lithium

Vigil in Nevada: Protect native peoples, sacred land and water from Thacker Pass lithium mining; prayer camps raided by police

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From Lakota Law Project

May 31, 2023

Warm greetings to you. Today, I share with you my story of a very important experience. Earlier this month, I joined my father, Lakota Law co-director Chase Iron Eyes, and our videographer, Chuck Banner, on a trip to Thacker Pass in Nevada – or Peehee Mu’Huh, as it’s known in the Paiute language. We were there to support our Paiute and Shoshone relatives in a direct action to stop a massive lithium mine, which threatens a sensitive ecosystem and disturbs sacred burial grounds. Upon my return, I wrote a blog and shot a video, which I encourage you to read and watch.

I won’t go into a ton of detail for you here, because the blog and video do that. Suffice to say that the Indigenous People of Nevada need our attention and support. Just like Standing Rock with the #NoDAPL struggle, they’re on the frontlines of extractive capitalism, and their homelands are being desecrated without their consent. 

It hasn’t yet reached the same extremes as the coordinated effort by law enforcement and Big Oil at Standing Rock, but once again, activists on the frontlines are being targeted. My colleague Chuck was among several people hit with Temporary Protective Orders; another was Dorece Sam, a Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone tribal member and Nevada President of the Native American Indian Church. These actions by law enforcement are meant to stifle our ability to exercise First Amendment rights to free speech and protest.

We must not stand down. We should use this moment to grow the movement. It’s time to recognize and reinforce the latest front in the battle to protect Indigenous People, defend sacred lands, and preserve precious, life-giving water.

Wopila tanka — thank you for standing with our Paiute and Shoshone relatives!

Tokata Iron Eyes
Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project

June 12, 2023

I remain on the sacred grounds at Peehee Mu’huh, where the resistance to protect Thacker Pass from a massive lithium mine suffered a major blow last week. On Wednesday, police raided the two prayer camps set up by our Paiute and Shoshone relatives, extinguishing the sacred fire lit since May 11 when the grandmother-led action began, destroying the two ceremonial tipi lodges, mishandling and confiscating ceremonial instruments, and arresting an Indigenous land protector. Ox Sam Camp shared a video they captured with us. facebook(dot)com/LakotaPeoplesLawProject/videos/1298934087643579/

During breakfast, law enforcement arrived. Almost immediately and without warning, a young Diné (Navajo) water protector was singled out by Lithium Nevada security and arrested. Even as two non-Natives were allowed to “move” in order to avoid arrest, the Diné woman was quickly handcuffed and subsequently loaded into a sheriff’s SUV for transport to Winnemucca for processing. 

While on the highway, she says – again without warning or explanation – she was transferred into a windowless, pitch-black holding box in the back of a pickup truck. “I was really scared for my life,” she told Ox Sam Camp. “I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I know that [the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women] is a real thing, and I didn’t want to be the next one.” She was eventually transported to Humboldt County Jail, where she was charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest, then released on bail. Again, I urge you to watch the video. Resisting arrest? I don’t think so.

Just hours before the raid, Ox Sam camp’s water protectors bravely stood in the way of large excavation equipment, shutting down construction at the base of Sentinel Rock for the second time that week. To many Paiute and Shoshone People, Sentinel Rock is a “center of the universe.” It’s been a site to gather traditional medicines, tools, and food supply for thousands of years, integral to many Nevada tribes’ way of life.

On Wednesday, at least five Sheriff’s vehicles, several Lithium Nevada work vehicles, and two security trucks arrived at the original tipi site containing the ceremonial fire. After the arrest and once the main camp was secured, law enforcement moved to dismantle the tipi site at Sentinel Rock, a mile away. There is a proper way to take down a tipi and ceremonial camp, and then there’s the way Humboldt County Sheriffs proceeded on behalf of Lithium Nevada Corporation. They knocked down tipis, snapped tipi poles, and rummaged through, mishandled, and impounded ceremonial objects and instruments. They approached and secured tents in classic SWAT-raid fashion. 

As we mentioned to you previously, Peehee Mu-huh is the site of two massacres of Paiute and Shoshone people. The remains of the massacred ancestors have remained unidentified and unburied since 1865. They are now being bulldozed and crushed by Lithium Nevada without consent or permission from the area’s Indigenous Peoples.

It’s clear that Lithium Nevada and law enforcement are now doing all they can to stifle this resistance before it can grow. Our videographer, Chuck, was one of several people served with restraining orders over the past several weeks, and we’re hearing threats of further legal action designed to stop continued media coverage of the events now unfolding. Ox Sam Camp has put out a call for legal defense assistance. If you can help, contact them through their website. And please stay tuned for further developments and potential action opportunities.

Wopila tanka – thank you for standing with water and land protectors!

Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Lakota People’s Law Project
547 South 7th Street #149
Bismarck, ND 58504-5859

The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.

https://lakotalaw.org/

Former Bolivian President Evo Morales Calls For a Global Campaign to Eliminate NATO

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From CovertAction Magazine

By Jeremy Kuzmarov
July 30, 2022

An interview with British journalist, Morales says the U.S. uses NATO to provoke wars and sell weapons. U.S./UK-backed coup against him in 2019 was undertaken for lithium and because his government advanced an alternative economic model to the neoliberal “Washington Consensus”

In an interview with British journalist Matt Kennard at his home in El Trópico, a small town four hours from Cochabamba in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, former Bolivian president Evo Morales (2006-2019) called for an international campaign to eliminate NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization].

According to Morales, this campaign should explain to people worldwide that “NATO is—ultimately—the United States. It is not a guarantee for humanity or for life. I do not accept—in fact, I condemn—how they can exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. When the U.S. has intervened in Iraq, in Libya, in so many countries in recent years, why have they not been expelled from the Human Rights Council? Why was that never questioned?”

Morales continued: “We [in the Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS] have profound ideological differences with the politics implemented by the United States using NATO, which are based on interventionism and militarism. Between Russia and Ukraine they want to reach an agreement and [the U.S.] keeps provoking war, the U.S. military industry, which is able to live thanks to war, and they provoke wars in order to sell their weapons. That’s the other reality we live in.”

Coup Against Alternative Economic Model

Morales is one of the most successful presidents in Latin American history who closed down a U.S. military base in Bolivia, expelled the CIA and DEA, and helped reverse half a millennium of colonial history by helping Bolivia to industrialize its economy.

In November 2019, Morales was ousted in a U.S./UK-backed coup that culminated with the army’s massacre of anti-coup protesters. Morales survived an assassination attempt only because Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sent a plane to rescue him.

The beneficiary of the coup, Jeanine Áñez—a conservative Christian who lost the October 2020 election to Luis Arce of MAS—was sentenced to 10 years in prison in June after being convicted of terrorism and sedition.

Morales—who returned to Bolivia after Arce’s election in October 2020—believes that the coup was prompted by his move to nationalize Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves.

Morales told Matt Kennard that “I continue to be convinced that the empire, capitalism, imperialism, do not accept that there is an economic model that is better than neoliberalism. The coup was against our economic model…we showed that another Bolivia is possible.” 

“All For Lithium”

In 2021, the British Foreign Office released documents which showed that the British embassy in Bolivia had paid an Oxford-based company to optimize “exploitation” of Bolivia’s lithium deposits the month after Morales fled the country after being ousted in the coup. 

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