Tribes seek order banning digging at Nevada lithium mine
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Two tribes that joined a legal battle over plans to build a mine at the largest known U.S. deposit of lithium urged a judge Thursday to temporarily ban digging for an archaeological survey that they say would desecrate sacred tribal lands in Nevada near the Oregon line.
The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Atsa Koodakuh Wyh Nuwu/People of Red Mountain are intervening in a lawsuit that four conservation groups have filed against Lithium Nevada Corp. The tribes say their ancestors were massacred in the late 1800s at the proposed Thacker Pass site that would mine lithium, a key component in electric vehicle batteries. Demand for the mineral is expected to triple over the next five years.
The tribes say the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the project in December during the final weeks of the Trump administration violates the National Historic Preservation Act because they haven’t been consulted about potential efforts to mitigate damage to their sacred lands.
Building a mine “where our ancestors were massacred — where our ancestors’ bones, blood and flesh form a part of the soil — would be like building a lithium mine over Pearl Harbor, Arlington National Cemetery or the Gettysburg Battlefield,” according to an affidavit that lawyers for the tribes filed Thursday in federal court in Reno with a request to temporarily block the digging.
The Paiutes call Thacker Pass “Pee hee mu’huh,” which means “rotten moon.” Tribal leaders with the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony describe in oral histories how Paiute hunters returned home to find the “elders, women, and children murdered, unburied and rotting with their intestines spread across the sagebrush in this pass shaped like a crescent moon.”
The tribes’ request comes after U.S. District Judge Miranda Du...