Our friends at San Diego State University have put together a short film documenting our fight to protect Peehee Mu’huh and the McDermitt Caldera. If you’re in Southern California, please come join us for the first screening on Thursday, April 25th.
An excerpt from an article originally posted by NBC News.
Opponents of the mine draw on both oral and recorded history to establish its spiritual importance to the Shoshone and Paiute people. According to Gary McKinney, tribal oral history says soldiers massacred around 30 Paiute tribal members at Thacker Pass in 1865.
A contemporary newspaper account and a 1929 book, both cited in court filings, described an early-morning raid on a Paiute camp in September 1865 by the 1st Nevada Cavalry Battalion that killed women and children. The article called it an “Indian fight,” and said it left at least 31 Indians “permanently friendly,” meaning dead, and said that tally was probably low.
McKinney says that tribal members go to Thacker Pass to gather roots, medicinal herbs and berries for traditional ceremonies and rituals. Like many members of his tribe, he believes the valley, also known to Paiutes as Rotten Moon, is a “final resting place” for his ancestors.
Members of other Indigenous groups far from Thacker Pass have expressed support for McKinney and the opponents of the mine. To raise awareness, activists from around the U.S. ran, biked, rode horses and drove 2,600 miles from Nevada to New York.
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
