Native American land activist Carrie Dann dies in Nevada
RENO, Nev. (AP) – Carrie Dann, a Native American land rights activist, Nevada rancher and longtime leader of the Western Shoshone Nation, has died.
Dann and her younger sister Mary Dann, who died in 2005, fought with the federal government for decades over ownership of their ancestral lands in central Nevada.
Born in Nevada’s Crescent Valley in 1932, Dann co-founded the Western Shoshone Defense Project in 1991.
She died Saturday at home of natural causes with family members near, said Julie Cavanaugh-Bill, a friend and lawyer in Elko who worked with Dann on numerous defense project cases. She was believed to be between 86 and 88, but didn’t have a birth certificate, Cavanaugh-Bill said.
Carrie Dann helped lead efforts to block several northern Nevada mining projects and was a staunch opponent of shipping nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain site in southern Nevada.