Lithium Mining Is Headed To Nevada, And Native Land Will Pay The Price

In the face of heatwaves, wildfires, and rampant flooding, many companies market a solution to the climate crisis: electric vehicles. However, while their vehicles do not run on oil and gas, the batteries require finite minerals like cobalt, lithium, and nickel.

Scientists project that demand for these minerals could increase 40 times over by the year 2050. Protect Thacker Pass co-founder Max Wilbert believes the climate crisis cannot be solved through more mining projects at the sacrifice of indigenous communities and their land. 

 “I don’t know what part of blowing up a mountain is green. I don't remember what part of destroying Native American sacred sites is green,” Wilbert said. “All extraction projects destroy and pollute the air and water. The Thacker Pass mine is no different. And right now they're destroying this land.”

Whose Land Is It Anyway? 

For the past two-and-a-half years, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony (RSIC) has attempted to halt Lithium Nevada Corporation’s operations of the world’s largest open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass, located in a remote mountainside in northern Nevada. To the Native Paiute peoples in the area, Thacker Pass is known as “Peehee Mu’huh” and is full of sacred and ceremonial sites, traditional hunting and harvesting grounds, and the site of two massacres of Paiute peoples.

Lithium Nevada began operations after consulting the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, the only one out of the 28 Native tribes and colonies in Nevada. The tribal council signed a Community Agreement with Lithium Nevada in 2022, but many of the tribe’s members oppose the decision.  

The RSIC along with Summit Lake Paiute Tribe and Burns Paiute Tribe, sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in February 2023 for the right to proper consultation. After the case was dismissed by the courts in November 2023, the RSIC is changing their tactics towards tribal organizing to raise public awareness and action to halting this mine, along with other projects which are still in early stages of development, such as the McDermitt Lithium project nearby. 

“We lost a lawsuit because the law favors mining, especially in this state. We are also not going to pursue an appeal at this time. It would be in the best interest if the mining was put on hold, but by the time you would get through to appeal, they would’ve already desecrated all the sacred sites,” said RSIC Former Chairman Arlan Mendez in a press conference on December 5, 2023. “Part of our strategy will be to mobilize tribes so we can speak with a louder voice organized together. The better we can do that, the more influence we have.” 

The main legal obstacle is the Mining Law of 1872, which declared all valuable mineral deposits in land belonging to the United States to be free and open to exploration and purchase by individuals and private enterprises. According to attorney William Falk, who has been representing the RSIC, federal law does not allow a judge to permanently protect sacred sites that would be destroyed by mining on public lands. 

“The tribes’ lawsuit was never capable of permanently stopping the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine because tribes in the United States only have a right to consultation about projects destroying their ancestral homelands. They do not have the right to consent. They don't have the right to tell a government agency, ‘no you cannot build this mine here,’ Falk said. “The same is true for non-Native communities that live close to these mines. That law has to change.”

Bracing For What's Next

Tribal communities across Nevada worry about what the Thacker Pass mine will bring, such as man camps, which are temporary housing set up for mining workers. There is already one under construction 60 miles south of the mine in Winnemucca, Nevada. According to a report by National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCSX), the presence of man camps result in a higher number of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). 

“It’s not just not going to be detrimental to women or children,” Eben said. “When man camps come around to rural communities, illegal activity comes. Drug trafficking, sex trafficking will come to all our Native communities and Winnemucca.”

Despite being marketed as a green solution, the mine heavily pollutes the land. According to an environmental impact statement prepared by the BLM, the mine burns 12,000 gallons of diesel and gasoline each day in its operations. That’s the equivalent of emitting 152,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. The mine will also require 500,000 gallons (1.9 million liters) of water to extract 1 metric ton of lithium, which powers about 90 electric vehicles. 

Thacker Pass is located within the McDermitt Caldera, one of the largest lithium reserves in the world, which stretches into Oregon. But this mine isn’t the only lithium extraction project; in Nevada alone, there are 83 lithium extraction projects in various stages of permitting or exploration, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The RSIC believes that if federal laws aren’t challenged, more of these projects will develop across the country at the sacrifice of other tribal lands and people. 

“The boom that's going to happen here is almost like the gold rush of a long time ago. It's going to happen here because this is the first mine that has really affected that region. But the whole state has lithium deposits,” Melendez said. “So we’re at the beginning stages of mobilizing our Native American and indigenous people to recognize these laws are outdated.”

The tribes also urge the general public to get involved with protesting the Thacker Pass mine and McDermitt Lithium Project through media efforts, mass civil disobedience, direct actions, and peaceful protest. They hope their fight can link people from coast to coast and beyond to unite the peoples of the world. 

“We're trying to realize peaceful protests that mobilize a number of people. We can really make an impact  knowing that it’s an issue worth marching for, assembling for, and speaking to the media or whoever will listen,” Melendez said. “Not just within the state, but also in South Dakota, reaching out further to other countries where indigenous people are impacted. It's a broader vision and broader effort, and I think it starts by really focusing on and assembling people together so that we can brainstorm and determine how we move forward from here.”