Daranda Hinkey, who is from the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and is a leader of a group known as People of Red Mountain, is rejecting and protesting Biden’s lithium mine.
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Just 45 miles from the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation where Daranda Hinkey and her family corral horses and cows, a centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s clean energy plan is taking shape: construction of one of the largest lithium mines in the world.
As heavy trucks dig up the earth in this remote, windswept region of Nevada to extract the silvery-white metal used in electric-vehicle batteries, the $2.2 billion project is fueling a backlash. “No Lithium. No mine!″ proclaims a large hand-painted sign in Hinkey’s front yard.
The Biden administration says the project will help mitigate climate change by speeding the shift away from fossil fuels. But Hinkey and other opponents say it is not worth the costs to the local environment and people.
Similar disputes are taking place around the world as governments and companies advancing renewable energy find themselves battling communities opposed to projects that threaten wildlife, groundwater and air quality.
Hinkey, 25, is a member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and a leader of a group known as People of Red Mountain — named after the scarlet peak that overlooks her house. The group says that in addition to environmental impacts, the Thacker Pass mine would desecrate a site where the U.S. Cavalry massacred their ancestors after the Civil War.
“Lithium mines and this whole push for renewable energy — the agenda of the Green New Deal — is what I like to call green colonialism,″ Hinkey said. “It’s going to directly affect my people, my culture, my religion, my tradition.”
Protests near the mining site have flared up for more than two years, and the project has sparked legal challenges, including an appeal that a federal court will hear this month.
Hinkey had hoped Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American Cabinet member — might rally to the side of opponents. But that has not happened.
Haaland, whose department oversees Thacker Pass, said that while she supports the right to peaceful protests, her agency is in favor of the mine because “the need for our clean energy economy to move forward is definitely important.”
The project was approved in the waning days of the Trump administration but is central to Biden’s goal for half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. Lithium batteries are also used to store wind and solar power.
Haaland told The Associated Press that when her agency inherits a project from a previous administration, “It’s our job to make sure we’re doing things according to the science, to the law.”
According to an analysis conducted by three nonpartisan organizations, it has been revealed that US lawmakers have proposed 185 laws in 2023 that may be used to subvert elections.
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