Do good neighbors dig up massacre sites? Questioning the Thacker Pass narrative

by | Sep 11, 2021 | Culture of Resistance, Dispatches from Thacker Pass, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support

On Tuesday, Lithium Americas CEO Alexi Zawadzki published an opinion column in this newspaper stating that “For Lithium Americas and its subsidiary Lithium Nevada, developing the Thacker Pass lithium mine isn’t worth doing if we don’t do it right. This means committing to a process that is transparent, collaborative — and most of all, respectful to our neighbors.”

If Zawadski is telling the truth, he should back up his words with action and cancel the Thacker Pass mine project right away.

The neighbors he refers to — local farmers and ranchers in Orovada and Kings River, as well as Native Americans from the nearby Fort McDermitt Reservation — have almost universally expressed outrage about the Thacker Pass mine.

Lithium Americas faces three lawsuits from a rancher, environmental groups and Tribes. They face protests to their water rights transfers. Their Argentina mine has faced complaints of human rights violations, as reported in The Washington Post. And the protest camp that I helped found attracts hundreds to the site in a groundswell of public opposition.

Yet now, they are poised to bulldoze through sagebrush habitat over new evidence showing a massacre of Paiutes took place in Thacker Pass in 1865. Apparently, despite “extensive cultural inventories,” they missed this. What else have they missed?

Zawadzki claims his company is doing “extensive work to respect and safeguard” the connection of tribes to the region. Charitably, he is confused by what these words mean. Less charitably, he is lying. Desecrating sacred sites, looting artifacts and ignoring a history of massacres to punch through a rushed project is the polar opposite of respect.

Does this sound collaborative? Does it sound like being a good neighbor?

Behind the public relations rhetoric is the truth. This mine will release chemicals, raise radioactive dust and pollute with fumes from up to 200 semi truck trips per day. The environmental impacts include water drawdowns, bulldozing of habitat, severing of migration corridors and possible harm to endangered species. And this project hurts the public, too: It will virtually privatize 28 square miles of public lands for at least 40 years and possibly much more.

All that traffic will hurt the community through more than air pollution too. Locals, including Humboldt County Commissioner Ron Cherri, have stated that “it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when” someone dies due to the increase in truck traffic. And the indigenous community in particular is concerned about missing and murdered Indigenous women and the rise in drug abuse and crime that tends to follow large industrial projects — part of what Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has called an epidemic of violence against Indigenous peoples.

And when the mine is inevitably used up, what will be left behind? A wasteland for future generations? A cancer cluster? A moonscape with a fraction of its former biodiversity? Perhaps if Zawadzki was a local, and his children and grandchildren would be living in this area, he would make different choices.

For now, the courts have sided with Lithium Americas. But that decision may not last. Further, in a pluralistic society, it is a mistake to rely on governments or courts to always do what is right. In his letter from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. — who broke the law repeatedly — wrote that “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’”

Zawadzki is not telling the truth. He is doing what corporate crooks are paid to do: lying in order to ram this mine through, despite the harm it will cause, and despite determined, principled community opposition.

Reno Gazette Journal

Photo: a resident of Thacker Pass, by Max Wilbert.

International Lithium Group Stands in Solidarity with Peehee mu’huh / Thacker Pass Communities

by | Sep 8, 2021 | Culture of Resistance, Dispatches from Thacker Pass, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support

For Immediate Release
September 8, 2021

Contacts:
John Hadder, Great Basin Resource Watch
Mirko Nikolić, YLNM-Lithium Group / Postdoc Linköping University
Hannibal Rhoades, YLNM-Lithium Group / The Gaia Foundation

Today, an international working group of individuals from around the world who are directly facing the effects of lithium extraction or are a part of organizations working alongside these frontline communities, have released a statement in support of the directly affected communities of the proposed Thacker Pass lithium mine. They are demanding that all ground-breaking at the Thacker Pass mine site be halted and that the affected communities be treated with full right to withhold consent for the mine.

The international YLNM lithium group is composed of people from places in Chile, Serbia, Portugal, Nevada, California, Australia, Spain, and the UK who are facing the negative repercussions of existing lithium mining or who are fighting proposed lithium mines threatening to devastate their communities, cultural resources, and ecosystems. It is from this place of first hand experience of the harms associated with lithium mining that they internationally demand for ground-breaking operations to be halted at Thacker Pass and for the affected communities to be treated with complete right to withhold consent for the mine.

Ramón M. Balcázar is one of the members of the YLNM network, who works at the Plurinational Observatory of Salares Andinos in protecting Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia’s salt flats from lithium extraction: “​​As we can see in Nevada, the expansion of lithium mining reproduces colonialism not only in Latin America but also in stolen lands in so-called developed countries. If this is the cost of having electric cars for the most polluting countries of the world, maybe we need to find other ways for clean and just mobility, and those ways are probably beyond green capitalism.”

Prior to and after the Record of Decision on the Thacker Pass mine by the Bureau of Land Management in January 2021, large numbers of individuals from the various affected communities–such as the People of Red Mountain, the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, the Burns Paiute Tribe, and the agricultural communities within Orovada and Kings River Valley–have been loudly voicing opposition. Members from these multiple frontline communities that will be directly and significantly harmed by the Thacker Pass Lithium mine have been fighting to prevent its construction through various peaceful avenues.

One of these forces of community resistance is the Atsa koodakuh wyh Nuwu, or the People of Red Mountain, which is a group of Fort McDermitt tribal descendants who formed specifically to oppose the Thacker Pass mine and other lithium projects threatening their homelands. As Deland Hinkey from the group states, “Peehee Mu’huh is sacred land and we must protect sacred land. It is not too late for change. We all need to realize that we only have one Earth and she must be protected. Stop corporations like Lithium Nevada, who want to destroy Mother Earth for profit…Let’s Protect Peehee Mu’huh.”

Folks from the agricultural communities next to the mine have also been clear in voicing the harms the mine will cause them. As one of these community members, Jean Williams, in Orovada, NV states, “this mine at Thacker Pass is not being permitted for the well being of our farming community. The process they wish to use is questionable. The amount of sulfur to be brought in for processing has the potential for permanent harm to crops and cattle production. Our water may disappear with no guarantee from the mine to make it right.”

Despite their and other community members’ efforts, and the clear community un-consent for the mine, it was permitted by the Bureau of Land Management in a fast-tracked manner that neglected proper Tribal consultation and public process. The mine is currently on the brink of construction, with many members from affected communities actively still resisting it, as well as active litigation in opposition to the mine’s permitting from a local rancher, conservation groups, two federally recognized Tribes, and the Atsa koodakuh wyh Nuwu. It is still undetermined precisely when the mining company, Lithium Nevada, will be breaking ground, but they have stated intent to do so in the near future.

The international working group’s statement of solidarity and demand for the rights of the communities affected by the Thacker Pass mine was echoed by over a dozen other international organizations and individuals who also signed on to the demands in the statement. The sentiment of solidarity with those on Thacker Pass’s frontlines is global beyond the YLNM network.

In a time where proponents of the mine largely center their arguments around domestic production of lithium and preventing “outsourcing” of the harms of mining it onto other nations, the statement coming directly from those affected by lithium mining in these other nations speaks volumes in pushing back this narrative. It states loud and clear that communities, no matter where they are located, should hold complete right to withhold consent for mines that directly affect them, their cultural resources, sacred sites, water, land, and air. The YLNM lithium network and the greater global voices’ sweeping support and solidarity for those harmed by the Thacker Pass mine sends the message that a win for the community members fighting the Thacker Pass mine is a win for communities directly affected by lithium mining everywhere.

“Our planet is home to an astonishing multitude of plant, animal, human communities and living environments. Toxic and exploitative extractivist system keeps trying to separate us from our communities and Nature, and plunges us deeper into climate and socio-ecological chaos that it caused in the first place. A true and just transformation will be led by communities and imbued by our knowledge to meet the specific needs and realities of the places we inhabit and care for. Through this work in our respective places, we will be able to join paths towards regenerating the Earth community of justice and solidarity,” Mirko Nikolić from the YLNM-Lithium Group.

Press Release: Native People, Supporters Will Gather on September 12th to Commemorate an 1865 Massacre

by | Sep 7, 2021 | Culture of Resistance, Dispatches from Thacker Pass, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support

Illustration: Travis London, Deep Green Arts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact People of Red Mountain and Protect Thacker Pass

OROVADA, NV — Opponents of the proposed Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada will gather on Sunday, September 12th, to commemorate a massacre of at least 31 Northern Paiute people on that day in 1865 with prayers and songs.

Sunday’s gathering will begin at 10:30am at “Sentinel Rock,” a culturally significant rock outcrop on the east side of Thacker Pass, and conclude at the protest camps further west in the pass. Protesters have been on-site since January.

“Our remembrance event is a special event to honor our ancestors and this sacred place we call Peehee Mu’huh [the Paiute name for Thacker Pass],” said Daranda Hinkey, a tribal member from People of Red Mountain, one of the groups opposing the Thacker Pass mine. “One hundred and fifty-six years after this massacre, we gather to honor our ancestors in a good way. We feel it’s our responsibility to protect these burial grounds and sacred places.”

The 1865 massacre, part of what historian Gregory Michno describes as “a summer-long hunt for renegade Indians,” began when soldiers departed their camp near Willow Creek, less than a mile east of Sentinel Rock. On September 12th, 1865 at one am, the 1st Nevada Cavalry moved to surround a nearby camp of northern Paiute people west of Willow Creek in Thacker Pass, but were discovered. The Cavalry moved in with guns blazing, and the camp was all but wiped out. In his book “The Deadliest Indian War in the West,” Michno writes that the massacre “lasted three hours and stretched out for several miles.” Many Paiutes were also believed to be wounded. One cavalryman was wounded, but none killed. There were three survivors: two infants who were taken by a soldier, and one young man who fled on horseback.

Opponents of the Thacker Pass mine believe that the massacre took place within the boundaries of the planned Lithium Nevada project, and historical documents corroborate this. The Bureau of Land Management and Lithium Nevada Corporation have consistently denied that any massacres took place in Thacker Pass, evidencing the inadequacy of their consultation with tribes, the inadequacy of their historical research about the site, and their intent to bulldoze forward despite this.

The massacre took place in the context of “The Snake War,” a guerilla war which officially lasted from 1864 to 1868, but came after over a decade of tension and rising violence. Throughout the 1850’s and 60’s, settlers from the eastern United States poured west, crossing lands of the Northern Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock tribes, appropriating springs and water sources, and overhunting game. Settlers felt entitled to the land, while natives viewed settlers’ actions as disrespect, trespass, and directly injurious to their survival. Violence was inevitable, and by 1864 the Snake War, which would officially claim 1,762 casualties, was underway.

The ideological force underlying The Snake War was “Manifest Destiny,” the Catholic church doctrine under which the United States seized land from native people. This bred a pervasive racism, as evidenced by the Owyhee Avalanche newspaper stating after the 1865 massacre that the death toll amounted to “thirty-one permanently friendly Indians.”

Attendees of the September 12th commemoration are invited to wear the color teal or turquoise in honor of the fallen.

Open Letter to Secretary Haaland

by | Sep 7, 2021 | Culture of Resistance, Dispatches from Thacker Pass, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support

Dear Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland,

My name is Daranda Hinkey and I am a part of the People of Red Mountain, a group of fourteen Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone tribal descendants who are against the Lithium Americas/Lithium Nevada’s Thacker Pass Lithium Mine.

People of Red Mountain would like to invite Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland to a Remembrance event on Sunday, September 12th, 2021. This event will take place north of Winnemucca, NV on our traditional land which is threatened by this mine. We will start at 11 am near Nipple Rock (near mile marker 14 on Hwy 293) and then move to the Peehee Mu’huh camp around noon. I will include an event flyer in this letter.

People of Red Mountain’s ancestors fought in countless battles; one battle was dated September 12th, 1865 in which at least 31 Natives were brutally massacred by the U.S. Cavalry near Peehee Mu’huh. 156 years later, Paiute and Shoshone people will honor their ancestors in a good way. We feel it’s our responsibility to protect these burial grounds and Sacred places. We will be wearing teal for our Peehee Mu’huh Remembrance event. We will also sing honor songs, host drum groups, discuss the history of Peehee Mu’huh, the 1865 Massacre, and much more.

Our Paiute and Shoshone people talk about two massacres at Peehee Mu’huh or also known as Thacker Pass of Humboldt County, NV. Neither of these massacres are being taken seriously by the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Federal Court system. The remains of the Paiute and Shoshone people are soon to be disturbed, desecrated, and stolen from the Indiginous people due to Judge Miranda Du’s decision to deny the People of Red Mountain’s, Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, and Burns Paiute Tribe’s preliminary injunction to stop the excavation of 55 cultural sites.

The name Peehee Mu’huh (Rotten Moon) was given due to a massacre of a band of Paiute and Shoshone people where women, children, and elders were killed and their intestines were draped across the sagebrush. There is not a date of this massacre, but many elders have been told this story through oral history. Another massacre of the Paiute and Shoshone people was carried out on September 12th, 1865 by the U.S. Calvary. In this massacre, the people were viciously killed around daybreak. Three boys were able to escape this attack, one by fleeing towards the Oregon border and two others were adopted by a Humboldt County Sheriff, Charley Thacker.

People of Red Mountain, allies, and many Indigenous people around the country are standing against the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine. Many people are beginning to rethink the ‘clean energy’ proposal that the United States blindly believes will save the planet. It is not too late for you to make a statement on the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine.

I know one of your main missions as Secretary of the Interior is “Preserving our historic sites and lands for future generations,” and I know that you have said you, “remain committed to centering the voices and history, and stories of those who have been unrepresented and underrepresented” (Twitter Account @SecretaryDebHaaland). People of Red Mountain and others know you have the voice and power to help us in making a stand against the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine. Now is the time to come out to Peehee Mu’huh and honor the ancestors with the Remembrance event and hear out Tribal voices. You have mentioned on your Twitter account that you “will honor the sovereignty of tribal nations and recognize their part in America’s story” and “will be a fierce advocate for public lands.” People of Red Mountain know that Peehee Mu’huh is the right place and now is the right time to exercise your commitment and promises.

As you may know already, Lithium Americas/Lithium Nevada have promised to bring clean energy that will mitigate climate change and save the planet. This lithium will be used for lithium powered batteries used for electric vehicles, solar panels, rechargeable electronics, and more. But in return, the land, water, and air quality will be contaminated. The land will never look the same, the animals will never return, and the Indigneous first foods will never grow here again. The mine will deplete groundwater levels and aquifers for thousands to millions of years. The air quality will be polluted with hazardous contaminants that the animals and humans will be forced to breathe. The aboriginal people of this area, ranchers, and other community members will face a lifetime of countless environmental impacts which will endanger cultural resources and people’s way of life. The inevitable effects of this mine will be irreversible for hundreds of years to come. I do not believe this is what the U.S. the Secretary of the Interior wishes for America’s public lands and ancestral homelands of the Paiute and Shoshone people.

Our people have been overlooked and taken advantage of for too long. We need your help to turn this around. Please join us on September 12th and speak up about this issue.

Sincerely,

Daranda Hinkey
Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribal Member
Secretary of Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu / People of Red Mountain

Attention Supporters: We need your help this week!

by | Sep 7, 2021 | Culture of Resistance, Dispatches from Thacker Pass, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support

We need your help this week to put pressure on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, asking her to at the very least delay digging at Thacker Pass so consultation can be done properly. Native people of this region have been disregarded and disrespected by the Bureau of Land Management, and now digging threatens sacred sites and massacre sites very soon. This is urgent! 

Please reach out to Secretary Deb Haaland today!

TWITTER:
@SecDebHaaland — Lithium Nevada Corp is poised to bulldoze a known massacre site and sacred site of the Paiute Shoshone people. We need your help! Please read this letter; help us take action to #ProtectPeeheeMuhuh! @Interior @BLMnational https://www.protectthackerpass.org/open-letter-to-secretary-haaland/

EMAIL:
exsec_exsec@ios.doi.gov, feedback@ios.doi.gov, nculver@blm.gov, BLM_Press@blm.gov

PHONE:
202-208-3100
And keep calling, and please let your friends and family know, so they can call! We would like to keep calling as long as possible.

PHONE SCRIPT:
Hello, my name is ________ .

(If you’re a tribal member, state: I’m a member of the _______Tribe).

The Bureau of Land Management is about to bulldoze and dig up sacred sites and known massacre sites in Thacker Pass, Nevada. I am calling to request that the Department of the Interior rescind the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine Project Record of Decision and Plan of Operations.

I also request that the Department of the Interior order the Bureau of Land Management to stop any disturbance of cultural sites in Thacker Pass so that meaningful, government-to-government consultation can happen with local tribes.

Finally, I request that Secretary Haaland personally meet with the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Burns Paiute Tribe, and People of Red Mountain to hear their concerns about the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine Project.

The Lust for Money

by | Sep 4, 2021 | Culture of Resistance, Dispatches from Thacker Pass, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support

Earlier today, Judge Miranda Du rejected requests from the Reno-Sparks Indian Tribe, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu/People of Red Mountain to put an emergency halt on planned archeological digging for the Thacker Pass lithium mine.

As I watch Lithium Americas investors online celebrating Judge Miranda Du’s decision to allow the removal of sacred artifacts from Thacker Pass, I feel sick to my stomach.

“Go LAC!!” writes one investor. “Dirt shall move!” writes another. “Argentina online next year. Thacker Pass one less road block. Almost 500 million in bank. Sitting so damn pretty right now.” says a third.

Another writes of how many stocks he owns, punctuating his boast with an emoji showing a human face, eyebrows raised, panting as if in a caricature of lust with dollar signs for eyes and on the extended tongue.
Is this how the world is saved? By lust for money?

Sometime soon, bulldozers and excavators will arrive at Thacker Pass to begin “archeological digging” — a whitewashed term for the legally sanctioned looting of cultural artifacts and sacred sites. And afterwards, unless they are stopped, this whole mountain will be shattered and carted off.

The flesh of Earth, turned into profit.

I am disgusted and angry, but not surprised. This is a pattern of our culture, and history repeats itself.

In the mid-1800’s, colonization spilled over into Nevada territory. Miners, settlers, and soldiers gained footholds along rivers and where springs made life possible. With axes, the pine nut trees were felled, and like the mass-murder of the buffalo on the plains, the indigenous people’s ability to fight was cracked. With bullets, disease, and starvation, Paiute, Goshute, and Shoshone people were pushed out, corralled, and marched to reservations and boarding schools. “Kill the Indian, save the man,” they proclaimed. And now the mountains belonged to the conquerors, and they called it right. They called it manifest destiny.

Today, miners come for the land. They come for the water, 4.6 million gallons of it per day. They come for the sacred sites. The springs. The antelope. The ancestors in the soil. “We have complied with the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and our duty to consult with tribes,” they say. They claim the mountains belong to them, and while manifest destiny is officially out of favor, economic development is not. Besides, this is a green project, right? It is our destiny.
How is this different?

Three hundred and thirty-nine days ago, a few days before I visited Thacker Pass for the first time, I walked into a forest near the Columbia River. Finding a quiet spot in the dappled shade, I lay on my back on the dirt, and closed my eyes. My mind traveled to Thacker Pass.

First, I imagined the silence of this land, where wind and the hum of insects is often the loudest noise. I imagined ants, jackrabbits, antelope, and yes, human beings crisscrossing Thacker Pass on their ancient paths. From harmony, my vision shifted to the threat now facing the land.

“[G]reed comes,” I wrote in February, “wearing the flesh of human beings and armored in corporate law. Greed eyes the mountain and sees not the pronghorn or the burrowing owl or the ants venturing out from their colony, but only what he can take by breaking it all — by violating stone and wind and water, by transgressing of 16 million years of sacred silence. Greed sees that this mountain is full of lithium — the new white oil. Greed is a good storyteller, and he speaks of jobs and opportunities and investments, of stock options and shareholder returns, and electric cars. He speaks of saving the world.”

Now, for the first time since I have arrived here at Thacker Pass, destruction is imminent. The corporate laws that I wrote of back in February are playing their part. Bureaucracy, that indispensable tool in the arsenal of a democratic empire, has spoken. In court, administrative rules allowed the state to argue that “you had a chance to participate in the process, and you missed it.” And what is morally right, what is good for the land, what is wanted by the local indigenous people, ranchers, and farmers, becomes subordinate to what is written in administrative codes and lawbooks.

I wrote, in February, that “Right now, greed gathers his men and his machines, his drillers and borers and furnaces, his explosives and his chemicals and his politicians and his bankers. And he schemes, and he plans, and he wheels and he deals. He waits for his moment to press the plunger down, to close the circuit, to shatter the mountainside.”

That vision is close to becoming real.

And so we move deeper into the sixth mass extinction event, wallets grow fat as nature grows small.

In her recent artwork, the brilliant political cartoonist Stephanie McMillan, whose work I truly admire, asks this question: what do you do when your heart is breaking?

I pondered that question this morning. In Stephanie’s artwork, the human suffering from heartbreak curls into a ball, and answers the question by saying, “Nail it shut and wrap barbed wire around it.” But the bird beside the poor human has another answer: “Or you could let it open.”

The decision from Judge Du didn’t tell us anything new today. We all know that the courts don’t protect our living planet. We all know that the courts don’t protect indigenous peoples and lands. The courts enforce the law, and the law favors the wealthy over the people and the planet. And so Judge Du writes that while she “finds the Tribes’ arguments regarding the spiritual distress that the [looting of native artifacts and sacred sites] will cause persuasive,” she “must nonetheless reluctantly” allow the archeological dig as “the Court must operate within the framework of the applicable laws and regulations.”

Nothing has changed at Thacker Pass. For months now, the headsman’s axe has been raised. Now, it teeters on the brink of descending. We knew this time would come.

The question for us is this: will we wrap our hearts in barbed wire and nail them shut by ignoring injustice, walking away from reality, and lusting for money?

Or will we let our hearts open, and commit to protecting the land?