US: Lithium Mine Permit Violates Indigenous Peoples’ Rights

(Washington D.C., February 6, 2025) – The United States government’s decision to permit Lithium Americas to mine at Thacker Pass in Nevada violated Indigenous people’s rights, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU said in a . The 18,000-acre mining project is under construction and will extract lithium from one of the world’s largest known deposits.The 138-page report, “‘The Land of Our People, Forever’: United States Human Rights Violations against the Numu/Nuwu and Newe in the Rush for Lithium,” found that the US Bureau of Land Management permitted the Thacker Pass mine without obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous people—the Numu/Nuwu and Newe, or Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone in English—in violation of their rights to religion, culture, and to their ancestral lands under international human rights law and standards. While there may be others, at least six Tribes have connection to the land at Thacker Pass.