Most lithium deposits in the US are on or near tribal land:
From The Guardian (CC-BY-SA 2.0) :
[...] Three-quarters of all known deposits of lithium in America are found near tribal land, igniting fears that a decline in destructive fossil-fuel mining could simply be replaced by a new form of harmful extraction.
Plans for a major, controversial new lithium mine in northern Nevada – a 1,000-acre site called Thacker Pass – will "will turn what is left of my ancestral homelands into a sacrifice zone for electric car batteries", Shelley Harjo, a member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, has warned, all still without meeting the burgeoning thirst for lithium.
Lithium demand is of course on the rise thanks to the mineral's role in battery stage and the ongoing global energy crisis. According to The Guardian, there's enough lithium at Silver Peak for 80,000 electric cars — that's not an insignificant contribution to decarbonization efforts! But there is some concern about the lithium battery production process, which involves massive water use and some higher emissions upfront. Even if it is ultimately a more environmentally-friendly option (assuming we can figure out better means of recycling or disposal), the threat of that resource extraction, particularly when the impact hits indigenous communities the hardest, is ... well, not great, to say the least, as evidenced by the entirety of US history.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @07:34PM (4 children)
This is bad why exactly? It's not because it's in the ground that it absolutely needs to be mined...
If it does, and more importantly, is green-lighted *if* these tribes choose to do so unencumbered, then those tribes will benefit, good on them. If not, they get to keep their land intact, and that too is good on them. Let those tribes decide, it's their land!
Oh, but wait, I get it now... it's a thing because we like to fuck those people over and this would potentially give them money and we don't like that. This is similar to realizing there's oil in the ground in Alaska after having bought it from the Russians, only this time, 'we' are the Russians.
Welp, I see another Trail of Tears coming up...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @07:46PM
Lots of hot buttons to push here, thanks.
I say we do what we've always done.
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Friday October 28 2022, @09:50PM (1 child)
Historically mineral exploitation on native lands has provided little payout and ultimately creates an environmental issue. Especially when we are talking about a mineral found near tribal land, as stated in the summary. There may be economic opportunity for these peoples, but more likely mining corporations will fuck them over and pay them pittance to level a mountain and exploit the scarce water. I'm extrapolating a bit here, but you can understand where these concerns are coming from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism#Native_American_peoples [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_people [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline#Indigenous_Lands_and_Peoples [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @11:24PM
Maybe they'll score Superfund site status in a couple decades and profit off the govt teat. Bah, welfare leeches!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @11:05PM
You never bough Alaska - it was against international laws of the time - you leased it for 99 years and never returned. One day you will and more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday October 28 2022, @07:46PM (11 children)
So...not their land.
Look, human history consists of on group of people conquering another. The fact that these tribes were among the most recent, means that they get lots of public sympathy. Undeserved, imho.
Their ancestors were conquered hundreds of tears ago. Life sucks, but after some number of generations it's time to move on. The reservations are, honestly, the saddest thing that could have happened to them. The inhabitants are mostly dirt poor, while the tribal leaders drive Mercedes.
If they are lucky enough that some of these deposits are actually on their land, maybe they can keep tribal elders from sucking up all the money. Or maybe not...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @09:42PM (4 children)
Integration with the general population would be an act of genocide. It's better to let them have ethnostates to be poor and drunk in.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Saturday October 29 2022, @01:26AM (3 children)
You can't just string words together and automatically come up with the truth. Members of a primitive culture entering a healthy society stand to gain immensely by taking up the virtues that make the society healthy.
Genocide is mass murder. Entering a technically advanced society enables improved health through using good medical technology.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday October 29 2022, @03:09AM
No, genocide is
Mass murder certainly qualifies, and is the most common usage.
But mass deportation qualifies as well, as does the practice of taking children from their parents and sending them to "reeducation" camps/schools. Destroying the culture destroys the cultural group as surely as destroying the people in it. While deportation destroys it within your borders.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2022, @05:29AM
You must be new here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2022, @09:41AM
https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-cultural-genocide/ [eji.org]
https://globalnews.ca/news/9232545/house-of-commons-residential-schools-canada-genocide/ [globalnews.ca]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @11:10PM (1 child)
You assume that whites won forever. The lesson of history actually is that whites will be burned one day and that day is coming soon.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @11:36PM
Fair point. "The Whites" run on gasoline and technological superiority. When the gas runs out it's game on for the spear chuckers. Amirite?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @11:33PM
> hundreds of tears ago
lol... spare us your pitiful tales of woe and despair... yawn
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2022, @01:55AM (2 children)
If there were an easy answer, we'd simply implement it.
IMHO, what it all boils down to is this: What should be the statute of limitations on genocide?
And just to give you an idea where I'm coming from, I'm Jewish on my mother's side (they left Odessa in the late 19th century) and Catholic on my dad's side (they left Poland around the same time).
So that brings us to the first wrinkle. Given that it's entirely conceivable that some ancestor of mine might have pogrom'd another ancestor of mine 200 years ago and ran them out of their village in to Odessa (many Jews migrated there to get away from that shit) do I reward myself or punish myself?
It's absurd. The answer is neither. I'm an American. Case closed.
OK, so what about my manager when I had my first internship as a teenager? His dad worked with Von Braun. Yes. That Von Braun. His dad may or may not have been a serious nazi, but he was in bed with them in a serious way. Well, that's kind of absurd too. He had no control over his father. He was born in America. I'm an American. He was an American. Case closed again.
It's when you get in to tracking down real life ex-nazis who stole from people that are still alive that it's plainly less absurd and so it's tempting to say "case closed" on all of it and say that the statute of limitations on genocide runs out when the direct victims and the direct perps are both dead.
Would that it were so easy, because this ignores the whole notion of incentive and softer forms of genocide. If it were known that your offspring would suffer no repercussions, your incentive to commit atrocities on behalf of your children is seriously unrestrained, and a lot of people would do it.
Once the children become aware of what their parents have done, they might continue in patterns that are less atrocious but nevertheless unfair. This is the template that fits poorly to the Holocaust, and more to the state of affairs in the USA where slavery ended but Jim Crow replaced it, and then when Jim Crow ended mass incarceration and policing practices continued to this day. That's Blacks though. We're talking Indians.
The situation is different in some ways, similar in others. The ongoing existence of the tribal entities as quasi-sovereign states complicates matters further. The situation is plainly ongoing. While I think that the idea of giving back vast tracts of land at the expense of those who don't belong to the tribes is not a good idea, I'm not ready to dismiss other forms of reparation out of hand. While I imagine that I would prefer to simply be an American if I were an Indian, I know that many of them don't feel that way. I'm not ready to dismiss that either--I'm not in their shoes. I'm in my shoes, where I don't feel like seeking reparations from anybody. Not the Germans, not the Russians, not the Poles. Nobody.
Why not? I've yet to see a case where you could say, "culturally, they owe their success to having successfully sought and received reparations from the descendants of the people who oppressed them".
I'm willing to be shown a counter-example of course; but as you might have gathered from what I've already written here, I'm biased towards "move on after a certain point". Yes. It's valid to seek acknowledgement of wrong doings in the past (e.g., Turkey really ought to own up to the Armenian genocide); but if I were Armenian I wouldn't be looking to Turkey to improve my lot in life.
Well, that went longer than I thought it would and I suspect it got us nowhere. To reiterate: No easy answer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday October 29 2022, @06:11PM (1 child)
I'd think that it should be at least as long as wealth is continued to be inherited as a result of that genocide.
Consider, for instance, the descendants of plantation owners living in the American south, right now. They in many cases own land their ancestors stole from Native folks. They live in the manor house slaves built. They very much benefit from wealth from slavery and genocide, a fact that many of them will freely acknowledge. And a lot of them dream of the day of returning to the days of slavery so they can go back to sipping lemonade on the veranda while somebody else does all the work that makes them obscenely rich.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2022, @03:25AM
GP here. Not sure if there's data to back it up, but it's often noted that American immigrants have 3 generations. 1. The naturalized, who work hard and instill the values of hard work and education in 2. The first native born, who fulfill the wishes of the arrivals by achieving and 3. The 2nd native born who piss it all away.
I'm sure there are examples of success and failure in all 3 generations, but the notion that immigrants are just like anybody else by the 3rd generation seems plausible. It seems equally plausible that since well over 3 generations have passed since the slave plantation days, the descendants of plantation owners are just as likely to be poor or wealthy as anybody else (although we need data).
Regardless, it still doesn't seem just to me that you'd take somebody with a set of expectations and then suddenly pull the rug out from under them, which is what you'd have to do to effect reparations in any meaningful way.
And on the flip side, I've gone to school with a lot of those 2nd generation immigrants--from Southeast Asia and Central America. Some of them have absolutely harrowing stories. Somehow they succeed. They're generally not looking back to their countries of origin for a hand-out.
Note that if somebody is *actively* trying to re-build the slave plantation society, that's where we need to act. The things that are happening *now*. The policing, discrimination in hiring, etc. That's what needs to be addressed. Whatever happened to equal and fair treatment anyway? Have we forgotten those ideals?
Let's look at this another way. What about the DACA recipients? Why is it wrong to send them back to Mexico? To me it's wrong for the same reason it's wrong to extract reparations from people who were not directly involved in slavery or Jim Crow. It's visiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons.
This is why I think I'm on to something--because my PoV pisses off the left and the right. It pisses off the left because I'm opposed to reparations. It pisses off the right that I want DACA recipients to stay. IMHO, when you piss off the extremists on both ends, it's usually a good thing.
A consistent application of justice only applied to direct perpetrators and victims leads, I would even say *requires* you to opposed reparations while supporting DACA, and with few exceptions I lean towards a very limited extension of the statute of limitations for genocide beyond those who perpetrated it directly.
One such narrow exception would be the recent return of a beach front property to Blacks in California [cnn.com] from whom it was taken roughly 100 years ago. While the direct perps and victims are long gone, the entities (city governments, corporations, families) involved still exist. That return doesn't unduly disrupt the lives of too many people--it involves government agencies, so the burden of the reparations is spread out over everybody; including Black taxpayers which some might say is unfair. That's just one of the many absurdities that emerges however, when you try to extend the statute of limitations beyond the direct perp/victim, which is why I generally oppose it in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday October 28 2022, @09:35PM (1 child)
My image of the PC term native Americans, is they're either drinking themselves to oblivion in trailer parks on some government handout, or raking in the big bux from gambling.
Seems to me if some tribes didn't luck out in the gambling (Things That Piss Me Off: Calling gambling gaming. I'm a gamer. I don't gamble. But I digress) then if they're sitting on top of a mining goldmine then, well, good for them. Granted, 90% of their lives won't be better and a lot will be worse. But those poor losers have their own 1%'ers who will make out like bandit with this mining.
Yay capitalism.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday October 29 2022, @01:57AM
1. Your image is very very wrong indeed. For example, a lot of them are completely sober, and they're more likely than most to have served in the military.
2. Terms they will use for themselves and are usually fine with you using: Their specific nation, if you know it such as "Dine" or "Lakota". "Indigenous", "Native", "Native American", "American Indian", "Indian" (sometimes playfully shortened to "NDN" such as "NDN tacos").
A halfway decent introduction to modern Native culture is the series "Reservation Dogs", which was largely written by Natives and is both funny and interesting drama. Or get to a pow-wow sometime and treat the people showing their culture to you with some respect.
(I learned some of this stuff from an Apache guy who was at the time leading the protests against a racist sports mascot in the area, and more recently from my Ojibwe spouse. Plus meeting some of her Native friends.)
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin