Posted on 06/12/2021 1:31:38 PM PDT by Libloather
One autumn evening four years ago, Ivan Bender, a Hualapai man in his mid-50s, took a walk with his fluffy brown-and-white Pomeranian, Sierra Mae, to check on the ranchland he tends. Nestled in western Arizona’s Big Sandy River Valley, the ranch protects Ha’ Kamwe’ - hot springs that are sacred to the Hualapai and known today in English as Cofer Hot Springs. As the shadows lengthened, Bender saw something surprising - men working on a nearby hillside.
“I asked them what they were doing,” Bender recalled. “They told me they were drilling.” As it turns out, along with sacred places including the hot springs, ceremony sites and ancestral burials, the valley also holds an enormous lithium deposit. Now, exploratory work by Australian company Hawkstone Mining threatens those places, and with them, the religious practices of the Hualapai and other Indigenous nations. But this threat is nothing new: Centuries of land expropriation, combined with federal court rulings denying protection to sacred sites, have long devastated Indigenous religious freedom.
Cholla Canyon Ranch, where Bender is the caretaker, includes approximately 360 acres about halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, flanked to the west by the lush riparian corridor of Big Sandy River. The valley is part of an ancient salt route connecting tribes from as far north as central Utah to communities in Baja California and along the Pacific Coast, documented in the songs and oral traditions of many Indigenous nations.
“There are stories about that land and what it represents to the Hualapai Tribe,” Bender said. “To me, it holds a really, really sacred valley of life in general.”
(Excerpt) Read more at hcn.org ...
I’m sure indigenous peoples will happily do their part for our carbon-free, renewable and diverse energy future.
It’s just amazing how often mineral deposits occur under sacred places. What are the odds?
It’s too bad that the zillions of windmills being built aren’t on sacred places.
I’m surprised they’re not. Usually when anybody wants to do something with some land, the land turns out to be sacred, whether or not it had ever been before.
And previously unknown “endangered” species are found there when you can’t find any natives.
Bkmk
tell ‘em it’s needed to make slot machines
When one worships mother earth every place is sacred.
Who owns the land where the lithium is? That is the determining factor and not all this BS.
MAYA KAPOOR My name is Maya L. Kapoor, and I am running for a seat on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists. I appreciate all that SEJ does...
To be honest, private ownership no longer matters as far as the government is concerned. It only matters who can make best use of it in regards to the community and economic growth. See Kelo v. City of New London.
Am I still bitter about this ruling? Yes, I am.
OK, this is fine, so long as these indigenous people swear off owning any lithium batteries.
So now the Left is holding some obscure religion sacred while demonizing God's own people?
Mine that land for all it's worth. Don't leave a spoonful unturned. Dig, baby, dig!
Whoever owns the “mineral rights” matters.
But the places with economic mineralization are extra super-duper sacred. Many dollars worth of sacredness are in these places.
The indians also have sacred casinos.
Well, lithium strip mining is one of the many evil necessities for the manufacture of batteries for the dreaded environmental catastrophes known as the hybrid automobile
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