After World War II the federal Indian policy in the United States changed from the Indian New Deal to the Termination Policy to promote the assimilation of Native Americans into American society. The Indian Claims Commission (ICC) which existed from 1946 to 1978 was established to solve the historical land issues with the Indian tribes, and as part of the Termination Policy, decided whether the federal government should compensate the Indian tribes for their loss of lands. Although there are many studies on the history of the ICC, its relations with Cold War policy in the United States have not been sufficiently discussed. This article analyzes the land issues of Western Shoshones through the ICC by considering the development and militarization of the American West after World War II. It explores the responses of the Western Shoshones as well as the federal Indian policy, using the archival records and historical materials.

Politicians from the Western states supported the creation of the ICC and the Termination Policy as well as the land development for promoting regional economies in the 1950s. Based on the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, the Western Shoshone submitted claims for their ancestral land to the ICC in 1951. The Te-Moak Bands council, which was organized in 1938, under the Indian Reorganization Act became the representative of the Western Shoshone in the procedures of the ICC. However, the Nevada Test Site was established in 1951 on their ancestral land and the militarization of the West developed during the Cold War. It became the National Sacrifice Area after repeated tests of atomic bombs caused cancers and other diseases among downwinders including Shoshones.

The traditionalists of the Western Shoshone tried to resist the process of the ICC because they sought not compensation but the return of their ancestral lands. Especially during the 1960s they organized the new tribal movement to claim the lands and even the members of the Te-Moak Bands council joined it in the 1970s. The court battles over the land between the Bureau of Land Management and the Shoshone sisters, Mary and Carrie Dann, started in 1974.

Notwithstanding their conflicts, in 1977 the ICC decided to pay the Western Shoshone about $26 million compensation for the loss of 24 million acres of land and the Court of Claims supported this decision in 1979. Although the Western Shoshone resisted receiving the compensation the decision was never changed. The plan to install the MX missile in the central Nevada in 1979 was abandoned after the storm of protests by local residents including Shoshones. However, the Yucca Mountain in the Nevada Test Site became a proposed site for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste in 1987. Thus the Federal Indian policy through the ICC aimed to incorporate Indian Tribes and their lands into Cold War America against the background of the militarization of the West.

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The objective of this article is to make clear the significance of the contract farming system in Mexico by means of some detailed case studies. The contract farming system usually involves the developed countries' agribusiness and farmers in rigid contracts with respect to their agricultural production and supply of agricultural products. It has often attracted researchers' attention as a strategy of the rural development in less-developed countries, and was formulated as "the core-satellite model" by Arther Goldsmith (1985). The case studies in this article deal with production of asparagus and strawberry. These crops have been grown for exporting abroad from Mexico since the beginning of their production. Both the production and export of these crops have remarkably increased since the 1960s. They are mainly exported to the United States and other developed countries. In the States of Guanajuato and Michoacan, which are the prime producers of these crops in Mexico, the large-scale farmers concentrate a large proportion of the total sales of farm products, irrigated land, farm laborers, and so on. One of the case studies investigates the contract farming of asparagus in Bajio Vally (in the State of Guanajuato), the other analyzes that of strawberry in Zamora Vally (in the State of Michoacan). These case studies make it clear that the most advanced technologies in agriculture have been introduced to Mexico through the contract farming there, and as a result of this, the productivity of the Mexican agriculture has been unambiguously enhanced. The large-scale farmers have further increased the number of their farm laborers and enlarged the scale of cultivation. The small-scale farmers, by contrast, have little opportunity to share the benefits provided by the contract farming. On the other hand, the contract farming system enables the agribusiness to command farmers' production by holding the channels of sales, furnishing credit in kind, and rigidly controlling the production process in agriculture. The agribusiness can also extend their sphere of activities into the farm supplying industries. In short, the contract farming system functions as one of the new ways of comprehensively controlling agriculture by the agribusiness, and creates a new form of the evolution in capitalistic agriculture. Completely commercial agricurture is operated under the total control of the agribusiness, for the purpose of sales in the world market, with the most advanced technologies applied.

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