Western tribes’ last ditch effort to stall a large lithium mine in Nevada

Activists protested what would be the country’s largest lithium mine outside federal court in Pasadena, Calif. Tuesday.

Kirk Siegler/NPR

PASADENA, Calif – The fate of what would be the largest lithium mine in the U.S. on federal land in Nevada is now in the hands of a federal appeals court.

It’s the latest development in a more than two year legal battle over a plan by the Canadian firm, Lithium Nevada, to build an open pit mine near Thacker Pass, along a remote stretch of sagebrush-studded land close to the Nevada-Oregon border.

Initial construction has already begun on the mine after a district court ruling earlier this year upheld a federal plan permitting it. It would become one of the first major domestic sources of lithium, a key component in electric vehicle batteries. But the roughly nine square mile mine would also be on land considered sacred by some Native people.

Activists from western tribes packed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals courtroom Tuesday, some wearing traditional regalia, while others stood outside praying and singing.

Gary McKinney, an enrolled member of the Shoshone Paiute Tribe, wore a leather vest with an American Indian Movement emblem. He said federal land managers pushed the lithium mine through without considering its cultural significance.

“The world needs to know that this lithium mining, and this fast tracking of lithium mining, is a continuation of racism on Paiute and Shoshone people,” McKinney told NPR.

Native people have gathered traditional plants there and conducted ceremonies, he said. The mine is also believed to be near the site of a massacre of Native people by the U.S. Cavalry in 1865.