OWYHEE — The family placed flowers by a pair of weathered cowboy boots, as people quietly gathered for the memorial of the soft-spoken tribal chairman who mentored teens in the boxing ring and teased his grandkids on tractor rides. Left unsaid, and what troubled Marvin Cota’s family deep down, was that his story ended like so many others on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in far-north Elko County. He was healthy for decades.
They found the cancer too late. Shoshone-Paiute tribal member Michael Hanchor visits his mother’s grave, March 15, 2024, in Owyhee on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation that straddles the Nevada-Idaho border. In the area, toxins are embedded in the soil and petroleum is in the groundwater — but no one can say for sure what has caused such widespread illness.
Until recently, a now-razed U.S. maintenance building where fuel and herbicides were stored — and where Cota worked — was thought to be the main culprit.
But the discovery of a decades-old document with a passing mention of Agent Orange chemicals suggests the government may have been more involved in contaminating the land. “I don’t know if I’m more mad than I am hurt,” Terri Ann Cota said after her father’s service. “Because if this is the case, it took a lot of good men away from us.
” Homes on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation that straddles the Nevada-Idaho border are shown on March 14, 2024, in Owyhee. Owyhee, some 100 miles north of Elko, is the sole town on the rese.