Upcoming Rallies – Join Us!!

Join Us!

✊✊ Rally in Carson City ✊✊

Join us July 7, 11am in Carson City to rally at the Far Western Headquarters (Research Way) and make sure they know we will #ProtectThackerPass #ProtectPeeheeMuhuh.

Keep up the pressure!!

📞 Call the Register of Professional Archeologists and tell them that Far Western members of the Register are violating the Register’s code of conduct.
📞 Call or email Craig Young at Far Western Anthropological Research Group and tell him to cancel the looting of Peehee Mu’huh / Thacker Pass.

Join the event and invite others!! https://www.facebook.com/events/767721677228709

✊✊ Rally in Reno ✊✊

Join us July 21, 8am in Reno for a rally at the Reno Federal District Courthouse (400 S. Virginia St.). We will make sure that the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) and the court hearing the injunction motion filed by a coalition of four environmental groups know we mean to Protect Peehee Mu’huh / Thacker Pass from mining. Bring your signs! 

✊✊ Direct Action Training ✊✊

We invite you to join us at Peehee Mu’huh / Thacker Pass on the weekend of July 24th and 25th for an in-depth direct action training. We will cover basics of direct action, strategy and tactics, legal issues and know-your-rights, and more.

Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3qPO6uz

Calling on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to Protect Peehee mu’huh / Thacker Pass

Tribal Members Aim to Stop Lithium Nevada Corporation From Digging Up Cultural Sites in Thacker Pass

Fort McDermitt, Nevada – As soon as July 29, 2021, Lithium Nevada Corporation (LNC) plans to begin removing cultural sites, artifacts, and possibly human remains belonging to the ancestors of the Paiute and Western Shoshone peoples for the proposed Thacker Pass open pit lithium mine.

According to a motion for preliminary injunction filed by four environmental organizations in the case Western Watersheds Project v. United States Department of the Interior, LNC intends to begin “mechanical trenching” operations at seven undisclosed sites within the project area, each up to “40 meters” long and “a few meters deep.” The corporation also plans to dig up to 5 feet deep at 20 other undisclosed sites, all pursuant to a new historical and cultural resources plan that has never been subject to meaningful, government-to-government consultation with the affected Tribes or to National Environmental Policy Act analysis.

Daranda Hinkey, Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone tribal member and secretary of a group formed by Fort McDermitt tribal members to stop the mine, Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu (People of Red Mountain) states: “From an indigenous perspective, removing burial sites or anything of that sort is bad medicine. Our tribe believes we risk sickness if we remove or take those things. We simply do not want any burial sites in Thacker Pass or anywhere in the surrounding area to be taken. The ones who passed on were prayed for and therefore should stay in their place, no matter what. We need to respect these places. The people at Lithium Nevada wouldn’t go and dig up their family gravesite because they found lithium there, so why are they trying to do that to ours?”

LNC’s Thacker Pass open pit lithium mine would harm the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, their traditional land, and traditional foods like choke cherry, yapa, ground hog, and mule deer. It would also harm water, air, and wildlife including sage grouse, Lahontan cutthroat trout, pronghorn antelope, and sacred golden eagles.

Thacker Pass is named Peehee mu’huh in Paiute. Peehee mu’huh means “rotten moon” in English and was named so because Paiute ancestors were massacred there while the hunters were away. When the hunters returned, they found their loved ones murdered, unburied, rotting, and with their entrails spread across the sage brush in a part of the Pass shaped like a moon. According to the Paiute, building a lithium mine over this massacre site at Peehee mu’huh would be like building a lithium mine over Pearl Harbor or Arlington National Cemetery.

Land and water protectors have occupied the Protect Thacker Pass camp in the geographical boundaries of LNC’s open pit lithium mine since January 15. Will Falk, attorney and Protect Thacker Pass organizer, says: “Our allies, the People of Red Mountain, do not want to see their ancestors disturbed and their sacred land destroyed. We plan on stopping Lithium Nevada and BLM from digging these cultural sites up.”

On Tuesday, June 15th at 11am PST / 2pm EST, we will be phone banking to Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) to ask that she rescind (cancel) the Record of Decision for Thacker Pass, delay the project for consultation, and meet with Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu (People of Red Mountain) to discuss the issues here.

During this phone bank, we will be live streaming a press conference featuring Fort McDermitt tribal members and other concerned people. Please join us by filling out the information on this form and join us to #ProtectPeeheeMu’huh / #ProtectThackerPass!

SIGN UP HERE: https://forms.gle/z4Y2w2dKaw7WMHwE6

Event hosted by People of Red Mountain, One Source Network, Moms Clean Air Force, and Protect Thacker Pass. Please share widely!

Day of Action: Phone Bank and Press Conference, Tuesday June 15

Join us for this phone bank and press conference action!

Ask Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to Visit Thacker Pass for Urgent Action

On Tuesday, June 15th, at 11am PST, Protect Thacker Pass will inform Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland of community concerns regarding the proposed lithium mine at Peeheemu’huh (Thacker Pass). During a live press conference, we will run a phone bank in which we will take turns calling Haaland’s office, requesting an urgent meeting with her and asking her to put a stop to this mine.

Please add your voice to our phone bank. Help us demonstrate to the federal government that local communities and their supporters seriously, strongly oppose this mine!

Participate through Zoom or on live feeds on Facebook and Twitter.

Speakers: Daranda Hinkey, Derek Hinkey, Max Wilbert.

Join via Zoom / Facebook / Twitter at 11am PT Tuesday June 15th