Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada
federally recognized tribe of Western Shoshone Indians
The Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada is a federally recognized tribe of Western Shoshone people in northeastern Nevada.
History
The tribe organized under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Western Shoshone elected a traditional council, led by Chief Muchach Temoak and his descendants, to create the new governments; however, the United States refused to recognize the traditional council and created the Te-Moaks Bands Council. Traditionalists did not feel adequately represented by this council and created the United Western Shoshone Legal Defense and Education Association, now known as the Sacred Lands Association in 1974. The traditionalists argued before the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) that the Te-Moak Bands Council did not speak for them and the tribe never gave up their title to their traditional lands. Their claims and appeal were rejected in 1979, when the ICC ruled that the Western Shoshone lost title to their lands in the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863. In 1980 the courts ruled that the lands were not ceded in 1863 but were lost on 6 December 1979. Despite appeals by the tribe, the US Supreme Court rules in 1985 that $26 million was paid to the tribe in 1979 for 24 million acres (97,000 km2) of land. The tribe is still fighting to reclaim their traditional lands today.
The tribe's corporate charter was approved in 1938 and their current constitution was amended in 1982.
“Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada” enters the record as federally recognized tribe of Western Shoshone Indians. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Te-Moak, Tribe and Western can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Te-Moak, Tribe and Western provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7690712. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1974, 1979 and 1863.
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This entry incorporates text from “Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.