Join us at Peehee Mu’huh for updates, camping, food, and visiting! Come spend the day or the weekend with us.
If you are camping, please be self sufficient. Event will take place on Saturday from 12-3pm. Lunch will be provided on Saturday at 12:30pm. Please come to Peehee Mu’huh in a good way. Stand in solidarity to protect sacred land and resources from being destroyed by Lithium Nevada.
Where: Peehee Mu’huh (Thacker Pass)
When: Saturday, April 30, 12-3PM
The 18,000-acre Thacker Pass mine would reach into ancestral lands of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, the Burns Paiute Tribe, Reno Sparks Indian Colony and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley Indian Reservation.
To the Paiute people, however, it’s Peehee mu’huh, or rotten moon, for its crescent shape and ugly history. It’s one of the few remaining places where tribal citizens can still gather traditional foods such as chokecherries and wild potatoes, and medicines such as toza root, or honor their ancestors at the site where 31 Paiute people were massacred by government soldiers in 1865.
Several of the tribes, along with environmental groups and others, say the mine would wreck their land, resources and culture, depleting or poisoning water supplies, destroying sacred sites, degrading wildlife habitat and leaving behind hazardous waste.
Read the rest of the article here at Indian Country Today.
“We deeply oppose President Biden’s executive order for the Defense Production Act for precious minerals,” said Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone tribal member Day Hinkey, who is part of the group Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu, or the People of Red Mountain. “I believe this is gonna be the second coming of environmental destruction. The first we’re in now is the climate crisis from the fossil fuel industry, and I believe this next one will be lithium mining.”
“Water is life. That’s not just a slogan, it’s what we all need to survive.”
Hinkey, who raised concerns about the destruction of cultural lands and elimination of Indigenous history, added that “water is life. That’s not just a slogan, it’s what we all need to survive. In this climate right now, we are suffering in drought, and everyone needs water. Lithium is going to contaminate a ton of water. We need this water to survive for drinking water and our foods.”
Read the full article here at Common Dreams
Some will tell you that we must mine our way out of the climate crisis. They will tell you that places like Thacker Pass must be sacrificed. But those of us who trace our ancestry to this place, and still rely on its resources for our way of life, reject that idea. Yes, we must act to address the urgent challenge of climate change, for ours and future generations. But we must do so without replacing dirty oil with dirty mining that desecrates the cultural resources and sacred sites of Indigenous peoples.
Lithium mining at Thacker Pass will take advantage of already impacted tribal communities and strip them of their cultural history. Do not tell us that this is the cost of progress. We are not prepared to sacrifice our burial grounds, or the places where we still hunt, fish and gather food.
Read the rest here at the Reno-Gazette Journal
An interview with Daranda Hinkey about the Lithium Americas proposed Thacker Pass lithium mine. She discusses how the legal system isn’t designed to protect tribal people and how mining is a growing threat.
