Ha'Kamwe' photo by Ash Ponders for Earthjustice.

Ha’Kamwe’

Sacred Site Reports, United States

Ha’Kamwe’ is a naturally occurring hot spring in the Big Sandy River basin where the Mojave and Sonoran deserts meet in what is now known as Arizona. Ha’Kamwe’ is a sacred healing place for the Hualapai Tribe. The important cultural and ecological site is threatened by a proposed lithium mine, as a subsidiary of the Australian company Hawkstone Mining Ltd. seeks permission to explore and drill on three sides of the spring, which would destroy cultural sites and block access to the oasis for desert wildlife.

Thacker Pass

Thacker Pass

Sacred Site Reports, United States

The largest known lithium deposit in the United States is in Thacker Pass, on the site of a collapsed super volcano in northern Nevada, 25 miles from the Oregon border. Thacker Pass is also known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, meaning Rotten Moon because of its crescent shape and also to honor the ancestors who died there in two massacres. The site is sacred to at least 22 tribes. Lithium Americas, operating as Lithium Nevada Corporation (LNC), is planning a lithium mine on nine acres of public land.

Avi Kwa Ame

Sacred Site Reports, United States

The 5,642-foot-high mountain known as Avi Kwa Ame in the Mojave language is the creation site for ten Yuman-speaking tribes including the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe. In response to more than a decade of efforts to protect the site, President Biden has designated 450,000 acres in Nevada as the “Avi Kwa Ame National Monument,” only the second monument to protect Native history.

Tomales Point

Sacred Site Reports, United States

Tomales Point and Point Reyes, the Farallon Islands and the West Berkeley Shellmound, all in northern California’s Bay Area, are sacred places. Their entirety forms an immense ceremonial and mortuary complex for the Coast Miwok and Ohlone, indigenous to the San Francisco Bay Area. These coastal sites are evidence of early Polynesian settlement in the Americas.

Juukan Gorge

Australia, Sacred Site Reports

In May 2020, while clearing the way for a mine expansion, the transnational mining company Rio Tinto set off explosives that destroyed a site sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people in Western Australia. The site included the Juukan Gorge Rock Dwellings, which have evidence of human habitation dating back 46,000 years. The mining company placed their explosives meters from the rock shelters with full permission of the Australian government—and after misleading Traditional Owners.

Yaghnob

Asia, Sacred Site Reports

When Soviet forces forcibly relocated the Yaghnobi from their mountain valley in what is now Tajikistan, the Russians were unable to crush the spirit of the people. Their cultural lifeblood remained in their homeland and they returned to create the Yaghnob National Natural Park to protect their ancient cultural landscape.