WIKIEUP, Ariz. — In the desert hills of western Arizona, Ivan Bender drives his ATV to inspect holes in the ground. The holes are near the property of the Hualapai tribe, and an Australian mining company drilled them in recent years as it explores for lithium, a key metal in many electric vehicle batteries.
Bender, a Hualapai tribal member, is the property’s caretaker, and he says he had no input when the company came on Hualapai land to access the spots where they drilled the holes.
“The company just jumped in here and started going to work. I didn’t understand what was going on,” Bender says, “It was like, where do we stand here?”
Demand for lithium and other metals like cobalt, copper and nickel is soaring as the world increases manufacturing of green energy components like batteries and solar panels. But research finds more than half of these mineral projects are on or near the lands of Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and around the world.
From water pollution to human rights abuses, mining has historically come with huge costs to native groups, says Galina Angarova of the Buryat Peoples in Siberia, who heads the Securing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Green Economy coalition. New mining, even when it’s meant to address climate change, threatens to repeat mistakes of the past, she says.