Mining the Past, Threatening the Future - The Margin

In August 2024, the Hualapai Tribe could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

After a five-year fight, a US District Court for the District of Arizona granted a temporary restraining order to block a lithium drilling operation that was threatening their land and one of their most sacred sites.

Big Sandy Inc., the domestic subsidiary of the Australian company Arizona Lithium, formally began exploratory drilling in northern Arizona near Cofer Hot Springs, or Ha’Kamwe’ — as the area is called in the Hualapai Native language — around 2019. It’s an oasis rich in water, in the Big Sandy River basin, where the Mojave and Sonoran deserts meet.

Ha’Kamwe’, which in Hualapai language means “warm spring,” is a sacred site for the Tribe. For generations, Hualapai elders passed on traditional stories and songs about Ha’Kamwe’, a place they say is so quiet that it’s possible to hear the water sing. Hualapai people have come here for centuries to connect with their land and ancestors and celebrate religious ceremonies.

In 2002, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Western Area Power Authority, an agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, acknowledged the historical importance of Ha’Kamwe’ and classified it as a Traditional Cultural Property eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Nearly two decades later, however, BLM approved Big Sandy Inc.’s exploration project only a few hundred yards from Ha’Kamwe’.

The Hualapai Tribe took issue with BLM’s approval of Big Sandy Inc.’s exploration efforts, claiming the agency omitted Ha’Kamwe’ in the project’s impact area and did not initially consult the Tribe. In 2024, the Tribe filed a lawsuit against BLM, arguing that the federal government violated the National Historic Preservation Act in failing to provide mitigation measures on the very property it had designated as worthy of such protections. 

The Tribe also argued that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it failed to take into consideration the consequences mining could have on water resources. An independent hydrologist hired by the Tribe found that the lithium drilling project not only impacted the spring water levels but could also permanently damage Ha'Kamwe'. Following exploratory drilling, the next phase aimed to drill 100 new exploratory core holes, between approximately 1,200 to 4,000 feet from Ha’Kamwe’.

A preliminary assessment commissioned by the Hualapai Tribe found that this phase could harm Ha’Kamwe’s flow, temperature, and chemistry and “is likely to imminently threaten the aquifer feeding the Ha’Kamwe’ waters, causing irreparable harm and affecting its potential status on the National Register of Historic Places,” court documents read. 

In November 2024, a judge converted the temporary restraining order against Big Sandy Inc. to a preliminary injunction, extending the drilling stoppage. Other Tribal Nations saw the District Court’s decision as a sign of hope for their attempts to preserve their ancestral lands.

“People were really happy for us,” said Ka-Voka Jackson, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and Director of the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources with the Hualapai Tribe. “It was something that was echoed across different Nations.” 

The good news kept coming to Jackson’s tribe. A couple of months ago, in February 2025, Arizona Lithium withdrew its plan of operations. “We’re pleased that they withdrew their plan. That means that for now, the sacred sites are protected from drilling and that the community members can continue to use Ha’Kamwe’ in line with their spiritual and cultural practices,” said Laura Berglan, senior attorney at the non-profit organization Earthjustice, representing the Hualapai Tribe. 

Berglan, however, points out that the case “is not finished yet,” as the court still has to rule on how the BLM handled the permitting process. Additionally, Arizona Lithium retains its mining claim on the area, and the company could submit a revised plan of operations or transfer the claim to another company. Whatever the outcome, Berglan says this case will likely influence how federal agencies handle future mining operations. However, she added that the Tribe expects BLM to consult them very early and comply with U.S. law as stated in federal laws.   

Jackson remains cautious and hopeful. To her, the company’s withdrawal of their plan of operations is a temporary win. “We're keeping our focus on what matters for us, and we're ready,” she says.

The 19th Century Relic that Still Wounds

Political pressure to accelerate mining projects has intensified since the Hualapai Nation celebrated the initial restraining order in August 2024. The new presidential administration came into office promising to dismantle everything from DEI to the EPA. At the end of March, President Trump signed an executive order to expedite mining operations on public lands, which environmental groups argue, might lead to a disregard for environmental protections, including shorter timeframes for public comments.

Days after this executive order, the BLM published the environmental assessment of the McDermitt lithium exploration project in southeastern Oregon. BLM began working on the assessment three years ago, in 2022, but initially gave the public only five days to comment before proceeding. 

“That's the shortest time period I've literally ever seen for public comment on an environmental review,” said Roger Flynn, the founding Director of the non-profit law center, Western Mining Action Project. His organization has represented the public interests on mining issues in the American West since 1993, including the Hualapai Tribe’s case.

Late on Monday, March 31, just hours before comments were due, BLM extended the comment period on the McDermitt lithium exploration environmental review in Oregon, giving the public until April 25 to submit comments.

Studies have shown that lithium reserves worldwide and in the U.S. are disproportionately proximate to Tribal lands. According to 2021 research from Morgan Stanley Capital International, 79% of lithium reserves in the United States are within 35 miles of Native American reservations. Additionally, an analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University found that nine proposed lithium mines are within 10 miles of Native American reservations. 

The Margin examined three legal cases in which Tribal Nations and members of Indigenous groups sued BLM for approving mining operations in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and other federal laws. The Hualapai Tribe, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and People of Red Mountain, and the Western Shoshone Defense Project have alleged that BLM failed to meaningfully consult them on the impacts of the mining plans, underestimated the environmental consequences and, in some cases, fast-tracked permits leaving limited time for environmental reviews.

In recent years, a growing market for renewable energy technologies, including electric vehicles, increased the demand for lithium and other critical minerals. The Biden Administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—which allocated about $11.7 billion to the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office to support new loans for energy projects, including mining explorations for minerals like lithium—led to a wave of new investments in lithium mining operations across the country.

While lithium is considered a key material in the energy transition to curb carbon emissions and mitigate climate change—particularly for the manufacturing of rechargeable lithium batteries, which represented 85% of the total demand for lithium in 2023—its extraction is far from sustainable. Research has found that lithium mining can deplete local water sources, including fresh groundwater, and cause air, water, and land contamination, exposing humans to several health risks, including damage to the nervous system, thyroid, and kidneys.

The 21st-century mining rush is primarily governed by 19th-century law. The 1872 Mining Law is still the governing doctrine regulating the extraction of minerals in the U.S. Experts say the law's shortcomings have led to at least 140,000 abandoned mines in the country. Until the 1970s, mining companies were not required to clean up their toxic waste under the law. Cleanup would cost $50 billion. Today, mining companies have to reclaim and restore the land after shutting down mining operations.

Congress passed the 1872 Mining Law in an era when the federal government was also using its military forces to displace Indigenous Tribes violently. The law was aimed at supporting the gold rush in the West by providing generous rights, including exemptions from having to pay any royalties and giving mining projects priority over other uses of public lands. The same law, which for Indigenous rights groups and environmental advocates have fought to reform for decades, further enabled settlers to dispossess Indigenous people of their land.

Still, the mining law does not directly provide environmental protections for land affected by mining operations, even though mining claims are subject to environmental law as a precondition for development. Experts argue, however, that BLM and other federal agencies have repeatedly failed to ensure environmental protections. “In my 30-plus years career, [the BLM] has hardly ever said no to a mine. Period,” Flynn said. Taking BLM and other agencies to court is often the only accountability mechanism Tribes have. 

Flynn has argued that BLM is not using its full authority to protect Indigenous people and their land. Days after BLM approved a new lithium and boron mine in Rhyolite Ridge in southwest Nevada, a coalition of environmental and Tribal groups filed a lawsuit alleging the agency “adopted a highly accelerated permitting timeline for the project, which limited opportunities for environmental analysis and public participation.” 

The Rhyolite Area has a unique environmental, historical, and cultural importance for the Shoshone and Paiute peoples, who lived here long before the arrival of European settlers. Cave Spring, one of the dozens of natural springs in the area, is an irreplaceable sacred site to many Indigenous groups. Western Shoshone families go to Cave Springs to educate younger generations about their identity and cultural practices—something that cannot be achieved at any other site, as they stated in the lawsuit.

“We think the [federal] courts have supported our view, on federal public land, that they [BLM] have more authority and they're not using it,” Flynn said. “They're not meeting their duty to protect public land and waters and other resources.”

Sacred Lands from Ha’Kamwe’ to Peehee Mu'huh

Ivan Bender, a member of the Hualapai Tribe in his early sixties, grew up speaking the Hualapai Native language and listening to elders telling stories of Ha’Kamwe’. “Those are the things that I was raised on,” he said. But it wasn’t until Bender began spending entire days on that land that he came to understand the full meaning of the tales he heard as a child. “I never really thought it would come to a point where it made sense,” he said. “Like five [or] six years ago, I began to realize what these stories were all about.”

Bender, who describes himself as a “jack of all trades,” was hired by the Tribe roughly a decade ago to work as a caretaker on Ha’Kamwe’. He was fascinated by the warm spring water and the wildlife. “There were all kinds of animals; I used to see them all the time,” he said.”

One day in 2018, as he was doing his routine check around the area, he saw a flag flying in the distance. As he walked closer, he saw several men working close to Tribal land. “That’s when I found out what they were doing,” Bender said. “They were already drilling.”

Bender immediately reported what he saw to the Tribe. He said the noise of the mining operations scared away the wildlife, and the water sources weren’t the same. “The water was going down,” Bender recalls. “I live here, I see that. I work around this place, I know the water.”

Before the first contact with European settlers around 1776, Hualapai land extended from the Colorado River’s junction with the Little Colorado River to the confluence of the Bill Williams and Santa Maria Rivers, at the border with modern-day southern California. The reach of their trade and social relationships stretched out to the Pacific coast and Baja California in the West and Flagstaff, Arizona, in the East.

For centuries, the Hualapai—which means “People of the tall pines”—followed the seasonal cycles of the Colorado River, settling closer to the river in the summer, when the water retreated, and moving further inland, closer to the hills during the fall and winter, to avoid high waters.

The discovery of gold in the mid-1800s attracted a new wave of white settlers, as well as an increased presence of the U.S. government and military. The Hualapai tried to defend their land, but the U.S. government crackdown was devastating for the Tribe. Hualapai people were deprived of any access to food resources and incarcerated by the U.S. military, marking the beginning of a systemic suppression campaign against the Hualapai. 

In 1874, the Bureau of Indian Affairs ordered the displacement of the Tribe. The U.S. Army forced hundreds of Hualapai people to walk for two weeks, in what is today remembered as the La Paz Trail of Tears. The Hualapai were forcibly displaced to the Colorado River Indian Reservation in Parker, Arizona, a desert area that, according to the Hualapai Tribe, an Army officer in charge of the forced removal called the “Sahara of the Colorado.” During the march and the following year of detention, women were assaulted, and many died, but some managed to flee and return to the areas surrounding Ha’Kamwe’.

“When they escaped their internment camps, several of them did go back to the Big Sandy Valley to hide out in the hills,” says Jackson. “There's just a lot of not only spiritual and cultural connection, but historical events that happened in that area.”

Bender started researching the impact of mining and noticed its consequences on Ha’Kamwe’. Part of Bender’s research involved visiting another Tribal Nation in a similar fight.

Near the end of the first Trump Administration, BLM issued a permit for a large open-pit lithium mine in the desert mountains of Nevada, bordering Oregon, known as Thacker Pass or Peehee Mu'huh in Paiute. This site formed millions of years ago following the eruption of a supervolcano, creating what is now the largest lithium deposit in the United States and a sacred site to the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone peoples.

It was here, on September 12, 1865, that the 1st Nevada Cavalry Battalion of the U.S. Union Army raided an Indigenous village, killing 31 people. A joint report from Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union says the 1865 massacre is emblematic of the abuses against Indigenous peoples often perpetrated by U.S. military forces in pursuit of natural resources. Similar to the gold rush in Arizona that contributed to the brutal displacement of the Hualapai people, the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone faced land dispossession and brutal abuses. The joint report notes that there are accounts of 111 massacres of Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone that took place in four years between 1864 and 1868.

To learn more about the impact of lithium mining on Tribal land, Bender asked the Hualapai Tribal government to be sent to Thacker Pass. He spent several days at an encampment protesting the Thacker Pass mining project, talking to the elders, exchanging information, and learning what steps the Hualapai could take next.

A year after the Thacker Pass mining project was approved, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and the People of Red Mountain filed a lawsuit alleging that BLM had failed to identify historic properties that local Indian Tribes consider sacred and culturally significant that would be affected by the mining operations, in violation of the  National Historic Preservation Act, as well as other laws, including the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Ultimately, the Tribal Nations opposing the Thacker Pass project lost their legal fight in 2023, and the mining company, Lithium Americas, went on to build its open pit mine. 

Tribal Nations and human rights advocates also claim the BLM fast-tracked the mining operation in Thacker Pass without meaningfully consulting Indigenous Nations. Advocates and legal experts say this has been a recurring pattern in recent years’ lithium mining projects.

Flynn believes that the BLM fails to ensure environmental protections because the Agency interprets the 1872 law to mean that the BLM has limited power to deny a proposed mining project.

Bender returned to Thacker Pass recently, taking his niece with him. He wanted her to see the consequences mining operations can have on the land. In Thacker Pass, Bender found that the beautiful sagebrush he remembered had been destroyed. “Take a real good look at that; remember it,” he told his niece. “Because that’s how [Ha’Kamwe’] is going to look. The water is going to be gone. Is that what you want?”

“Listen to us when we’re talking about how to treat the land.”

As exposure to new mining projects threatens Tribal lands and Indigenous sacred sites, the Hualapai case—while still unfinished—provides some much-needed hope for Indigenous and environmental advocates after the legal loss in Thacker Pass. Earthjustice called the court’s decision to extend the drilling freeze near Ha’Kamwe’, last November “a major win.”

But even after that November decision, the Hualapai Tribe remained prudent. “I feel a huge sense of relief today, but we know this is not the end of the story,” said Chairman Duane Clarke of the Hualapai Tribe in a statement at the time, clearly understanding that the battle to protect their land was far from over.

While the Hualapai Tribe’s fight results from a recent lithium rush, the stage to onshore more mining in the U.S. was over 15 years in the making and will likely continue to increase in the near and long terms.

Each of the last three presidential administrations demonstrated the belief that supporting the mining of critical minerals is a priority for the country, believing the U.S. is too dependent on imports of most critical minerals. Despite their efforts and the threats that mining poses to Indigenous communities, critics argue that the U.S. remains far from achieving self-reliance in lithium and other critical minerals. A study conducted by researchers at Indiana University found only minimal progress in creating additional U.S. mines for critical minerals and materials.

“The mining industry in the United States has been on a path of steady decline for decades,” says John D. Graham, a professor at Indiana University O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs who was part of the research team. “The amount of investors, the amount of academics, the amount of students interested in mining has only very recently picked up because of the clean energy transition and the desire to have more mining for these minerals.”

The Obama Administration was the first to set goals for the commercialization of electric mobility. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act devoted billions of dollars in grants and loans to support the supply chain. Out of the 20 projects, a majority of the grants were awarded to manufacturing, while only one involved lithium mining and processing.

Compared to the Obama years, the first Trump Administration significantly increased the rate of new mining projects according to a review published by Energy Research & Social Science. According to the United States Geological Survey, the United States was 100% reliant on foreign suppliers for 14 out of the 35 minerals on the critical minerals list.  In 2020, Trump issued an executive order that declared a national emergency for critical minerals to address the reliance on imports of these essential minerals.

The Biden Administration further invested in the U.S. mining industry with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In his second term, Trump recently signed a new executive order, which accelerated the permitting process and opened the doors to new mining opportunities. Trump’s action added copper, uranium, gold, and potash to the list of minerals eligible for federal support and granted the Secretary of Defense the latitude to connect private capital sources to mining projects. Arizona, for example, contains some of the world’s largest copper deposits.

“It's not just lithium,” Flynn said. “I don't think there's any difference between the agencies’ failures to protect Tribal resources and Indigenous resources, whether it's copper, gold, lithium, uranium.”

Copper is usually mined in large, open-pit mines that are disruptive to the environment. According to the EPA, copper mining wastes account for the largest share of metal mining and processing wastes generated in the United States. A key case before the Supreme Court will determine whether a copper mining project on land sacred to the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona can continue.

In 2013, Resolution Copper filed a general plan of operations, proposing to build a mine in Oak Flat, near Phoenix, to extract copper from what is estimated to be the largest copper ore deposit in North America.

Theresa Nosie’s family has spent years fighting against the mining plan. Her husband, Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., a former San Carlos Tribal chairman, founded Apache Stronghold, a non-profit organization that has led the long battle to protect Oak Flat—a peaceful area covered in Emory oak trees and surrounded by red rocks, part of the Tonto National Forest.

Oak Flat is sacred to the Western Apache and other Indigenous people who lived here before being forcibly displaced to the San Carlos reservation, a mostly desert plain, where many Tribal members still live today. “Apache people didn’t live where it’s hot,” Nosie, a Navajo Tribal member who has lived in the San Carlos reservation for decades, said. “They all lived in this area all around, in the mountains.”

In 2014, the Senate approved a land swap, giving Resolution Copper property over Oak Flat in exchange for other land. Two years later, the National Park Service added Oak Flat to the National Register of Historic Places. Apache Stronghold has fought to protect its sacred place ever since.

Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. spends days and nights camping out in Oak Flat. Many of the couple’s six children and eighteen grandchildren are also involved in the organization, which now gathers Tribal members and other people from all over the country. “It's only by word of mouth,” Theresa Nosie said as she seasoned the grill at her home in San Carlos to cook for the events surrounding the organization’s annual protest march and run. Dozens of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people gathered in San Carlos to commemorate the Tribe’s forced displacement and protest the mining plan in Oak Flat.

As the Nosies wait for the highest court in the land to issue their decision, Theresa remains stoic. “The history of Native country and the United States is not a good one,” Nosie said. “So, you just have to be positive, and then you just live with the outcome.”

Others echo Nosie’s approach. Ka-Voka Jackson, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and Director of the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources with the Hualapai Tribe, also patiently waits for the Hualapai case to be resolved in court. In the meantime, she’s determined to keep fighting to protect her land, culture and beliefs—something, she says, that is passed down generationally and is ingrained in her. 

“We’re here to protect our lands,” says Ka-Voka Jackson, the Director and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Hualapai Tribe. “We are here, we have always been here, we will continue to be here, so please, listen to us when we’re talking about how to treat the land.”

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