Many deposits for minerals used in EV batteries and solar panels are on or near lands of Indigenous groups. Native communities worry about repeats of past mining abuses, but there may be solutions.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There’s growing demand for minerals like lithium and cobalt as the world ramps up manufacturing of electric vehicles and solar panels. It’s estimated more than half of these minerals are on or near lands of Indigenous peoples, including in Arizona. That’s where NPR’s Julia Simon begins our story.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: Ivan Bender takes a net and removes algae from a bright turquoise hot spring in the Arizona desert.
IVAN BENDER: It’s a ongoing kind of thing here, this algae.
SIMON: The springs are called Ha’Kamwe’. And for the Hualapai tribe, the waters in this land are sacred and healing. Bender is a Hualapai tribal member and caretaker of the springs in Wikieup.
BENDER: This is important right here. It’s where the – Wikieup generation to come, and this is their water.
SIMON: But, he says, mining activity threatens this water.
There is a seat belt. OK, great.
Bender took me out on his ATV through the desert…
BENDER: Okey-dokey.
SIMON: …To a spot with holes in the dusty earth. In recent years, mining operations have drilled these exploration holes for lithium, a key mineral in climate solutions like electric vehicle batteries. Bender says it impacted the spring water.
BENDER: When they drilled that, that’s what happened to our water.
SIMON: It went down.
BENDER: It went down. This is where it all started at.
SIMON: Experts say growing demand for energy transition metals will have huge impacts on Indigenous groups around the world. Research finds more than half of projects for these minerals are on or near Indigenous people’s lands. The mining company with activity near the springs, Arizona Lithium, declined to directly talk to NPR. It sent a statement through a partner, saying…
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