Urgent News Alert from Paul re Nevada Lithium Mine Indigenous Women-Led Camp — We Need YOU….

This urgent alert contains a status update on the lithium mine camp, numerous links for background info, and a variety of volunteer and other support we would appreciate ASAP. Thanks for your attention…

Last Thursday, May 11th, I became one of the founding campers at what we intend and hope will become the next nationally significant Standing-Rock-like prayer and action camp — at Thacker Pass, Nevada (Pee’hee Mu’huh in the Paiute language meaning “rotten moon” named for the massacre of Paiute ancestors in 1865) — to try to stop the construction of what would become the largest open pit lithium mine in the world, as a false and ecologically devastating “green energy solution” to our fossil-fuel woes.

Here’s a 1-minute video intro to this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goCCPEMunSQ

We simply cannot dig our way out of our climate emergency. And if you don’t believe me, I urge you to read Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen, full of the hard data we all need to stop lying to ourselves about an electric battery future nirvana. A real solution is a rapid transition first to a steady state or zero-growth economy (which is frankly impossible under capitalism which requires constant growth) followed by carefully planned, massive and rapid economic shrinkage. There really is no other option if we truly want to see the survival of diverse species thriving on Mother Earth.

And when We the People continue to allow large business corporations to exercise their so-called Constitutional “rights” — of property, of free speech, access to the courts, etc, which were never approved by the public in our nation’s history — our options are limited when We try to stop these outrages against land, water, and people. Because corporations really do have more constitutionally protected “rights” than We do. So we need to tackle this crisis on many fronts. (If you want to learn more about this aspect of the crisis our society is facing, check out my new book.)

If we can stop the Thacker Pass lithium mine this year, then we have a fighting chance to stop the other (dozens?) of planned lithium mines all across the Americas.

I am extremely proud to have been invited as a founding camp member of this just launched camp which only days ago was given a proper name by the Paiute Shoshone women elders who are in charge of this camp: Ox Sam Newe Momokonee Nokutum. Ox Sam was one of only a few surviving members of the 1865 massacre of dozens of Native people at Thacker Pass. And Newe Momokonee Nokutum translates as Indigenous Women’s Camp and is open to ALL — Native and non-Native, women and men. (Here’s a pronunciation guide for speaking that beautiful name: New’-weh Moe-moe-koht’-nee Noh-kuh’-duhn.)

For the first few days of the new camp, I played a highly significant support role on site: as the Liaison between those drivers trying to reach the mining operation (workers, mine deliveries, and occasionally just members of the public driving up this rural county road) and the grandmothers who are in charge there. I didn’t hold a leadership position. I didn’t speak for the camp. I simply moved information back and forth between the drivers and the grandmothers, who decide who gets to pass and who does not.

Here’s what my role as Liaison actually looked like on the entrance road in these minute-long videos. This man is one of the mine security supervisors…

Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi8-3RJdz54

Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO0NQE6yxl4

It has been a scary and intimidating but also incredibly moving and powerful experience for me, and we’ve already stopped dozens of vehicles with our banner held high by camp participants standing across the roadway, and always with a local Native elder in prayer sitting in front of the banner. The goal always is for an elder to be arrested by the local sheriff, as the spark that we need to build Native and other public outrage / uprising towards building a much larger campaign here on site.

Meet three extraordinary leaders of the camp in this 23-minute video:

https://www.facebook.com/lastrealindians/videos/live-prayer-action-at-peehee-muhuh-thacker-pass-lithium-mine/3538888233000432.

The sheriff’s office has been in constant communication for days with Lithium Nevada Corporation managers (behind the scenes) as they’ve been going out of their way to not arrest any of us, even though we are creating quite the hassle for their daily operations. What they want, more than anything, is to make this look like it’s led by a handful of white out-of-state eco-freaks so they can mock the camp in their news releases. But the reality is that the camp is 90% Native people, mostly local, and THEY are its leaders.

On Friday evening, we found out that Max Wilbert (co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass) and myself were the only named people in a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), which the company has put before a judge this weekend, and once it’s approved, they will try to serve Max and myself. I came prepared to risk arrest, so all is well.

“Please be advised that Lithium Nevada is filing an Application for Temporary Order for Protection Against Harassment in the Workplace against Max Wilbert and Paul Cienfuegos later this afternoon, in the Justice Court in the Township of Union Humboldt County, Nevada.”

All of this in furtherance of the company’s desperate attempt to attach white leadership to the story of this camp, when in reality neither of us has stood in the way of any employee or company vehicle.

In order to not give the corporation any messaging advantage in their false claims, it was essential that Max and I exit the camp, which we did on Saturday morning, which then forced the company’s hand.

Lithium Nevada Corporation now has only two options:

1) Arrest Native elders front and center in each road blockade event, and watch the camp grow by the day, or…

2) Pull back police enforcement entirely, and watch the camp grow by the day…

…in its existing location right on top of the company’s ongoing water line construction. One TiPi now in place, and more on the way. More tents arriving daily. On the company’s BLM-leased land. Or more accurately, on land “beyond the treaty frontier”, as the US government has no treaties in place, which would be needed to claim that this land was EVER taken from the local Paiute Shoshone communities. So local native communities have more right to be on this land than any other persons or corporations.

Which is where YOU come in! And when I say you, I mean YOU, the person reading these words right now!

Please share this information with your own social networks in the next 48 hours.

Standing Rock started when local Native people took a stand against a pipeline. Other Native peoples came to support them. Then the non-Native environmental and social justice movements took notice and started showing up en masse. Major media coverage followed from there. And a historic Native-led mass encampment was born, which shook the consciousness of the nation. We can do this too — here at Thacker Pass, Nevada.

We need all hands on deck NOW. This week. We need bodies. We need supplies. We need media support. We need funds. The small group holding this camp simply cannot sustain itself unless YOU and people YOU know are willing to do SOMETHING to support us THIS WEEK.

Please phone or text or email me directly with any questions, or offers of assistance that you may be able to provide, and I will forward your offering to the appropriate camp leaders. (I will be on and off-line the next few days on the road, so please be patient.) Or contact the camp directly. See below for those details…

I thank all of you reading this, from the bottom of my heart. This is NOT just another single-issue campaign. The success or failure of this effort could have historic impact on the future survival of the extraordinary diversity of creatures here on this beautiful and mysterious orb we call home, floating in the endless blackness of space.

warmly,

Paul Cienfuegos

Founding Director

Community Rights US

Paul@CommunityRights.US

c/txt: 503 506 8333