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142 H Harnar, Nellie Shaw (Northern Paiute, 1905–85). Nellie Shaw Harnar was born in Wadsworth, Nevada, a Central Pacific Railroad stop that became alienated land from the Pyramid Lake Reservation. One of nine children born to James and Margie Shaw, she attended this Northern Paiute reservation’s day school and subsequently was graduated from the Stewart Institute boarding school in Carson City, as well as Carson City High School. Her formal education next took her to the Normal Training Course at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Then after obtaining a baccalaureate in early education in 1936 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Shaw earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Nevada in Reno. Despite her long career as a dedicated Bureau of Indian Affairs teacher in boarding schools in Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nevada, she nonetheless managed to turn her master’s thesis into an invaluable history of the Pyramid Lake Reservation (Harnar 1974). In this informed source, we learn, for example, that Frank Spencer (see Weneyuga) carried the first of Nevada’s two world-famous nativistic religions (see Ghost Dance of 1870) from the Walker River Reservation to fellow Kuyuidokado (see Northern Paiute) on the Pyramid Lake Reservation and that “Young Winnemucca,” their seemingly at first reluctant Northern Paiute military leader of what became an important early war with the whites in 1860 (see Pyramid Lake War), not only negotiated the terms of its peace afterward with F. W. Lander, but also spoke fluent English as a result of having previously lived in California (see Numaga). Nellie Harnar Shaw married Curtis Sequoyah Harnar, and they had one son, Curtis Jr. Among her many awards, she was named Nevada’s Outstanding Woman of the Year in 1975 (Ronnow 2001a). Harney, Corbin (Shoshone, ca. 1930–2007). Corbin Harney was born in Idaho. After his mother apparently died within hours of delivery, he was adopted by Florence Vega and Eunice Silver, Western Shoshone herbalists and healers. When he grew up and decided to become a medicine person himself, Harney then completed an apprenticeship under them. He also undertook a dedicatory fast to participate in a Plains Indian annual religion that today is increasingly becoming popular throughout the Great Basin as part of what is called the “Traditional-Unity Movement” (see Sun Dance; see also Jorgensen 1986, 667–71). According to Harney, it was a Water Spirit seen in a vision that shaped his future role as a political activist: “You’re going to have to come out from behind the bush and give us a hand here,” he reported hearing its voice say (1995, xxiii). Harney thus interpreted that message as a directive to join antinuclear demonstrators who subsequently crossed a cattle guard in 1982 leading onto a 1,350-squaremile US military nuclear test site in Nevada, where they of course were promptly arrested (see Yowell, Raymond). Probably, though, Harney’s antinuclear sentiments were aroused thirty years earlier, in 1950, when he undertook pre-NAGPRA per- h a r n e y , c o r b i n 143 sonal responsibility for reburying the remains of Native Americans unearthed at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site north of Las Vegas (see NAGPRA). Harney participated in antinuclear demonstrations until the end of his life and often spoke out against nuclear testing. Along with marching in Las Vegas in October 1992 to protest the US Department of Energy’s interest in uranium mining, the Western Shoshone spiritual leader and activist traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, two years later and addressed the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Indeed, Harney’s opposition to the use of nuclear power also led him to establish two organizations: the Shundahai Network in 1994 (Shundahai in Shoshone is reportedly translated as “Peace and Harmony in Creation”) and Poo Ha Bah, a transcultural healing-type center located just outside of Death Valley, California (see Esteves, Pauline). Not unrelated to those concerns is Harney’s commitment to the preservation of what he called Native American “places of power” (see Booha; Sacred Sites). His commitment became such that he even felt obliged to divulge the location of several important yet otherwise secret Shoshone religious shrines, such as Eagle Rock in Lander County, Nevada, after rumors of its coming transformation into a “multiuse ” recreational area; Rock Creek Canyon, which is just north of Battle Mountain in northern Nevada and contains Bah-tza-gohm-bah, “Otter Water,” a natural spring flowing through an ancient canyon...
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