Activists Sued by Mining Company Tell Their Stories
by | Nov 20, 2024 |WINNEMUCCA, Nevada -- Six people who were sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation last year for protesting the Thacker Pass lithium mine are telling their stories for the first time.
Today, each defendant in the case released a statement explaining who they are and why they took action to defend Thacker Pass, and calling for the public to support their case.
I am from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. And my background is knowledgeable person, keeper of stories and family history. Our family is part of, descended from, the Winnemucca family here in Pyramid Lake.
I love doing and sharing history and culture with our people, the ones who want to learn. I’m willing to share beadwork, many different things with them on the cultural side.
I want to protect Peehee Mu’huh, Thacker Pass, because our ancestors are still out there. They were not given the privilege of being buried. So like many, many places during the Snake War, our people were just brutally massacred. And the massacre that happened at Thacker Pass was in 1865 when the military came in and massacred our people.
Sentinel Butte is a sacred place, a place of prayer. And that’s another reason we are standing up and protecting these sites from the greed and ignorance of these corporations that are coming in.
The lawsuit, it’s not much. Piece of paper, waste of paper, waste of ink. When they brought the papers in, we were having a sweat that day, that evening. So we used the papers to build our sweat fire. And that was the prayer started right there.
We started using our spiritual ways to help us. But people can support us by donating. We have to pay our lawyers. So any way that you can help us, that would be good to help pay the lawyer fees. And that’s it.”
Background Information
About the Lawsuit
The ongoing suit, which is similar to a what is called a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” or SLAPP suit, is aimed at shutting down free speech and protest. It aims to ban the prayerful land defenders from the area and force them to pay monetary damages.
“We face potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for peacefully protesting and praying at Peehee Mu’huh,” says Will Falk. “Lithium Nevada Corporation has successfully gained an injunction from the court which means we cannot return to Peehee Mu’huh. It’s heartbreaking not to be able to return.”
In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for the defendants are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’ The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.
Their legal filings state that the protesters “possessed an actual belief that their acts of protest were necessary to prevent the present, continuing harms and evils of ecocide and irreversible climate change.”
“We’re in the midst of the 6th mass extinction of life on Earth, and it’s being caused by human activities like mining,” said attorney Terry Lodge, who is representing the protesters. “Our lives are made possible by biodiversity and ecosystems. Protecting our children from pollution and biodiversity collapse isn’t criminal, it’s heroic.”
Currently Earth is experiencing one of the most rapid and widespread extinction events in the planet’s four-billion-year history.
Biologists report that habitat destruction, like the bulldozing of nearly 6,000 acres of biodiverse sagebrush steppe for the Thacker Pass mine, is the main cause of this “6th Mass Extinction.”
In their court filing earlier this year, Lodge and the other attorneys working on the case made several additional legal arguments, including invoking the doctrine ‘unclean hands,’ asserting that Lithium Nevada Corporation has “engaged in serious misconduct including violating the Defendants’ human rights, Defendants’ civil rights, misleading the public about the impacts of lithium mining and how lithium mining contributes to catastrophic climate destabilization and biodiversity collapse, and conducting the inherently dangerous and ecologically-destructive practice of surface mining at the Thacker Pass mine”.
They’re also arguing the “climate necessity defense,” reasoning that by attempting to stop a major mine that will produce significant greenhouse gas emissions, the protesters were acting to reduce emissions and stop a bigger harm: climate catastrophe. According to permitting documents, the Thacker Pass lithium mine is expected to produce more than 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, roughly equivalent to the emissions of a small city, and amounting to 2.3 tons of carbon for every ton of lithium that will be produced.
This legal strategy has been used by many fossil fuel protesters around the world for roughly a decade (and has been successful in a few cases), but this is the first time the same argument has been applied to a so-called ‘green technology’ minerals mining project.
Will Falk:
“Lithium Nevada, a mining corporation benefiting from the violence used to conquer Native peoples, is trying to bully peaceful protestors opposing the destruction of that massacre site. People need to understand that lithium mining companies—like coal or gold mining companies—use racist and violent tactics to intimidate opposition.”
Dean Barlese:
“The Indian wars are continuing in 2024, right here. America and the corporations who control it should have finished off the ethnic genocide, because we’re still here. My great-great-grandfather fought for this land in the Snake War and we will continue to defend the sacred. Lithium Nevada is a greedy corporation telling green lies.”
Bethany Sam:
“Our people couldn’t return to Thacker Pass for fear of being killed in 1865, and now in 2024 we can’t return or we’ll be arrested. Meanwhile, bulldozers are digging our ancestors’ graves up. This is what Indigenous peoples continue to endure. That’s why I stood in prayer with our elders leading the way.”
Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu:
“Lithium Nevada is a greedy corporation on the wrong side of history when it comes to environmental racism and desecration of sacred sites. It’s ironic to me that I’m the trespasser because I want to see my ancestral land preserved.”
Paul Cienfuegos:
“It is truly outrageous that we live in a society where our Supreme Court has granted constitutional rights to resource extraction corporations, making their destructive activities fully legal and virtually immune from oversight by We the People. Even their right to sue us is a corporate personhood right.”
Max Wilbert:
“Lithium mining for electric vehicles and batteries isn’t green, it’s greenwashing. It’s not green, it’s greed. Global warming is a serious problem and we cannot continue burning fossil fuels, but destroying mountains for lithium is just as bad as destroying mountains for coal. You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green.”
In March, the judge presiding over the case dismissed an “unjust enrichment” charge filed against the protesters, but allowed five other charges to move forward. The case is expected to continue for months.
About Thacker Pass
The lawsuit against the protestors was filed in May 2023 following a month of non-violent protests on the site of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada. Thacker Pass is known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, and is a sacred site to regional Native American tribes. It’s also habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife.
On September 12th, 1865, federal soldiers murdered at least 31 Paiute men, women, and children in Thacker Pass during “The Snake War.”
This massacre and other culturally important factors have made the Thacker Pass mine extremely controversial in the Native American community. Dozens of tribes have spoken out against the project, and four — the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Winnemucca Indian Colony — battled in court to stop the Thacker Pass mine. The National Congress of American Indians has also passed several resolutions opposing the project.
But despite ongoing criticism, lawsuits, and lobbying from tribes as well as environmental groups, ranchers, the Nevada State Historic Preservation Society, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, both Lithium Nevada Corporation and the Bureau of Land Management have refused to stop construction or change any aspect of the Thacker Pass mine.
In February 2023, the Bureau of Land Management recognized Thacker Pass as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as a “Traditional Cultural District,” or a landscape that’s very important to tribes. But the very day before, they issued Lithium Nevada’s final bond, allowing the Canadian multinational to begin full-scale mining operations.
The Thacker Pass defendants are seeking monetary donations to their legal defense fund. You can donate via credit or debit card or by check.
Today, each defendant in the case released a statement explaining who they are and why they took action to defend Thacker Pass, and calling for the public to support their case.
The group includes Dean Barlese, a 66-year-old spiritual leader from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe who was regularly at the protest camps before his foot was amputated due to health issues. Dean’s passion for defending the land drew him back to Thacker Pass soon after his life-changing operation, and he was on the front lines of the 2023 protests.
“I want to protect Peehee Mu’huh,” Dean says, using the Paiute name for Thacker Pass, “because our ancestors are still out there. They were not given the privilege of being buried [after the U.S. Army massacred dozens of Northern Paiutes at Thacker Pass in 1865].”
As a beadworker, healer, and knowledge keeper, Dean’s story of resilience and resistance is a powerful testament to the traditional values he was raised with and to the strength of his spirit.
Another defendant speaking out today is Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu, a mother of four and small-business owner who is a member of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and is Te-Moak Shoshone and Washoe by blood. Bhie-Cie practices traditional herbal medicine, and was particularly upset to see her plant allies and relatives under threat for the mining project.
“I grew up with my traditional grandparents who were boarding school survivors,” Bhie-Cie says. “They gave me a strong background in being Native and loving the land and the concept that we are all related.”
The other defendants include:Bethany Sam, Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Public Relations, Chairperson of Nevada’s Indian Territory, traditionalist and a woman warrior for Mother Earth.
Paul Cienfuegos, a 66-year-old pro-democracy organizer and teacher who has worked to dismantle corporate rule for decades.
Will Falk, a 37-year-old poet and pro-bono attorney for regional tribes who co-founded Protect Thacker Pass, and who lives in Colorado.
Max Wilbert, a 36-year-old community organizer and co-author of the book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It. Wilbert co-founded Protect Thacker Pass with Falk, and lives in Oregon.
The Statements
Today, all six defendants released personal statements explaining who they are and why they took action. Their statements can be found below. They are open to media interviews.
Dean Barlese
This Native Elder is Being Sued by a Mining Company
“We used the lawsuit papers in our sweat fire”
This is the first in a series of articles introducing the Thacker Pass Six, a group of traditional indigenous people and grassroots activists who are being sued by a Canadian mining company called Lithium Nevada Corporation. Dean was interviewed by Max Wilbert.
This is Dean Barlese, a traditional knowledge-holder from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, an elder who was raised on old stories told by his father and grandparents. He’s the leader of the Pyramid Lake Spiritual Healing Center, and his ancestors fought in Snake War (1864-68) to protect Northern Paiute homelands from settler-colonial incursions.
I met Dean in the spring of 2021, when he first visited the protest camp that my friend Will Falk and I established on the proposed site of an open-pit lithium mine at Peehee Mu’huh (known as Thacker Pass, Nevada in English). Dean was in a wheelchair and traveled for hours to get to camp, visiting with his relatives from nearby reservations around the fire.
Soon after his first visit, Dean’s health deteriorated, leading to the amputation of his foot. Yet Dean kept coming to camp. Not only that, he was on the front lines of the prayer actions that took place in spring 2023, sitting in front of heavy equipment destroying the land his ancestors fought and died to protect.
Now, Dean is being sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation, a fully-owned subsidiary of Lithium Americas. The suit is a civil case, which means that the company is seeking to get money from Dean.
Lithium Americas is a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and Dean is a retired and disabled Native American elder. He provides spiritual healing to people in his community for free. When Dean’s roof leaks, when he needs a ride to a medical appointment, or he needs to put away firewood for the cold Pyramid Lake winter and for ceremonial sweats, he asks for help from his friends and people he has helped. What little money Dean has is used for food and utilities.
Lithium Nevada can’t get any money from Dean, because he doesn’t have any. The goal of their lawsuit against him is simple: intimidation and violence. If they cannot stop Dean from taking action to protect his ancestral lands, if they cannot undermine his courage, if they cannot break his spirit, they will talk the only language they truly understand: money. They will attempt to destroy his finances, and thus undermine his ability to live.
Here is Dean’s statement, in his own words:
“My name is Dean Barlese. I am age 66. I was born on 9-14-1957.
I love doing and sharing history and culture with our people, the ones who want to learn. I’m willing to share beadwork, many different things with them on the cultural side.
I want to protect Peehee Mu’huh, Thacker Pass, because our ancestors are still out there. They were not given the privilege of being buried. So like many, many places during the Snake War, our people were just brutally massacred. And the massacre that happened at Thacker Pass was in 1865 when the military came in and massacred our people.
Sentinel Butte is a sacred place, a place of prayer. And that’s another reason we are standing up and protecting these sites from the greed and ignorance of these corporations that are coming in.
The lawsuit, it’s not much. Piece of paper, waste of paper, waste of ink. When they brought the papers in, we were having a sweat that day, that evening. So we used the papers to build our sweat fire. And that was the prayer started right there.
We started using our spiritual ways to help us. But people can support us by donating. We have to pay our lawyers. So any way that you can help us, that would be good to help pay the lawyer fees. And that’s it.”
Watch the video: Meet Dean and read the statements of
Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu
Bethany Sam
Paul Cienfuegos
Will Falk
Max Wilbert
https://www.protectthackerpass.org/press-release-activists-sued-by-mining-company-tell-their-stories/
Bethany Sam
Paul Cienfuegos
Will Falk
Max Wilbert
https://www.protectthackerpass.org/press-release-activists-sued-by-mining-company-tell-their-stories/
Background Information
About the Lawsuit
The ongoing suit, which is similar to a what is called a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” or SLAPP suit, is aimed at shutting down free speech and protest. It aims to ban the prayerful land defenders from the area and force them to pay monetary damages.
“We face potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for peacefully protesting and praying at Peehee Mu’huh,” says Will Falk. “Lithium Nevada Corporation has successfully gained an injunction from the court which means we cannot return to Peehee Mu’huh. It’s heartbreaking not to be able to return.”
In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for the defendants are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’ The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.
Their legal filings state that the protesters “possessed an actual belief that their acts of protest were necessary to prevent the present, continuing harms and evils of ecocide and irreversible climate change.”
“We’re in the midst of the 6th mass extinction of life on Earth, and it’s being caused by human activities like mining,” said attorney Terry Lodge, who is representing the protesters. “Our lives are made possible by biodiversity and ecosystems. Protecting our children from pollution and biodiversity collapse isn’t criminal, it’s heroic.”
Currently Earth is experiencing one of the most rapid and widespread extinction events in the planet’s four-billion-year history.
Biologists report that habitat destruction, like the bulldozing of nearly 6,000 acres of biodiverse sagebrush steppe for the Thacker Pass mine, is the main cause of this “6th Mass Extinction.”
In their court filing earlier this year, Lodge and the other attorneys working on the case made several additional legal arguments, including invoking the doctrine ‘unclean hands,’ asserting that Lithium Nevada Corporation has “engaged in serious misconduct including violating the Defendants’ human rights, Defendants’ civil rights, misleading the public about the impacts of lithium mining and how lithium mining contributes to catastrophic climate destabilization and biodiversity collapse, and conducting the inherently dangerous and ecologically-destructive practice of surface mining at the Thacker Pass mine”.
They’re also arguing the “climate necessity defense,” reasoning that by attempting to stop a major mine that will produce significant greenhouse gas emissions, the protesters were acting to reduce emissions and stop a bigger harm: climate catastrophe. According to permitting documents, the Thacker Pass lithium mine is expected to produce more than 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, roughly equivalent to the emissions of a small city, and amounting to 2.3 tons of carbon for every ton of lithium that will be produced.
This legal strategy has been used by many fossil fuel protesters around the world for roughly a decade (and has been successful in a few cases), but this is the first time the same argument has been applied to a so-called ‘green technology’ minerals mining project.
Will Falk:
“Lithium Nevada, a mining corporation benefiting from the violence used to conquer Native peoples, is trying to bully peaceful protestors opposing the destruction of that massacre site. People need to understand that lithium mining companies—like coal or gold mining companies—use racist and violent tactics to intimidate opposition.”
Dean Barlese:
“The Indian wars are continuing in 2024, right here. America and the corporations who control it should have finished off the ethnic genocide, because we’re still here. My great-great-grandfather fought for this land in the Snake War and we will continue to defend the sacred. Lithium Nevada is a greedy corporation telling green lies.”
Bethany Sam:
“Our people couldn’t return to Thacker Pass for fear of being killed in 1865, and now in 2024 we can’t return or we’ll be arrested. Meanwhile, bulldozers are digging our ancestors’ graves up. This is what Indigenous peoples continue to endure. That’s why I stood in prayer with our elders leading the way.”
Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu:
“Lithium Nevada is a greedy corporation on the wrong side of history when it comes to environmental racism and desecration of sacred sites. It’s ironic to me that I’m the trespasser because I want to see my ancestral land preserved.”
Paul Cienfuegos:
“It is truly outrageous that we live in a society where our Supreme Court has granted constitutional rights to resource extraction corporations, making their destructive activities fully legal and virtually immune from oversight by We the People. Even their right to sue us is a corporate personhood right.”
Max Wilbert:
“Lithium mining for electric vehicles and batteries isn’t green, it’s greenwashing. It’s not green, it’s greed. Global warming is a serious problem and we cannot continue burning fossil fuels, but destroying mountains for lithium is just as bad as destroying mountains for coal. You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green.”
In March, the judge presiding over the case dismissed an “unjust enrichment” charge filed against the protesters, but allowed five other charges to move forward. The case is expected to continue for months.
About Thacker Pass
The lawsuit against the protestors was filed in May 2023 following a month of non-violent protests on the site of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada. Thacker Pass is known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, and is a sacred site to regional Native American tribes. It’s also habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife.
On September 12th, 1865, federal soldiers murdered at least 31 Paiute men, women, and children in Thacker Pass during “The Snake War.”
This massacre and other culturally important factors have made the Thacker Pass mine extremely controversial in the Native American community. Dozens of tribes have spoken out against the project, and four — the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Winnemucca Indian Colony — battled in court to stop the Thacker Pass mine. The National Congress of American Indians has also passed several resolutions opposing the project.
But despite ongoing criticism, lawsuits, and lobbying from tribes as well as environmental groups, ranchers, the Nevada State Historic Preservation Society, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, both Lithium Nevada Corporation and the Bureau of Land Management have refused to stop construction or change any aspect of the Thacker Pass mine.
In February 2023, the Bureau of Land Management recognized Thacker Pass as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as a “Traditional Cultural District,” or a landscape that’s very important to tribes. But the very day before, they issued Lithium Nevada’s final bond, allowing the Canadian multinational to begin full-scale mining operations.
The Thacker Pass defendants are seeking monetary donations to their legal defense fund. You can donate via credit or debit card or by check.
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