Native Americans fight against lithium mine

These Native Americans are staging a protest. They call it a prayer, right home to where the heart is of America’s electric car revolution. the US president wants to make this country a world leader in electric vehicles. Sourcing its own lithium is central to it. This place in northern Nevada, called Thacker Pass, is being turned into America’s largest lithium mine to make electric car batteries. We’re people, too. We have red blood just like everybody else. The dispute is that this area, with its mountaintop lookouts, was once home to Native American tribes. Myron Smarts, grandmother knew the history here. As a baby. She survived a massacre by the US Cavalry in 1865. More than 30 tribal members were killed. To me, it’s a secret ground. But but to the government, it’s, you know, it’s just, oh, it’s just just Native American. That’s all it is. Native Americans say to mind where their ancestors died desecrates sacred land. I’m here for my people, my brothers and sisters. I’m here for our ways. I’m here for the children if we don’t fight for a mother who will? The company, Lithium Americas, is mining. The Thakur Pass site on water is public land. It highlights a community benefits agreement signed with a local trial. It says concerns about cultural and environmental resources were thoroughly addressed in the environmental impact assessment of a government body and that it withstood comprehensive reviews by federal, district and circuit courts. There was no way that the United States government could know our story. Opponents dismissed the official finding that there was no massacre on the mine site, maintaining the key evidence lies an eyewitness testimony passed down orally through generations back in our ancestors days. They didn’t write any documentations down. They didn’t send letters. They didn’t write in journals. It’s one flashpoint in the world’s energy transition. We have to. Acknowledge that we need electric vehicles. Environmentalists say that generally, wherever there’s mineral mining anywhere in the world, the priority should be people as well as product. We need to make sure that local communities are asked for their consent, and if they don’t give it, that is allowed as well. It’s all about the environment. The good, the bad. And the balance?