OWYHEE, Nev. — For more than a century, outsiders have come for what’s on this land. First, it was for gold. Today, it’s for lithium, a highly sought element in a rush for cleaner energy.
Across the region and beyond, leaders of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley have raised alarm to share the impacts of mining on cultures, tribal communities and tribal rights. And to illuminate the fact Indigenous peoples never gave up the title to the land here, said Brian Mason, chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation.
In 2023 testimony before the United Nations, Shoshone-Paiute Tribal Councilmember Addie Parker called for an approach that “recognizes our standing as Indigenous Peoples as decision makers and stewards.”
Grand entry on the final day of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes’ Fourth of July powwow and celebrations. Right, Kobie Lynn Kelly, 16, a member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, participating in the teen girls jingle competition. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Grand entry on the final day of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes’ Fourth of July powwow and celebrations. Right, Kobie Lynn Kelly, 16, a member of… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Left, Keenas Limon, an enrolled member of the Pit River Tribe and Ojibwe descendant, prepares for the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes’ Fourth of July powwow in Owyhee, Nevada. Right, Steve Johnson watches the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes’ Fourth of July powwow. Johnson says he dances for his family and his loved ones who are gone. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Left, Keenas Limon, an enrolled member of the Pit River Tribe and Ojibwe descendant, prepares for the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes’ Fourth of… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
The work that the tribes are doing is not just for Indigenous communities, but protecting the resources for everyone, Parker said in an interview this week.
The Shoshone-Paiute leaders say in a 2023 count they were aware of at least 70 lithium mining proposals across Nevada. One of those, at nearby Thacker Pass, is now taking shape. Mining company Lithium Americas secured approval of the mine under the first Trump administration, and then a $2.26 billion loan as part of the Biden administration’s clean-energy agenda.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management appeared to fast-track a nearby lithium exploration project, giving the public less than a week to comment on an environmental assessment.
Last summer on the reservation, families from across Nevada, the Columbia River Basin and beyond gathered for an annual Fourth of July powwow and rodeo.
In the southern tip of the Columbia River Basin, bright-white pelicans flocked to a marshy tangle of wetlands within the Owyhee River watershed, where Pacific salmon used to spawn.
“We’ve already suffered from an energy policy,” Mason said at his office. “The Department of Energy dammed up the Columbia Basin. We used to be a salmon people.”
The Shoshone and Paiute tribes were forcibly removed from their vast homelands and settled in Duck Valley, a reservation that straddles Idaho and Nevada. They settled here in part because of the expectation they would have access to salmon and other resources. But the construction of Owyhee Dam would block the 900-mile salmon migration to their historical habitat.
It’s a story that’s been repeated across the Columbia Basin, as detailed by the Biden administration in a sweeping report that acknowledged the harms inflicted on tribal communities by the construction of dams. And the harms of resource extraction have piled on those losses.
A recent report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union found the U.S. violated a United Nations declaration on Indigenous rights when it permitted Lithium Americas’ mine at Thacker Pass “without any meaningful consultation” with Indigenous peoples and “without their free, prior, and informed consent.”
The report also criticized the General Mining Act of 1872, a law written to protect cheap, easy access to natural resources in the era of Manifest Destiny. That law has not seen significant changes, even as a new rush for minerals has been spurred in the effort to leave fossil fuels in the ground to blunt some of the worst effects of climate change.
Nevada in 2021 passed a bill to collect new revenue from mining, but it excluded tribes.
“They’re trying to build an energy policy on the backs of the tribes,” Mason said. “We’ve already done that. We’ve already experienced it. So we’re saying don’t do it again.”
A rocky outcrop called Turner Table holds a window into the past, with cherished foods gathered by families for generations, said Reggie Sope, a traditional historian and an enrolled member of the Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute tribes.
Remnants of people’s existence here can be found all over the desert, Sope said.
The reservation era brought a shift to raising crops, rather than harvesting plants and medicines, Sope said. The elders of the time chose to live here along the Owyhee River where salmon spawned.
Enrolled member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Reggie Sope at his home near Owyhee, Nevada. Sope is a poet, rancher and traditional historian. Right, he shows an arrow made by Richard Dick, representing the Snake and Northern Paiute people. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Enrolled member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Reggie Sope at his home near… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
Before then, Sope explained, people built homes with willows and survived off the salmon, ducks, camas and tulee bulbs along the Owyhee.
Stories described the salmon at one time as so big they were tied by the jaws and hung over saddlehorns and their tails still dragged on the ground.
Salmon brought nutrients to the land and people that kept them in good health. Since the construction of dams in the Snake River basin and the loss of salmon, cancer, heart disease and diabetes arrived in the valley, Sope said.
Sope, perched on warm bleachers in the midsummer sun, looked beyond the brim of his hat as his son Milo in a bright pink button-up entered the rodeo grounds.
Ranching goes back to his great-grandparents, in a time where they could sell steer for $7 per animal.
Sope says he was born in the saddle, his mom rushed to the hospital for his premature birth after a horse ride induced labor. His first rodeo was at 6 years old, just meeting the age limit. As a teen, he thought he was Iron Man, and he would go on to hold the roping title for nearly two decades.
He was raised here among the meadowlarks and magpies, the swish of horses’ tails punctuating the rooster’s crow. His parents’ one-bedroom home is just down the road from where his horse trailers now sit.
Sope is among those working to restore the health of his people.
A crackling fire cast heat waves over the landscape, illuminated by the soft blue sky at twilight. Neighbors and relatives rolled up with towels around their necks, some gathering medicines nearby, preparing for a sweat purification ceremony.
Sope today holds ceremonies at his home, but hopes to expand opportunities for the community with the ceremonial house he is building. He envisions sharing stories in Paiute and Shoshone, teaching basketry and beadwork.
“We used to go out and sweat, speak the language, drum, sing songs,” Sope said. “The gullies, the valleys miss that. That’s what this land heard for thousands of years.”
