Preston Arrow-weed led the battle against gold ming here on Quechan sacred land, and now battles a new monster, lithium mining, driven by corporate greenwashing for electric vehicles
By Brenda NorrellCensored News
It is a sacred place for Quechan, where obsidian burst from the earth, their sacred stories come from here. When the U.S. government and county targeted the sacred place for lithium mining, they did not tell the Quechan Nation.
Preston Arrow-weed, who has just fought gold mining at Indian Pass, began the battle to protect the sacred here near the Salton Sea, in Imperial Valley, and where the borders of California, Arizona, and Mexico meet.
Arrow-weed said, "We must learn from the past. What good is it to replace dirty oil with dirty mining? The toxic cycle will continue. Indigenous communities will continue to be sacrificed for the 'greater good.'"Quechan songs carry the story of their journey, and the sacred place now targeted for lithium mining near the Salton Sea, where the obsidian burst from the earth, and here are the remains of a powerful snake.
"We have a belief that something sacred happened there," Arrow-weed said at the recent Western Mining Action Network Conference in Reno, Nevada.