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The Reno Sparks Indian Colony says it will end its legal fight against a lithium mine on sacred land after a Nevada court dismissed their lawsuit.
The Thacker Pass lithium mine would be located at the site of a village that was massacred.
Christina Aanestad reports.
“We didn’t lose the lawsuit because we were wrong. We lost the lawsuit because the law favors mining.”
Reno Sparks Indian Colony Chair Arlan Melendez says continuing a legal fight against the Thacker Pass lithium mine would be costly and take too long,
“By the time you would get through to appeal, they would have already desecrated all of the sacred sites.”
But the Washoe Paiute and Shoshone Tribes that make up the colony aren’t giving up the fight either.
Melendez says the next phase will be a public awareness campaign about the $2 billion project – the largest open pit lithium mine in North America.
To produce electric vehicle batteries in the push to transition off of fossil fuels and combat climate change.
Will Falk is the tribes’ lawyer.
“This project is absolutely a fossil fuel-based project. They’re gonna burn 12,000 gallons of diesel and gasoline on site every single day to operate the Thacker Pass lithium mine. There’s going to be over 152,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, emitted by operations of the Thacker Pass lithium mine single year. That’s the size of a small city.”
The lithium will go to General Motors (GM), which invested $650 million in parent company Lithium Americas earlier this year.
GM makes the electric Hummer, a large SUV that is predicted to emit more emissions than a gas-powered sedan, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a non-profit climate research center.
There are more than 21,000 other lithium mining claims in the state of Nevada alone, according to the Nevada Division of Minerals.
Brenda Beyal sits with the third grade students in a circle as each student shares how they can manage stress by singing their answer in the middle of the song “Shí Naashá”. (Photo: Martha Harris / KUER)
In Utah, a group of educators at Brigham Young University is working with the eight sovereign nations in the state to create lessons that reflect what tribes want taught about them.
KUER’s Martha Harris went to a classroom to see one of these lessons in action.
Brenda Beyal is visiting a third grade class at Spanish Oaks Elementary in Spanish Fork.
She’s teaching the students how to say words in Navajo, her Native language.
Beyal is Diné, a member of the Navajo Nation.
The students are learning the song “Shí naashá.”
What makes this lesson unique is it has the Navajo Nation stamp of approval. It’s a part of BYU’s Native American Curriculum Initiative.
The project started because of what Beyal heard from teachers.
Educators wanted help knowing what’s appropriate to teach about Indigenous people. So Beyal and her colleagues started creating lesson plans.
“It was important that we actually go to the sovereign nations and we asked them, what would you like the children of Utah to know about your ways?”
Beyal says every single tribe wanted kids to know that they are still here. They’re not historical figures.
“But then after that, every one of them has a different topic or content that they want children to know.”
Beyal says many lessons treat Indigenous people as having one singular viewpoint.
“Within Utah, there are eight sovereign nations with eight different ways of viewing things, different cultural ways, different arts.”
In these lessons, students are not just learning about the sovereign nations and their history. They’re learning from them and through their perspectives.
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