Lithium really is the future.
They get to come mine here and then go home.
Demand for lithium is going through the roof.
This is our home. This is where our people are.
These are ancestral homelands, we don't get to leave this place.
The intensifying quest to find and produce lithium.
It's a soft, silvery metal, that's the key component in electric car batteries.
And it stores the electricity spun out by wind turbines and solar panels.
The world's need for lithium for batteries may surge by 75 fold.
There are estimates that the lithium-ion battery market could reach more than $100bn by 2027.
Lithium stocks are on fire.
Lithium, lithium, lithium, lithium, lithium, lithium, lithium, lithium.
There's so much lithium in this area that, you know, it makes people foam at the mouth.
My name is Daranda Hinkey and I'm part of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe.
There's a lot of history behind these mountains, these caves, the creeks near us.
One hundred and fifty six years ago, there was a massacre here, of a band of Paiute-Shoshone people.
They were slaughtered here by the US Cavalry.
And so today is the day we're gonna come back and remember these people
and then also talk a lot about the history of this place.
I do feel like a little bit of like a knot in my chest just because of like, yeah ...
Just of like what has happened, and like how resilient the people are to be here. And I think that's really beautiful,
but I just think it's really good to be back. So, yeah.
We're facing a global crisis, a climate crisis,
and you're seeing a lot of the world leaders, certainly President Biden, are stepping up and addressing this issue.
There's no reason why Americans, American workers, can't lead the world in the production of electric vehicles
and batteries, I mean there is no reason.
But in the US, we simply don't have the resources to do it effectively without depending on foreign sources.
And what I mean by that is the materials that go into lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium Nevada is developing a project in north-eastern, north-central Nevada, at a place called Thacker Pass.
So this is an example of what lithium carbonate looks like.
This is our final product that we'll be producing at the plant.
It looks like flour. There's nothing really special about this, except that this is the material
that is really used as a raw material to make batteries
that will go into probably all of our electric vehicles one day.
Right now in the US, we produce probably less than 1% of global supply of lithium,
and we'll increase that amount well over tenfold.
A lot of environmentalists will argue that, yeah, we do need those lithium, we do need that electric car,
but I don't think they've actually thought about really the outcome of all of that,
what ancestral homelands, what indigenous lands are they taking it from ...
Thacker Pass is one of a number of proposed lithium mining operations in North America.
A recent study put out by an investor analyst firm
found that 79% of lithium in the United States
were within 35 miles of Native American reservations.
And these are communities that have already been pushed out of their homelands, affected by genocide,
and they have to pay the price for the transition to a low carbon economy
that perhaps those same communities are not even going to benefit from.
It's completely unacceptable.
Nevada has been mining now for 150 years,
all the mining companies and all the stakeholders, they're billionaires, and we're still poor, destitute, struggling.
It's really easy to think that if we just say the right things, if we just argue the right things,
if we just have the best lawyers, we're going to win these things
and this is going to go away.
That's, that's wishful thinking.
Eventually, we're going to have to be ready to physically block construction equipments.
I think that one of the, one of the ways that wakes up people in the United States
is when they see people getting dragged away by the police for trying to protect their land.
And I think that's where this is going.
We put up the protection camp two or three months ago.
I'm planning to, all of the people who stand with us in solidarity,
they're all wanting to stay until, you know, this place is protected. Truly, we're going to be there for a while.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I have just a quick excerpt of the massacre that happened here in 1865.
My father, my mother, my sisters, my brothers, I see no more.
Long time ago, not much to talk about now.
There's family, direct family descendants from that person.
And so, I think it's really resistant, resilient of our people
to still be here, to still be able to talk about it.
It's like putting a lithium mine on Arlington Cemetery.
It's just not fair. I still think people think we are savages in some way, you know, we still use the land, we still care for it.
They see that as weak, but we see that as strength.
Right now we have sage bundles and so we're just going to wrap them up.
I picked them yesterday.
And it will look kind of like this.
And this is what we'll use for smudging or ceremony or praying, things like that.
So yeah, just kind of getting it ready.
That's how we like take care of each other say, like, you know, we care about you, or we love you.
Imagine them digging out that clay 400ft deep.
You know, I can't even imagine what this place would look like with just like these huge pits
and the sulfuric acid burning and all the water being taken. You know, that affects not only us
but it affects the animal, people, affects, you know,
things that we need for ceremony, it affects, you know, the things we need to just do on a daily basis.
We're going to great lengths to make sure that the environment is protected, and that we're being responsible.
And we're also going to great lengths to make sure that any historic artefacts are preserved and treated appropriately.
You know, Lithium Nevada has the same right as anybody else.
If they go through the proper process to get a mining claim and get all the right permits and do those kinds of things,
then they have every right to be here.
So I'm Dave Mendiola, I'm county manager here in Humboldt County, Nevada.
Here's Thacker Pass.
My hope for lithium mining in Humboldt County is really that it's a, that it's a positive experience for our community,
our kids that come out of our schools,
we want more opportunities for those kids, because many of them come out and leave
because they want to experience the world, maybe the opportunities that at that instant are not here.
I've heard from ranchers and farmers out in the area that some of them are very excited.
There's going to be tremendous opportunities for those kids to stay here,
which means those family ranches and farms can stay in place.
They are 40 tribal members in the nearest Native American community, which is called Fort McDermitt.
Forty members of that tribe are interested in working at our facility.
And we're working through getting them trained up and ready to go when, when we, when we open this thing up.
I totally understand we have to have that job, we have to provide for our family, I understand that, I really do.
But we're giving up something that is going to last generations and generations and generations after that.
And to me that's more important.
And I just think that comes from maybe just like a moral decision.
We don't need to dig new holes in the ground in order to power the clean energy transition.
Li-Cycle is North America's largest recycler of lithium-ion batteries.
If we think about it, the traditional sources of mining was to have a geological deposit that exists in the Earth's crust
that we would then mine, and we would turn it into material that we could then use somewhere in our society.
We talk about urban mining as the ability to gain those same materials that we would have otherwise mined
from the Earth's crust, from our lives around us.
We take lithium-ion batteries from all walks of life,
and we then turn those materials back into useful products that can go back into the industry.
We absolutely need to fulfil our commitments to reducing fossil fuel dependence,
but the pathway to get there...
We can make choices that don't create new sacrifice zones and environmental injustices.
I understand that we need to move away from gas, oil and coal but the million dollar question, is how?
Thank you everyone.