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.