From large-scale anti-nuclear actions by the American Peace Test in the 1980s to this year's smaller rallies by the Shundahai Network and the Nevada Desert Experience, the Nevada Test Site has always been a target of demonstrators.

On New Year's Eve, some 450 protesters gathered outside the Mercury entrance to the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to participate in the Nevada Desert Experience's "Millennium 2000 -- Walking the Ways of Peace."

Actor Martin Sheen, as he has in the past, joined the group's candlelight march a few hours after one leader of the religious-based group, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, declared, "We're protesting the continuing maintenance of nuclear weapons."

As recently as last week, the Shundahai Network -- an international anti-nuclear group based in Southern Nevada -- condemned the Department of Energy for conducting a subcritical nuclear experiment at the test site. Government officials maintain these small-scale experiments are allowed under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

But the Shundahai activists, inspired by Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney, released a statement that said, "It is with blatant disrespect that the DOE continues to violate our Mother Earth as well as disregard the Treaty of Ruby Valley."

Nearly 50 years after the first atomic bomb lit up the sky over the test site, Western Shoshones maintain they never relinquished the land.

Western Shoshone leaders say their claim to the land is supported by the 1863 Ruby Valley Treaty that was forged between their nation and the United States. The treaty ended violent disputes by allowing the tribe to retain its ancestral land, Newe Sogobia, the so-called, "place for the people of Mother Earth," while the U.S. government gained access to this land which included what is now the test site.

To settle the ownership issue that simmered for a century, the government allocated the Western Shoshone $26 million in 1973 for the land, but the national council has never accepted it. The money, and interest, estimated to be $105 million in 1998, sits untapped in an Interior Department trust account.

Department of Energy records show American Peace Test demonstrations at the test site took hold in 1986. At first only a few dozen people participated, resulting in only a few arrests for civil disobedience. The largest protest that year, from May 31 through June 2, drew 775 participants and resulted in 154 arrests.

In 1987, the protests were attracting thousands of demonstrators and arrest tallies mounted in the hundreds.

From 1986 through April 1994, government records document 536 American Peace Test demonstrations at the test site involving 37,488 participants and 15,740 arrests.

The arrests usually were for trespassing or blocking roads. Sometimes, to avoid multiple arrests, test site and Nye County authorities would cite the trespassers, drive them 140 miles northwest to Tonopah, then release them.

The largest American Peace Test demonstration occurred from March 12 through March 20, 1988, when the Energy Department counted between 7,300 and 8,800 participants and 2,067 arrests. The group, established in 1985, disbanded in 1994 after tax-deductible contributions dwindled from $100,000 during the peak years of the 1980s to $15,000 in 1993.

Home Page