A Mine and the Broken Promise Or

The Saga of Rotten Moon

A Mine and the Broken Promise

The land was quiet before they came. The wind moved through the pass, and the people went there like always.

They called it Peehee mu’huh, Rotten Moon, because of what had happened long ago.

The soldiers came in 1865, and they left bodies behind. The blood dried, and the people remembered.

The miners followed. The Bureau of Land Management gave them a permit.

They wanted lithium. They said the country needed it. They authorized the permit in January 2021.

The pandemic made things bad. Tribal offices were closed. The virus had taken too many.

There was no consultation, but the digging began anyway. The United States had signed papers agreeing to protect Indigenous rights, but the law did not require it.

The Winnemucca Indian Colony and the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe said no. The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, the Burns Paiute Tribe, and the Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute Tribe said no.

They fought in the courts. The Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute wrote to the United Nations.

The land was sacred. It had been for a long time.

But the mine went up. A fence came first—barbed wire and signs telling the people to stay away.

They guarded the road, the old places where they had gathered food and medicine locked behind gates. Lithium Americas said they had done what was required, following the law.

A report came out. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU said the mine was illegal under international law. The government had not gotten consent.

The consultation had been rushed, done poorly, done in a way that made sure it would not change anything.

The mine is still there. The earth is being torn open.

The promise was fragmented, like before.