The rugged and beautiful Thacker Pass in the desert mountains of northern Nevada has long been a sacred site for Native American tribes in the region.
It has witnessed bloody and terrible history. On 12 September 1865, US federal soldiers in the 1st Nevada cavalry committed a massacre of Native Americans, the Numu, across Thacker Pass, named Peehee Mu’huh – Rotten Moon, in the Numu language. Thirty to 50 Native Americans are believed to have been killed, including women and children.
The pass is also the site of the largest known lithium deposit in the US and one of the largest in the world, and Native people and their supporters say another tragedy is now unfolding there.
A mining project on the site by Lithium Americas, fast-tracked at the end of the Trump Administration, started construction earlier this year. For its proponents, the mine is an essential component for the US’s shift to a greener future. For its critics, the mine threatens irrevocable environmental and historical destruction to the area.
“All the people here on the reservation were not consulted when this mine was approved,” said Dorece Sam, a direct descendant of Ox Sam, one of three survivors of the Thacker Pass massacre.
She is currently being sued by Lithium Americans along with six other protesters of the project. “Myself as an Ox Sam descendant, it means a lot to me to know and watch from US Highway 95 as the grounds become more and more desecrated. It’s hard to see and hard to watch.”
The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe are currently pushing to have the Thacker Pass region designated a site under the National Register of Historic Places.
Lithium, dubbed “white gold” by investors, is used for rechargeable batteries used in electronics ranging from cell phones to computers, with demand expected to surge in the next several years for the material.
But the process for mining lithium is rife with environmental impacts. Production of a ton of lithium carbonate produces three times the emissions of producing a ton of steel on average, and uses a huge amount of water. The Thacker Pass lithium project is expected to use 1.7bn gallons of water annually to produce 60,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate a year.
A lawsuit filed by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and the Summer Lake Paiute Tribe is still pending in court against the project to recognize Thacker Pass as a cultural district. Another lawsuit filed by a rancher, four environmental groups, and two other Native American tribes was ruled in favor of the project and an appeal was lost in July 2023.
Michon Eben, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, said she submitted the petition report to the Bureau of Land Management in February but has not heard any movement on it from the agency.
She said the regional office still has not turned it into the National Park Service to review, respond, and put it on the national register. She also criticized the federal agency for not addressing these issues in the environmental impact statement for the mining project.
“That’s upsetting, because while they’re holding the report, the traditional cultural district has been destroyed. Because Lithium Americas is out there, they’re doing ground-disturbing activities in the area, which we state is a traditional cultural district,” said Eben. “So, if any tribes or anybody wanted to mitigate that destruction, what are we going to mitigate?”
Between 1864 to 1868, there were concerted efforts by the federal government to massacre Native Americans in the Great Basin area, a part of history not taught in schools and often ignored, Eben said.
“The world needs to know that an important historical event occurred there, and that the Bureau of Land Management is not following the National Historic Preservation Act, one of the federal laws that has to be followed during a project like this. They failed to conduct an ethnography with Paiute and Shoshone people,” added Eben.
Arlan Melendez, chair of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, said the tribe has been in contact with the White House to try to apply pressure to federal agencies to take some sort of action. The White House did not provide comment for this story.
“We’re kind of looking for some action. There hasn’t been any, especially on the massacre site, which is a big issue to the tribes. We’re also concerned about water and the environment and the cultural significance,” said Melendez. “When we talk about leaving something for our generations to come, we’re trying to do that.”
Mining projects have extracted wealth on Native lands for generations under the 1872 Mining Act, and have stolen lands under the Dawes Act of 1887, all while the government has levied taxes on Native Americans on their own land, said Melendez.
“It’s just one big political Ferris wheel that keeps turning, and it never turns for the tribes. What did the Native Americans get who had all this aboriginal land? How much of the millions of dollars that went out of Nevada did the tribes ever get? They got zero. This came out of their aboriginal territories, [and] all they got is a bunch of holes in the ground and contaminated water,” added Melendez.
“If you’re not going to stop, are we still in a situation where the rich get rich and the tribes get poorer because they don’t get a dime off of the mining that happens within their original lands? That’s hard to swallow.”
Around 85% of all lithium reserves are on or near indigenous land. In Argentina, indigenous communities held demonstrations in June to oppose mining efforts, and met with riot police, resulting in numerous injuries of protesters. Lithium mining operations in Chile have incited indigenous communities to decry the effects mining has had on water and farming practices.
In the US, the Thacker Pass lithium mining project has prompted similar opposition from activists and Native Americans who built activist camps to try to stop the project. The latest protest camp, the Ox Sam Camp, was raided by police and disbanded in June and seven protesters are currently facing a lawsuit filed by Lithium Americas.
The protesters are currently seeking the dismissal of the lawsuit, characterizing it as a Slapp (strategic lawsuit against public participation) lawsuit, on the grounds of free speech.
“This mining company is destroying a biodiversity hotspot in a Native American sacred site where people were massacred, and people including direct descendants of those were killed in Thacker Pass, environmentalists and other allies, went out non-violently in prayer to try to stop that destruction and are now facing criminalization from the company and the government,” said Max Wilbert, one of the protesters who are being sued.
“The company is seeking to bar from even visiting the sacred site that was first taken from them in 1865 at the point of a gun, and here in 2023, it’s being taken from people again under these bulldozer treads and the court system.”
The Bureau of Land Management declined to comment.
Lithium Americas also declined to comment on this story, citing pending litigation.
