Dozens of local activists and Native American tribe members in Nevada are camping out at Peehee Mu’huh, or Thacker Pass, to protest the extraction of lithium from one the largest deposits in the world.
The Bureau of Land Management in January approved the Thacker Pass Lithium Project, granting Lithium Americas and its subsidiary, Lithium Nevada, exclusive rights to mine there, despite the fact that it’s home to one of the local community’s most sacred sites.
“It’s like putting a lithium mine on Arlington cemetery. It’s just not fair,” Daranda Hinkey, of the Paiute tribe in Nevada, told The Guardian. Thacker Pass is the site of an 1865 massacre, where at least 31 members of the Paiute tribe were killed. Hinkey’s great-great-great grandfather was one of just three survivors.