RENO, Nev. — The room was packed with Native American leaders from across the United States, all invited to Washington to hear from federal officials about President Joe Biden's achievements and new policies aimed at improving relations and protecting sacred sites.
Arlan Melendez was not there.
The longtime chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony called his own meeting 2,523 miles away. He wanted to show that his community would find another way to fight the U.S. government's approval of a massive lithium mine at the site where more than 20 of their Paiute and Shoshone ancestors were slaughtered in 1865.
Melendez has been opposed at every legal turn by government lawyers, saying another tough appeal would not save the holy sites from desecration.
“We are not giving up the fight, but we are changing our strategy,” Melendez said.
That shift for the Nevada Tribe comes as Biden and other top federal officials are making good on promises to work better with Native American leaders on everything from making federal funding more accessible to including tribal voices in land conservation efforts and resource management planning. .
The government has also pushed for more spending on infrastructure and healthcare across Indian Country.
Many tribes have benefited from this, including those who led campaigns to establish new national monuments in Utah and Arizona. In New Mexico, pueblos have succeeded in getting the Department of the Interior to ban the development of new oil and natural gas on hundreds of square miles of federal land for 20 years to protect culturally significant areas.
But the colony in Reno and others such as the Tohono O'odham Nation in Arizona say promises of greater cooperation ring hollow when it comes to high-stakes fights over multibillion-dollar “green energy” projects. Some tribal leaders have said consultations resulted in little more than listening sessions, with federal officials not incorporating the tribe's comments into decision-making.
Rather than continue its claims in court that the federal government has failed to conduct meaningful consultations on the Thacker Pass lithium mine, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony will focus on organizing a broad coalition to build public support to build holy places.
Tribal members worry that other culturally significant areas will find themselves in the path of a modern-day Gold Rush, with companies seeking lithium and other materials needed to meet Biden's clean energy agenda.
Melendez was among those thrilled when Biden appointed Deb Haaland to head the Interior Department. Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, is the first Native American to serve as Cabinet secretary.
Melendez, a former member of the U.S. Human Rights Commission who led his colony for 32 years, said he understands the difficulty of navigating the electoral landscape in a Western swing state where the political influence of the mining industry takes a backseat comes after the power of casinos. .
Still, he was disappointed that Haaland declined an invitation to visit the site of the massacre.
“The largest lithium project in the United States and they don't even have the time to come here and meet with the tribal nations in the state of Nevada,” he said.
The tribe's attorney, Will Falk, urged other tribes to resist “letting ourselves believe that just because the first Native American Secretary of the Interior is in power that she actually cares about protecting sacred sites .”
Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz did not immediately respond to that criticism, but said in an email to The Associated Press that there has been “significant communication and cooperation with tribes in Nevada.”
The federal government published new guidelines for dealing with sacred places at the beginning of December. While Falk and others are skeptical, they acknowledged that the document addresses concerns that tribes have expressed for decades.
The guidelines say, among other things, that federal agencies should involve tribes as early as possible in project planning to identify potential impacts to sacred sites and determine whether mitigation measures can address concerns. Agencies should also consult with tribes that attach significance to the project area, regardless of where they are located.
It also suggests that indigenous knowledge should be on an equal footing with other sciences and included in the federal decision-making process. That knowledge can include practices, cultural beliefs, and oral and written histories that tribes have developed over many generations.
Justin C. Ahasteen, executive director of the Navajo Nation Washington (DC) Office, said the new guidelines appear to have incorporated some of the recommendations from tribal leaders, but could have gone further.
“If this manual increases transparency in the consultation process, we will consider it a victory,” Ahasteen said. “But ultimately what we are all striving for is for the federal government to recognize the need for tribal consent before changing regulations that affect tribes. ”
The problem, Falk said, is that none of it is legally binding.
“These types of documents function more as pacifying propaganda,” he said.
Fermina Stevens, director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, said the changes were “more 'lip service' for the government to address the 'Indian problem' in this new age of mineral extraction.”
Morgan Rodman, executive director of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, disagrees. He said the guidelines are intended as a springboard to improve engagement with tribes and that the government will be aggressive with training to ensure employees understand what sacred sites are.
“While change certainly doesn't happen overnight, it is part of a continuum of important policy statements – part of the momentum we've built over the last three years,” he said in an interview.
Rodman made clear he was not referring to Thacker Pass, but some of the guidelines he highlighted were major points of contention in that case.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno ruled twice that the tribe had failed to prove that the massacre occurred on specific lands of the mining project, or that far-flung tribes had a legal interest in the battle. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld its previous ruling in July.
The tribe says the government has ignored evidence that the land they consider sacred is not limited to a specific site where America's Calvary first attacked men, women and children as they slept.
They cited newspaper accounts, diaries and a government surveyor's report documenting human skulls discovered along a miles-long escape route through the mine site where troops killed and scalped those who tried to flee.
Michon Eben, a historic preservation official, said the entire stretch is an unmarked cemetery.
Melendez said he is pleased that Biden has promised to improve consultations.
But if federal agencies don't do this, he said, “Well, they're just words that don't really mean anything to us.”
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Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed to this report from Albuquerque, New Mexico.