Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
The American Southwest is the focus of a lot of lithium interest. While Monument Valley is clearly protected, other areas are being considered for development. Storyblocks image
You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. Environmentalists in the US have formed an anti-lithium mining alliance with Indigenous groups. Their goal is to block the development of new lithium mines in the US West and Southwest.
Yes, you read that right. The anti-lithium crusaders are members of the same international environmental movement that brought us climate change alarmism and overly zealous emissions cutting rules. Under normal circumstances environmental activists are keen supporters of electric vehicles (EVs) and the lithium-packed batteries that make them run.
A call to arms for the campaign against lithium mining was published in a May 3, report authored by Johanna Hansel, Carla Samon Ros and Wyatt Myskow that appeared in the online magazine Inside Climate News. The headline reads “How the Rush to Mine the Metal of the Future Echoes America’s Colonial Past: Companies have staked claims for more than 100 lithium-mine projects. Tribes are among the most affected.
Hansel, Samon Ros and Myskow describe how several Native American tribes are, or soon will be, adversely impacted by weakly regulated lithium mining operations. Conflicts between the tribes and mining companies are often centred on alleged failures on the part of US government regulators and mining companies to engage in adequate consultation with Native groups.
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Equally contentious are assertions by tribal members about the damage to sacred springs and streams caused by exploratory drilling. This is given added urgency due to fact the vast majority of the exploration and mining permits are located in the arid US Southwest.
For example, one of the conflicts presented in the report involves plans by the Australian mining company, Ioneer, to develop a mine on Nevada’s Rhyolite Ridge. Environmentalists claim the area around the proposed mine site is home to a rare endangered wildflower “that could be driven to extinction.” The mine will be located near a spring considered sacred by the Western Shoshone.
Out of 108 lithium mining projects in various stages of development in the US, 69 are located in Nevada. There is only one lithium mine in actual operation thus far in the US and it is located in Nevada.
The concerns about lithium mining on the part of Native American groups in the US have similarities with conflicts between First Nations allied with environmentalists to block resource developments like oil pipelines in Canada. As is the case in British Columbia, the concerns of Nevada’s Native tribes extend beyond the boundaries of reservation lands. Native American groups claim interests in all of their traditional lands going back to pre-treaty times. These include areas they still use for hunting and the gathering of natural foods like pine nuts and medicinal plants. The tribes claim that many, if not all, of the proposed mines pose a threat to biodiversity and rare species as well as to groundwater resources and streams
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Case in point, lithium miner, HiTech Minerals Inc., plans to drill 168 exploratory holes in the Thacker Pass area close to the Nevada-Oregon border. Members of the local Paiute tribe claim the drilling threatens a biodiverse region where they “have long hunted and gathered traditional medicines.” It is also close to a sacred site where the Paiute hold ceremonies to “honor a dozen members of the tribe massacred by US soldiers in 1865.”
Another similarity with the conflicts in B.C., revealed in the report, is how so many of the concerns raised by Indigenous groups involve the disturbance of things they claim to be sacred. Sure, a spring in the desert could understandably be something of great practical and perhaps spiritual importance. But they use term “sacred” quite loosely—to describe virtually anything that might be affected by industrial development. It is used so frequently it loses significance to practical-minded people involved in industrial projects and wealth creation.
As one might expect in a litigious country like the US there has been a flurry of lawsuits launched, some producing temporary stop-work injunctions. This is another similarity between conditions related to oil pipeline development in Canada and open pit lithium mining in the US.
But, there is a big difference in the results obtained by Indigenous groups in the US versus Canada. Based on the court challenges mentioned in the ICN report, the cases filed by tribes in the US are not as successful as suits filed by First Nations in Canada. Here in Canada it seems the federal government does not contest all treaty-related legal challenges launched by First Nations. Rather, the government simply awards out of court settlements to the bands that file suits.
According to the report, in Nevada “Roughly one in 10 proposed mines sits within 10 miles of a tribal reservation, even though reservations comprise 2 percent of US land overall. And that doesn’t take into account the millions of acres of lost tribal territory.” The point being that, as is the case in B.C., Native Americans in Nevada demand a greater role in the control and management over lands ceded many decades ago to the government under treaties.
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Unlike British Columbia, the US federal government and the states in the West and Southwest have not adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), but tribal activists cited in the report would certainly like US authorities to do so.
Saskatchewan’s lithium explorers and producers are unlikely to ever face the same level of challenges as lithium in the US. Saskatchewan’s lithium is recovered from deep wells as opposed to the open pit mines common in the US. The extraction done here goes on deep underground—out of sight and out of mind.
One of the more interesting elements of the controversy associated with US lithium mining is how it exposes the contradictory objectives of the uber-progressive woke activists who champion both action on climate change and efforts to redress the various injustices suffered by Indigenous Nations. Aboriginal peoples are viewed as victims of colonialism and therefore worthy of special consideration. Normally the social justice warrior tendencies of environmentalists and their pursuit of Net Zero by 2050 are in harmony.
The Inside Climate News report acknowledges the contradictory objectives and attempts to reconcile them. The report states that while the green transition is critical to the planet’s future, it can’t come at the cost of the rights of Native Americans.
Who doesn’t like win-win outcomes? Let’s mine lithium provided Indigenous people agree with everything we do and no plants, animals or other sacred things are damaged in the process.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t always deliver results that satisfy everyone. The French Revolutionary, François de Charette, had this figured out in the 18th century, when he stated “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” As it turns out we can’t always engage in resource development without stepping on a few wildflowers.
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