A huge lithium mine under construction in northern Nevada is at the center of a dispute over President Joe Biden’s clean energy agenda. The administration says the mine will produce battery material needed to meet Biden’s goal for half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. But Native American tribes and environmentalists say the mine at Thacker Pass will harm wildlife habitats, degrade groundwater and pollute the air in a remote area dotted with sagebrush. The mine also could destroy a sacred site where U.S. troops massacred dozens of Paiute tribal members after the Civil War. One activist calls the mine “green colonialism″ that will irreparably harm Indigenous people
The remains of two Native American children will be returned to South Dakota from more than a thousand miles away in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, according to the US Office of Army Cemeteries. Amos LaFramboise and Edward Upwright were two children with ties to tribal land in South Dakota when they were sent to the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in 1879. The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate are upset with how the process has gone. Historian Tamara St. John has been working on bringing the two boys home for over half a decade. She thought they’d be able to come home last year, but that didn’t happen. “Within the denial letter, they made statements that we will do this next year. But the problem is that they have not engaged us as a tribe and our leadership in order to make those plans. So now to see that they’re just proceeding is unsettling to a lot of us and disrespectful, in my opinion,” Tamara St. John said.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
