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| Hualapai Walk for the Sacred Opposing Lithium Mine |
Navajo Government Joining Australian Company to Devastate Hualapai Sacred Land for Lithium Mine
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
December 10, 2022
The Navajo Nation's "energy transition office" plans to operate the lithium mine that will devastate Hualapai's sacred spring used for healing since time immemorial. In a deal with the Australian company, Vern Lund, the CEO of the Navajo office in Farmington, N.M., would join the lithium company's board.
The Navajo Nation's "energy transition office" plans to operate the lithium mine that will devastate Hualapai's sacred spring used for healing since time immemorial. In a deal with the Australian company, Vern Lund, the CEO of the Navajo office in Farmington, N.M., would join the lithium company's board.
The lithium mine will deplete and poison the water on Hualapai sacred ancestral land in northwest Arizona. Hualapai elders point out their sacred plants and the animals will be poisoned.
"It will destroy what is important to our people," said Ivan Bender, Hualapai caretaker at the sacred spring Ha'Kamwe. "Every living thing needs clean water."
Already, Navajo Transitional Energy Company has invested Dine' money in a Texas company mining rare metals, and operates the Navajo Mine, three coal mines in Wyoming and Montana. It owns a percentage of the coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant on the Navajo Nation, among the worst polluters in the world.
Arizona Lithium, a subsidiary of Hawkstone Mining in Australia, said that the Navajo Transitional Energy Company will take over the operational development of Big Sandy, managing everything from permitting requirements to a definitive feasibility study and mine construction, under the terms of the deal.
Hualapai said carving an open pit mine into the earth would devastate the aquifer that feeds Ha’Kamwe, a sacred spring that the Hualapai people have used medicinally since time immemorial.
