White House Summit --'Clean Green Energy is on the Backs of the Underserved' -- Timbisha Shoshone and Wampanoag

White House Tribal Nations Summit --'Clean Green Energy on the Backs of the Underserved' -- Timbisha Shoshone and Wampanoag

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Dec. 6, 2023

At the White House Tribal Nations Summit today, a panel praised themselves on the great job they are doing in the Biden administration. However, Jimmy-John Thompson representing the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe in Death Valley pointed out during questions that "green energy" actually means that the land in Nevada is being targeted by foreign mining corporations pursuing lithium mining and nuclear projects, and the tribes are not benefitting.

Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, in Massachusetts, questioned what is being done to protect the sacred from the detrimental effects of wind energy, including the submerged archaeological resources.

Jimmy-John Thompson said in Washington, "DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm was one of the panelists with whom I spoke directly regarding mining in Nevada for the Green Energy Initiative and its impacts on tribes."

Jimmy-John Thompson representing the Timbisha Shoshone Nation, located in Death Valley National Park, with lands in Nevada and California, voiced his concerns during questions to the panel, "Protecting Tribal Homelands in the Era of Climate Change."

"A lot of this clean energy push is being pushed into Nevada, a lot of the mining, and some of it is even being funded by the federal government. None of that funding is going to the tribes."

Native people in Nevada are feeling the greatest impact, he said.

"The entire state is being overrun by folks from Canada, South America, looking at the lithium mines, and everything else, including nuclear."

"We're just very concerned."

"We don't want to look back in twenty or thirty years and see all of our lands are a Superfund site. And that's how we see that it's going to happen -- and it's all going to be in the name of clean energy."

Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah. Photo by Ray Ewing.

Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, questioned what is being done to protect the sacred resources from the detrimental effects of wind energy. The Tribe is located on the Island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.

Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais said the negative impacts of wind energy are being ignored in the push for clean energy, and the detrimental effects on their sacred sites, ceremonial sites and submerged underwater archaeological resources.

Wampanoag are concerned with the effects on underserved communities in the coastal east, and in the south, in Mexico, and the West Coast.

Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais asked what is being done to protect the cultural, spiritual and traditional resources in this new push for clean energy.

The enormous wind turbines and all of this new energy are being placed "on the backs of underserved and under-represented communities," she said.

Secretary of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, gave a rambling response and said that the U.S. is not funding projects that don't serve the best interests of communities.

The White House panel did not discuss the devastating lithium mining now underway at the Paiute Massacre Site, where Lithium Americas of Canada is digging into the massacre site, or the lithium mining targeting Quechan sacred places near the Salton Sea in California and Hualapai sacred land in Arizona, in the name of "green energy."

Further, the panel did not discuss Biden and Interior Sec. Deb Haaland's approval of the oil and gas drilling of the Willow Project and how it will devastate Alaska's North Slope, where polar bears will be among the victims.

During the self-congratulatory, public relations spin, the Biden appointees on the panel praised Biden and their own work. There was no mention of the widespread damage being done to the land, water and air by mining, oil and gas drilling, and development across Indian country.

There was no mention of the uranium mill poisoning White Mesa Utes in Utah, and  the aquifer water supply of Dine', Hopi and Four Corners residents, or the fact that the Biden administration joined mining companies and are fighting Apaches in federal court to destroy Sacred Oak Flat with a copper mine in Arizona. Already, Rio Tinto mining blew up 46,000 years of sacred Aboriginal teachings in caves in Australia, and was forced to admit widespread sexual assaults at its mines in Australia and South Africa.

The panel on 'Protecting Tribal Homelands in the Era of Climate Change,' was moderated by Wahleah Johns, Dine', a former grassroots activist who is now Biden's director of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs.

Johns said that 80 percent of the biodiversity is on Indigenous lands globally.

There are now more than 21,000 lithium mining claims in Nevada, and the size of the wind turbines detrimental to Wampanoag resources is ignored in the push for clean energy.

"Earlier this month, Vineyard Wind started putting in monopiles for 62 giant turbines, which will stand nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty with blades as long as a football field. No other project in the U.S. has come close to its size. By way of comparison, the Block Island wind turbines are 328 feet tall; the Vineyard Wind turbines will top 800 feet," the Vineyard Gazette reported in June.

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2023/06/29/wind-energy-has-momentum-environmental-concerns-remain

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