Thacker Pass is a project to mine Lithium on sacred lands of the Shoshone & Paiute in Nevada — and it is a serious threat to the native people’s health, culture, and environment. The Bureau of Land Management should never have approved it, but the administration pushed hard for its approval and is defending it in court.
The Thacker Pass project not only fails the basic test of environmental impact, it fails to respect treaties with Indigenous people, and is a gross violation of even the most basic level of environmental justice [EJ]. Biden made a point of saying environmental justice (EJ) is of critical importance, but he’s also willing to toss it aside for other reasons. It looks like the US is still firmly in settler-colonialism mode, taking what it wants and making Indigenous people pay.
Chase Iron Eyes, of the Lakota Law Project, recently consulted with Indigenous people there: “Because mining in so-called Nevada threatens the health and safety of frontline Native communities without our consultation or consent, we must stand together, right now.…Please watch our new video, in which I sit down with Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Chairman Arland D. Melendez to talk about mining’s threats to his ancestral homelands.…”
https://lakotalaw.org/resources/thacker-melendez
Also see:
Lithium Mining for EV Batteries Threatens the Environment, Indigenous Lands