Paul Cienfuegos & Six Others are now Defendants in a Lawsuit by Lithium Nevada Corporation

Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone tribal elders Josephine Sam Dick, 76, and her sister, Elvida Sam Crutcher, 73, sit inside the second tipi after they led the creation of Newe Momokonee Nokotun, a Paiute name that translates to Indigenous Women’s Camp, also known as Ox Sam Camp, after the sisters’ great-grandfather, who was one of only three survivors of the 1865 Thacker Pass Massacre. The sisters urge people to come stand with them to stop the desecration of sacred sites and the final resting places of their ancestors. Photo by Jarrette Werk (Underscore News / Report for America)

Our founding director, Paul Cienfuegos, has been intensively involved with the campaign to stop the destruction of a vast high desert sagebrush ecosystem at Thacker Pass in Northern Nevada where the largest open pit lithium mine in the world is being prepared right now with massive road building and the laying of a ten-mile water line to the mine site.

This mine will require five million gallons of water per day, from an already over-allocated and rapidly shrinking aquifer, in the driest state in the US. Green energy. HAHAHAHA!

In April, he and three other campaigners were served with a Temporary Restraining Order by Lithium Nevada Corp, saying that if any of them were seen within 150 yards of any mine company property, they would be charged with felonies. The accusations against the four include the laughable charge of “aggravated stalking.” In reality, many of them (not including Paul) have been participating in classic nonviolent direct action, peacefully blocking the entry road into the mine. Then in May, an additional SLAPP-type charge was made against seven participants (again including Paul) with even more absurd and serious accusations.

SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, and is a classic tactic by giant corporations against activists who are simply being effective in their advocacy work against some specific corporate harm being done. They’re designed not to win against the activists, but to force them to stop doing their work, and shift immediately to raising money for expensive lawyers to defend themselves against absurd charges. Some states have anti-SLAPP laws, but Nevada is not one of them. So now they’re scrambling to find Nevada attorneys and raising money to pay for them!

If you care about the ongoing and massive desecration of US and other nations’ wild landscapes for the so-called “green energy” mega-mines masquerading as solutions to the climate crisis, we urge you to support their efforts by making a generous one-time or monthly donation to the campaign HERE. To donate by check, go HERE. Thanks in advance!

And if you want to learn more about why it is so urgent that we strip constitutional so-called “rights” from business corporations such as Lithium Nevada Corp, so that they can no longer sue First Amendment protected citizens such as Paul, please order a copy of Paul’s groundbreaking book, How Dare We? Courageous Practices to Reclaim Our Power as Citizens.

Below, you’ll find links to some of the most critical information about this urgent campaign….

A link to the latest Press Release from the campaign, just released on Monday:

Lithium Nevada Lawsuit Aims to Stop Tribal Members and Allies from Praying at Sacred Site

https://www.protectthackerpass.org/lithium-nevada-lawsuit-aims-to-stop-tribal-members-and-allies-from-praying-at-sacred-site/

“When most people look out here they see nothing, because they don’t know how to look,” said Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu. “People think Nevada is just open land that can be trashed, whether it be nuclear testing, or bombing ranges, or toxic waste storage and now open-pit mining.” While taking portraits on May 16, Zahn-Nahtzu, a Te-Moak Shoshone and Washoe multi-disciplinary artist based out of Hungry Valley, Nevada, stopped to look at the different medicines and plants like this Nevada Lupine that is found in Oregon, Nevada and California. “It seems ironic to me that I’m the trespasser because I want to see my ancestral land preserved,” Zahn-Nahtzu added. Photo by Jarrette Werk (Underscore News / Report for America)

These words are from Paul Cienfuegos describing his role at the mine site encampment:

The Paiute-Shoshone grandmothers who founded and are in charge of the Ox Sam Camp at Thacker Pass lithium mine site in northern Nevada gave me a very specific and significant role at camp. They asked me to be the Liaison between them and the almost entirely white men who we were going to have to interact with, as mine employees and delivery trucks regularly drove up the county’s rural access road to get to the mine site. We were there to peacefully blockade all mine activity, but I was not a blockader. So each time a vehicle would roll up that road, I walked out in front of the civil disobedience blockade to talk directly to the drivers through their vehicle windows. You can see me in action here in these two short videos, engaging with the Humboldt County Sheriff on his two visits up the road. I’m the guy in a plaid shirt and sun hat…