Defenders of Paiute Massacre Site from Lithium Mine Prepare for Restraining Order

Live from Ox Sam Camp at Peehee Mu'huh (Thacker Pass)

Censored News
May 15, 2023

The defenders of the Paiute Massacre Site are prepared to be served with a restraining order. Lithium Americas of Canada is targeting two non-Indians, in order to distract from the fact that Paiute descendants of a survivor of the massacre are leading the ceremony and road blockade of lithium mine construction at Peehee Mu'huh (Thacker Pass) in northern Nevada.

Ox Sam Camp said late today, Monday, that Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of the Canadian company, is filing an application for a temporary order for protection against harassment in the workplace against Max Wilbert and Paul Cienfuegos, in the Justice Court in the Township of Union Humboldt County, Nevada.

"The sheriff’s office has been in constant communication for days with Lithium Nevada Corporation managers (behind the scenes) as they’ve been going out of their way to not arrest any of us, even though we are creating quite the hassle for their daily operations. What they want, more than anything, is to make this look like it’s led by a handful of white out-of-state eco-freaks so they can mock the camp in their news releases. But the reality is that the camp is 90% Native people, mostly local, and THEY are its leaders."

On Friday evening, they found out that Max Wilbert (co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass) and Cienfuegos were the only ones named in the temporary restraining order, which the company put before a judge over the weekend.

"Once it’s approved, they will try to serve Max and myself. I came prepared to risk arrest, so all is well," Cienfuegos said late Monday.

"All of this in furtherance of the company’s desperate attempt to attach white leadership to the story of this camp, when in reality neither of us has stood in the way of any employee or company vehicle."

The camp currently stands right on top of the company’s ongoing water line construction. One Tipi is now in place, and more on the way. More tents are arriving daily on the company’s BLM-leased land. Or more accurately, on land “beyond the treaty frontier”, as the US government has no treaties in place. The only claim is conquest by which this land was taken from the local Paiute Shoshone communities. So they have more right to be on this land than any other persons or corporations.

A New Prayer Camp Emerges at Thacker Pass
by Protect Thacker Pass | May 15, 2023

by Paul Cienfuegos, Founding Director, Community Rights US

Last Thursday, May 11th, the next nationally significant Standing-Rock-like prayer and action camp at Thacker Pass, Nevada (Pee’hee Mu’huh in the Paiute language meaning “rotten moon” named for the massacre of Paiute ancestors in 1865) was launched to try to stop the construction of what would become the largest open pit lithium mine in the world, as a false and ecologically devastating “green energy solution” to our fossil fuel woes.

I am proud to have played a small role in this just-launched camp which only days ago was given a proper name by the Paiute Shoshone women elders who are in charge: Ox Sam Newe Momokonee Nokutum. Ox Sam was one of only a few surviving members of the 1865 massacre of dozens of Native people at Thacker Pass. And Newe Momokonee Nokutum translates as Indigenous Women’s Camp and is open to ALL — Native and non-Native, women and men. (Here’s a pronunciation guide for speaking that beautiful name: New’-weh Moe-moe-koht’-nee Noh-kuh’-duhn.)

Read the full statement
https://www.protectthackerpass.org/a-new-prayer-camp-emerges-at-thacker-pass/

Photos courtesy Ox Sam Camp