LAVEEN, ARIZONA - OCTOBER 25: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at Gila Crossing Community School on October 25, 2024 in Laveen, Arizona. Biden formally apologized for the trauma inflicted by the federal government's forced Native American boarding school policy. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Standing solemnly in front of a crowd full of Indigenous people on the grassy field of a tribal elementary school near Phoenix, President Joe Biden issued a formal apology to Indigenous communities across the country for the role the United States government had in the Native American Boarding School system, a system that harmed Indigenous people for generations.

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program, but the federal government has never formally apologized for what happened,” Biden said. “Until today — I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did.”

Biden’s apology was met with loud cheers from the crowd. He is the first sitting president in the last 10 years to visit a Tribal Nation.

He told the community that it was long overdue and that it was only fitting that it was given at a tribal school within an Indigenous community deeply connected to culture and tradition.

“I have a solemn responsibility to be the first president to formally apologize to the Native peoples, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Native Alaskans and federal Indian boarding schools,” he said. “It’s long, long, long overdue. Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took (150) years to make.

Biden said the pain that the federal Indian boarding school policy has caused will always be a significant mark of shame for the United States.

“For those who went through this period, it was too painful to speak of,” he said. “For a nation, it was too shameful to acknowledge.”

“This formal apology is the culmination of decades of work by so many courageous people,” Biden said, acknowledging many who were sitting in the audience, including the boarding school survivors and descendants.

“I know no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy,” Biden said. “But, today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”

Biden’s apology, delivered Friday at the Gila River Crossing School on the Gila River Indian Community, comes three years after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the first ever federal investigation into Native American Boarding Schools.

Haaland spoke before Biden, and was welcomed to the stage by Miss Gila River Susanna Osife as “Auntie Deb.” Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, told the crowd that thinking about our ancestors today is important because they persevered, and their stories are everywhere.

“We tell those stories because Native American history is American history,” Haaland said.

The Department of Interior released the final boarding school report in July. It provided eight recommendations from the Department of Indian Affairs for the federal government that would support a path to healing for tribal communities.

At the top of that list was a call for the United States to acknowledge and apologize for its role in the federal Indian boarding school policies that have harmed — and continue to harm — Indigenous peoples across the country.

“Today is a day for remembering, but it’s also a day to celebrate our perseverance,” Haaland said. “In spite of everything that has happened, we are still here.”

While boarding schools are places where affluent families send their children for an exclusive education for most of the United States, Haaland noted how different the prospect was for Native Americans.

“For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years,” she said. “Tens of thousands of Indigenous children as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by U.S. government institutions.”

Haaland said that the federal Native American Boarding School system has impacted every Indigenous person she knows, and they all carry the trauma that those policies and schools inflicted.

“This is the first time in history that a United States cabinet secretary has shared the traumas of our past, and I acknowledge that this trauma was perpetrated by the agency that I now lead,” Haaland said. “For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books, but now our administration’s work will ensure that no one will ever forget.”

Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021 to shed light on the “horrific era of our nation’s history.”

The initiative compiled two reports and visited dozens of Indigenous communities, hearing from survivors and descendants so that their experiences are all documented because the goal of Native American Boarding Schools was to assimilate and eradicate Indigenous people.

Haaland said the investigation into these boarding schools are shared in those reports and it shows the “loud and unequivocal truth” that the federal government took deliberate and strategic actions through boarding school policies to isolate Indigenous children from their families and steal from them the languages, cultures, and traditions that are fundamental to Indigenous people.

“As we stand here together, my friends and relatives, we know that the federal government failed,” She said. “It failed to annihilate our languages, our traditions, our life ways. It failed to destroy us because we persevered.”

The Federal Boarding School Initiative’s report called on Congress and federal agencies to take action, and Haaland said that some of those recommendations are already being put into effect.

For instance, Haaland said the department is working alongside the departments of Education and Health and Human Services to invest in the preservation of Native languages.

“We are developing a 10-year national plan guided by tribal leaders and Native language teachers,” Haaland said, and more details about their efforts will be released later.

“The painful loss of our Indigenous languages has been a consistent topic as we have met with survivors across our nation,” she said.

Another effort Haaland highlighted is the department’s collaboration with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to create an oral collection of first-person narratives from boarding school survivors.

Haaland said this collaboration is a way to ensure that future generations are told the stories of the boarding school era and understand the impacts and intergenerational trauma caused by boarding school policies.

As the crowd listened to Biden give his speech, protesters with O’odham Solidarity made their voice heard as one walked toward the stage holding a sign calling for justice for Palestinians.

As Biden delivered his remarks, one protester yelled from the crowd: “No, what about the people in Gaza.”

The protest was met with shouts from the crowd as a man in the crowd yelled: “Get out of here.” But Biden said let her talk.

“Let her go,” Biden said as the protester was being removed. “There’s a lot of innocent people being killed and it has to stop.”

Even after the protestors voiced their concerns, the community’s attention went back to Biden as he continued his speech about the boarding school years as well as his investments to Indian Country.

‘It was long overdue’

Crystalyne Curley said she thought of her grandfathers as Biden delivered his apology, which brought back memories of the stories they would tell of their time at boarding schools and the trauma they experienced.

“It’s a bittersweet moment,” Curley said. “I think there is a lot of a mix of emotions, because each of our Navajo citizens has a tie to the trauma that has happened within our boarding schools.”

Curley serves as speaker of the Navajo Nation Council and has heard stories about the federal boarding school system from her community for generations.

“It was long overdue,” Curley said. “I really commend our president Biden for taking that step and being the first one to have that courage to say, ‘Yes, we done wrong.’”

Curley said that is something that many Indigenous people have been waiting to hear, including the Navajo people.

“Many of our children didn’t come home,” she said, and the policies’ lingering effects include the loss of language and culture.

The Department of the Interior investigated the federal Indian boarding school system across the United States, identifying more than 400 schools and over 70 burial sites.

Arizona was home to 47 of those schools, which were attended by Indigenous children who were taken away from their families and attempted to assimilate them through education — and, often, physical punishment.

The legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system is not new to Indigenous people. For centuries, Indigenous people across the country have experienced the loss of their culture, traditions, language and land.

Multiple federally operated boarding schools were established in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and many of them are still operational today, though under different policies than when they were constructed.

Curley said that there are still a lot of federally operated Bureau of Indian Education schools in operation on the Navajo Nation, but some families still hesitate to enroll their children in them because of the boarding school history.

She hopes that this apology will lead to the federal government investing in the education system within tribal nations.

“Start investing back into our children and our mental, spiritual, (and) psychological health that this has caused for many decades,” she added.

Curley said she hopes that the momentum of Biden’s apology will be carried on into the next administration by acknowledging the wrong done to Indigenous communities.

Now that an official apology has been given, Curley said that healing needs to take place and that comes in the form of investing in Indigenous communities, something she said is best done by funding public and mental health resources, as well as reinvesting in the culture and language revitalizations within their communities.

“For healing to take place, it takes at least two generations,” Curley said.

After Biden issued his apology, Native organizations and advocates from across Indian Country called for action.

Cheryl Crazy Bull, the president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, said that the federal government and philanthropists need to make a significant investment in restorative and healing approaches as well as institutions to repair the harm done by the boarding school era.

“The Native people who we support, from our youngest children to our college students, deserve that investment,” she said.

Crystal Echo Hawk, the founder and CEO of IllumiNative, called Biden’s apology a significant step toward justice for Indian Country, but said it must not be the end of the government’s efforts.

“True accountability requires comprehensive action — beginning with full transparency about the extent of these abuses and the return of Native children’s remains to their families and communities,” she said.

“We must continue to demand further accountability of the harms done to Native peoples, especially the Native children who experienced neglect, inhumane conditions, physical and sexual abuse, and death under the guise of education,” Echo Hawk said. “The federal government must commit to supporting Native-led healing initiatives, language revitalization programs, and cultural preservation efforts to effectively begin repairing the damage of the past.”

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Pershlie Ami, a citizen of the Hopi tribe, shares her experience of attending Phoenix Indian School when she was a kid during the Road to Healing tour hosted by the U.S. Department of Interior at the Gila Crossing Community School on Jan. 20, 2023. Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror

For the first time in history, a sitting U.S. president is set to apologize to Indigenous communities for the role the federal government played in the atrocities Indigenous children faced in the federal Native American Boarding School system.

The apology, which President Joe Biden will deliver Friday when he speaks at the Gila River Crossing School on the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix, comes three years after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the first-ever investigation into Native American Boarding Schools.

The final boarding school report provided eight recommendations from the Department of Indian Affairs for the federal government that would support a path to healing for tribal communities.

At the top of that list was a call for the United States to acknowledge and apologize for its role in the federal Indian boarding school policies that have harmed — and continue to harm — Indigenous peoples across the country.

“The president is taking that to heart, and he plans on making an apology to Indian Country for the boarding school era,” Haaland said in an Oct. 23 interview with the Arizona Mirror.

Haaland said she has been pinching herself since she got the news that Biden planned on issuing an apology because of the work put in by so many people to shed light on Native American boarding schools and the lasting impacts it has had on Indigenous communities.

“It’s incredibly meaningful,” Haaland said, because, as part of the boarding school initiative, their department organized the Road to Healing tour, where they visited several Indigenous communities to hear stories about boarding schools.

“They were all heart-wrenching,” Haaland said of stories that were shared by victims and their families. “We sat through so many testimonies from survivors and descendants, and I have a deep understanding of what so many people went through and what our community suffered from.”

The Department of the Interior investigated the federal Indian boarding school system across the United States, identifying more than 400 schools and over 70 burial sites.

Arizona was home to 47 of those schools, which were attended by Indigenous children who were taken away from their families and attempted to assimilate them through education — and, often, physical punishment.

The legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system is not new to Indigenous people. For centuries, Indigenous people across the country have experienced the loss of their culture, traditions, language and land.

“This is an incredibly suppressed history that so many people didn’t know about and now it’s seeing the light of day,” Haaland said. “I have to believe that people will heal from what we’ve been able to do, and certainly hearing from President Biden, who has been the best president for Indian Country in my lifetime, say that he’s sorry, it’s beyond words.”

Biden plans to visit Indian Country for the first time on Oct. 25, where he will issue that apology alongside Haaland at the Gila River Crossing School.

“Some of our elders who are boarding school survivors have been waiting all of their lives for this moment,” Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.

“It’s going to be incredibly powerful and redemptive when the president issues this apology on Indian land,” he added. “If only for a moment on Friday, this will rise to the top and the most powerful person in the world, our president, is shining a light on this dark history that’s been hidden.”

Haaland said Biden, being the first sitting president willing to apologize, helps Indian Country feel seen because the “horrible history” of Native American Boarding Schools and assimilation policies aimed at pushing Indigenous people out of their communities has been ignored “for so long.”

“It was an outright assault and genocide that our communities went through for centuries, and we’re still here,” Haaland said. “None of anything that the federal government or anyone did throughout those centuries managed to eradicate us.”

“We have persevered,” she added. “I feel so proud the sitting president is acknowledging that. It’s amazing, and I am deeply appreciative.”

Learning that the president is willing to issue an apology, Indivisible Tohono Co-founder April Ignacio said that it is a historic event because they finally acknowledge the government’s role in a national policy of forced assimilation against the first peoples of this land.

“Never in my life did I think we would be here,” Ignacio said. “This apology is long overdue, and the impact the Boarding School era had on our loss of culture and language must be tied to immediate action through reparations.”

In 2023, Ignacio said, Indivisible Tohono organized a caravan of 18 Tohono O’odham elders who were boarding school survivors and attendees to testify during the Road to Healing Tour organized by the Department of Interior.

Ignacio said she has five generations of boarding school survivors and attendees in her family. She shared her story during the Road to Healing tour.

“As a co-founder of Indivisible Tohono, I thank President Biden for his willingness to address the historical and ongoing impact of Indian Boarding School policies,” Ignacio said. “This apology is consistent with President Biden’s promise to honor sovereignty, and this historical acknowledgment will be a part of his legacy.”

Praise for Biden’s forthcoming apology is being shared by tribal nations across the country, including the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.

“President Biden’s apology is a profound moment for Native people across this country,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a written statement. “I applaud the President for acknowledging the pain and suffering inflicted on tribes and boarding school survivors, which is long-overdue.”

Hoskin said that Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools, which were attended by thousands of Cherkee children. Today, he said, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen feels the impact.

“Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, their culture and upended their spoken language,” he said. “They often suffered harm, abuse, neglect and were forced to live in the shadows.”

The Cherokee Nation is one of the largest tribes in the United States with more than 450,000 tribal citizens. About 141,000 of them reside within the tribe’s reservation boundaries in northeastern Oklahoma.

“The significance of this public apology by the President on behalf of this nation is amplified and an important step, which must be followed by continued action,” Hoskin said.

He said that the Department of Interior’s recommendations in the boarding school report, especially those focused on the preservation of Indigenous languages and the repatriation of ancestors and cultural items, can be a path toward true healing.

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This story was originally published by the Arizona Mirror

When Hualapai Spiritual Leader Frank Mapatis visits Ha’Kamwe’, the tribe’s sacred spring, to conduct any type of ceremony, the area must be completely quiet so that he can hear the water and connect with the land.

Mapatis said that as part of his traditional ways of life, when he is in prayer at Ha’Kamwe’, he hears the water sing, and when it sings, he connects with the creator to conduct ceremonies.

He has provided purification, healing and coming-of-age ceremonies at Ha’Kamwe’ for decades and visits the spring at least twice a month. The spring is also utilized for tribal members’ funeral ceremonies.

Not being able to hear the water, conduct ceremonies or provide traditional teachings to the Hualapai youth who join him during his visits to the spring are among Mapatis’ top concerns for the proposed exploratory drilling lithium project in the Big Sandy River watershed near the tribe’s sacred spring.

“It would stop me from doing ceremony,” he said about the drilling project as he testified in federal court on Sept. 17. He believes drilling in that area will traumatize the earth and water, and he would not want to use that area for ceremonial purposes due to that trauma.

Mapatis said he could continue his ceremonial practices in other places, but they would not have the same impact as doing them at Ha’Kamwe’ because of the water’s healing properties.

“It wouldn’t be as effective in other areas,” he added.

Ha’Kamwe’ is featured in tribal songs and stories about the history of the Hualapai people and their connection to the land. According to the tribe, the historic flow and spring temperature are essential for its traditional uses.

Mapatis was one of several Haluapai tribal members who testified during the Sept. 17 preliminary injunction hearing at the U.S. Federal District Court in Phoenix, where the tribe is fighting to extend the pause on drilling for the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project for the duration of the tribe’s lawsuit seeking to block the project entirely.

The project allows a mining company to drill and test more than 100 sites across BLM land surrounding one of the Hualapai Tribe’s cultural properties, among them Ha’Kamwe’, a medicinal spring sacred to the tribe.

Tuesday’s hearing came after a federal judge granted the Hualapai Tribe’s request for a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, temporarily freezing the exploratory drilling project. 

The restraining order was granted weeks after the Hualapai Tribe filed a lawsuit against BLM, following years of the tribe actively voicing its concerns about the mining effort.

Ha’Kamwe’ is located within the Hualapai Tribe’s property known as Cholla Canyon Ranch, and the boundaries of the Big Sandy Valley project nearly surround the entire property. Only one portion of the tribe’s land does not border the drilling project.

The spring is recognized as a traditional cultural property and is eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the tribe’s lawsuit claims that the project’s approval violates the National Environmental Protection Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. 

The lawsuit asks for full compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which includes having the BLM take a “hard look” at the exploration activity’s environmental impacts and consider the implications of its actions on historic properties.

The lawsuit claims that BLM approved the mining project without appropriately considering a reasonable range of alternatives or taking a hard look at water resources under the NEPA and moved forward with the project without providing mitigation measures under the NHPA for Ha’Kamwe’ and other resources essential to the tribe, thus violating both acts.

Out of concern for Ha’Kamwe’, the tribe submitted multiple public comments, sent several letters of concern, and participated in tribal consultations with BLM throughout the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project planning phase. 

Big Sandy, Inc., a subsidiary of Australian mining company Arizona Lithium, leads the project and has sought approval since 2019.  Arizona Lithium is not a direct party in the Hualapai Tribe’s lawsuit, but it filed a motion to intervene in the case. Humetewa granted the request in August, allowing the company to defend against the tribe’s efforts to stop the project.

BLM’s approval of the Big Sandy Valley Project allows the mining company to drill and test up to 131 exploration holes across 21 acres of BLM-managed public land to determine whether a full-scale lithium mining operation could be viable. 

‘How we connect to our ancestors’

Throughout the hearing, several Hualapai tribal members and supporters sat in the courtroom listening to the hearing while others sat outside the Sandra Day O’Connor courthouse holding signs backing the tribe.

Hualapai tribal member Ivan Bender, 60, from Peach Springs, showed up to the courthouse in support of his community, carrying a flag that said, “Protect Ka’kamwe’. No lithium mining.”

“That spring has a life of its own,” Bender said. “The water source we’re trying to protect is part of our sacred waters.” 

The preliminary injunction hearing lasted more than six hours, during which Judge Diane Humetewa heard witness testimony from all parties involved in the case as she weighed the tribe’s request to keep the drilling on hold. 

Testimony surrounded the way the project would directly or indirectly impact the Hualapai Tribe’s ability to carry out their cultural and traditional ways of life at Ha’Kamwe’, and whether the drilling that will take place as part of the project will harm the water that feeds into the hot spring.

Ka-voka Jackson, the director of the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources, was the first witness, and part of her testimony focused on how the Hualapai Tribe utilizes the area for cultural and traditional purposes — and how drilling can directly affect those practices.

Jackson told the court that tribal members often visit Ha’Kamwe for traditional practices or to gather and harvest culturally significant plants from surrounding public lands.

“That is how we connect to our ancestors,” Jackson said.

The tribe’s lawsuit states that the lithium project will create noise, light, vibrations, and other disturbances that will degrade Ha’Kamwe’s character and harm tribal members’ use of the spring for religious and cultural ceremonies.

Jackson said the project’s impacts could cause irreversible damage, affecting the water supply to the sacred springs and destroying the land.

“(It can) create a lot of negative energy and create a hostile environment,” she said.

As part of its environmental assessment, BLM listed several short- and long-term effects, including the temporary disruption to cultural practices at or near Ha’Kamwe’ and an impact on native wildlife and vegetation of up to 21 acres.

But even with these effects included in the assessment, BLM concluded that Phase 3 of the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project would not significantly negatively impact the quality of the area, so an environmental impact statement was not needed.

“Visual, noise, and vibration effects from drilling activities would be temporary,” BLM wrote in its final report. “Coordination with and providing notice to the Hualapai Tribe of drilling activities in the vicinity of the Ha’Kamwe’ may reduce impacts to cultural practices at or near the hot spring.”

To provide the court with perspective on the distance of the drilling locations near Ha’Kamwe’, Ivan Martirosov from Navajo Transitional Energy Company testified on behalf of the defendants. 

Martirosov is the project manager for the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project with Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC), a mining and energy company owned by the Navajo Nation. 

NTEC entered into a mining agreement with Arizona Lithium in March. Under this agreement, the Navajo-owned company is responsible for permitting, exploration drilling, mine design, environmental assessments and development for the Big Sandy Lithium Project. NTEC has worked with Arizona Lithium since December 2022.

Martirosov is in charge of overseeing and executing the Big Sandy Lithium Project. He told the court that he walked all approved drilling sites on foot and described the site’s proximity to the Hualapai’s cultural property.

Of the 131 drill sites approved for the project, Martirosov identified 22 with a line of sight to Ha’Kamwe’, a majority located on the north side. 

Martirosov said that he was restricted from accessing Ha’Kamwe, noting that the drill sites that do not have a line of sight of the cultural property were due to distance and terrain.

BLM: Concerns are ‘overblown’

At the end of the day-long hearing, Humetewa ordered all parties to file briefs outlining their arguments for why the injunction should or shouldn’t be granted. She said she would issue a ruling in the near future. 

During the hearing, Humetewa said that she was tasked with determining what process BLM took in connection to NEPA and their Section 106 process.

The Section 106 process seeks to accommodate historic preservation concerns through consultation among an agency official and other parties interested in the undertaking’s effects on historic properties. The consultation aims to identify historic properties potentially affected by projects and seek ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate any adverse effects.

The process is usually conducted in four steps: initiating it, identifying historical properties within potentially affected areas, assessing any potential adverse effects on any eligible historic property, and seeking to resolve any adverse effects.

Humetewa said in court that she wants to know where in the records she can find BLM’s engagement in those processes so she can fully understand the discussion about either approving or denying the project. That way, she said, she can understand what considerations went into the final environmental assessment and the NEPA assessment.

Earthjustice Senior Attorney Laura Berglan, who is part of the team representing the Hualapai Tribe, said she feels positive because their team presented all the points they wanted.

“I think it went well and we’ll see how it turns out,” she added.

BLM’s attorneys told Humetewa that the impacts this project will have on Ha’Kamwe have been “vastly overblown,” noting how their expert clearly testified that the water and temperature will not change due to the drilling in the project.

The tribe had its own expert testify. Winfield G. Wright, a certified hydrologist and president of Southwest Hydro-Logic, said he produced a report for the tribe about the water sources that feed into Ha’Kamwe’. Wright said his analysis found that the groundwater system that flows into the hot spring is very fragile, and any disturbances around the area can disrupt the water, the chemistry and the temperature.

Wright said a mixture of shallow and deep waterways feed into Ha’Kamwe’, and the BLM’s environmental assessment simplified identifying where the water comes from by saying a confined lower aquifer feeds it.

“It’s not a confined aquifer,” he said, noting that the lower aquifer in the Big Sandy Valley is not the only source of water for the spring. “The whole valley is connected because of the fractures.”

But Peter Burck, a hydrologist with the BLM, testified that the lower fractures of the lower aquifer are a more likely source of water for Ha’Kamwe’. 

Burck said that Wright’s claim the water comes from multiple sources is not conclusive. He said he did not see anything in Wright’s report that would lead him to conclude that the spring water source is a mixture of multiple flows.

He said that the likelihood of the drilling from Phase 3 of the Big Sandy Lithium Project encountering water or affecting the temperature of Ha’Kamwe’ is low.

BLM also told the court that any visual and noise disturbances from the drilling does not qualify as irreparable injury and is instead temporary. 

But Jackson said her tribe made a good case that the project would cause irreparable harm because they had people testify who had already experienced it.

“This is irreparable; you can’t go back and redo ceremonies,” she said. “There’s no such thing.”

Jackson said she understands that the court wants more clarification on whether or not the BLM took the appropriate steps under the NEPA and NHPA policies before making a final decision.

“We believe that they didn’t take into consideration the effects on Ha’Kamwe’,” Jackson said, adding that it is eligible for registration on the National Historic Register and a traditional cultural property.

Jackson said it deserves a thorough process included in the NHPA and NEPA. 

“I am proud of our people for sticking up for what we believe in and asserting our arguments,” she said. “Now, we just wait.”

Hualapai Chairman Duane Clarke echoed Jackson’s sentiments about how their team and tribal members presented a good case in court, and said he prays that the court’s decision goes with the Hualapai people.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed an amicus brief before the hearing supporting the Hualapai Tribe’s request for the preliminary injunction. 

“The sacred Ha’Kamwe’ spring has sustained the Hualapai people for generations, and its protection is critical for the Tribe,” Mayes said in a written statement. “The failure to properly evaluate the impact of this project on such an important water source is unacceptable.”

The amicus brief urges the court to take action to protect Arizona’s water resources from potentially irreversible damage posed by exploratory drilling near the Hualapai Tribe’s sacred spring.

“The BLM must fulfill its obligations under NEPA and fully evaluate this project’s impact on local water resources,” Mayes said. “I am proud to support the Hualapai Tribe’s efforts to protect their precious cultural and water resources.”

The amicus brief highlights the risk of irreparable harm to Arizona’s water resources if exploratory drilling is allowed to proceed without a comprehensive review. It also requests that the court grant a preliminary injunction to stop drilling activities while the case is being heard to protect Arizona’s water sources from potential compromise.

Hualapai Tribe fights to extend ban on lithium drilling it says jeopardizes a sacred site is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.