Mary Annette Pember
ICT
Time is running out for plans to save the Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon, part of a vast wilderness occupying lands in Oregon, Idaho and Nevada.
Environmentalists, tribes and politicians are advocating for preservation and protection of the 1.1-million-acre site from mining and other industrial development projects. That could come in the form of an act of Congress or designation as a national monument by a sitting president.
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The choices are complicated, however, by a diversity of supporters and detractors.
Often called Oregon’s Grand Canyon, the area is part of the 2.5 million-acre Owyhee watershed, which stretches over Oregon, Nevada and Idaho. The region is considered the sacred homelands of the Bannock, Shoshone and Northern Paiute tribes. The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation are both located in the Owyhee watershed in Nevada and have passed formal resolutions of support for designating the Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon as a national monument.
“The Canyonlands are sacred to our people, “ Arnold Thomas, vice chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation told ICT. “It’s full of natural resources. Many of our foods and medicinal herbs grow there.”
Legislation has been filed in both the U.S. House and Senate to protect the area, but supporters are pinning their hopes on getting a proclamation from President Joe Biden for a national monument before the president leaves office in January.
Earlier this week, on Monday, Dec. 9, Biden issued a proclamation creating the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument to honor the tens of thousands of students who attended boarding schools as part of the government’s forced assimilation of Native people.
The Carlisle monument is Biden’s 12th national monument designation under the Antiquities Act, which authorizes presidents to declare historic landmarks, historic and pre-historic structures and other objects of historic interest that are situated on federal lands.
Waiting for Congress to act on legislation is too risky, advocates say.
“It’s unlikely for Congress to move on this legislation this year,” said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, a conservation group in Oregon. “If the legislation doesn’t pass, then we have nothing.”
Leadership of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation hand-delivered resolutions to the Biden administration over the summer of 2024.
They were joined by representatives of the Klamath Tribes as well as the Northern Paiute, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. In November 2024, the Klamath Tribes – which include the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin located in Oregon – also issued a resolution in support.
The proposed Owyhee Canyonlands monument includes portions of the Upper Owyhee River watershed, Lower Owyhee River watershed, Trout Creek, Oregon Canyon Mountains and other landscapes near to the historic and present homelands of the Yahooskin-Paiute peoples.
“We’ve been to D.C. a number of times meeting with government agencies and asking for protection of the Canyonlands,” Thomas told ICT, noting that a national monument designation has been used successfully in the past to protect lands.
According to the tribes’ resolution, “the proposed Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument area contains thousands of cultural places and objects of vital importance to tribal history, cultural spiritual practices and our future.”
Congressional legislation
Although all of the proposals include elements of conservation and protection for the region, advocates for a national monument status say that option offers the best chance for success.
Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, introduced in 2019 the Owyhee Act in Congress, which would include the transfer of 27,000 acres into a trust for the Burns Paiute Tribe and create a co-management plan between the tribe and the Bureau of Land Management.
Currently, much of the land is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, and is designated as “protected lands with wilderness characteristics.”
The current designation, however, doesn’t protect the land from mining. Hunters, recreational groups and conservationists, as well as the Burns Paiute Tribe, support the legislation. The act has passed the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and is currently awaiting action in the full Senate.
In the House, U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz,a Republican from Oregon, has also introduced legislation to protect the Canyonlands, filing the Oregon Owyhee Wilderness and Community Protection Act in November 2024. Under Bentz’s proposal, however, only 926,000 acres would be designated as wilderness.
Many conservation organizations, including the Oregon Natural Desert Association, oppose Bentz’s legislation as a ploy to slow down the protection process. One conservation organization, Protect the Owyhee Canyonlands, described Bentz’s bill as a “bad-faith proposal” that would eliminate safeguards on 1.6 million acres of land and leave it open to industrial development.
The Bentz bill, unlike the Owyhee Act, also would not transfer lands to the Burns Paiute Tribe.
Monumental decisions
A national monument designation for the Owyhee Canyonlands would continue efforts by the Biden administration during his term in office.
Under the Antiquities Act, which was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, presidents may turn public land into national monuments protected forever from commercial development or future mineral exploitation.
Only land controlled by the federal government can be designated as a national monument.
Early presidential designations often pushed tribes from their ancestral homelands, however. In one of his final acts as president in 1933, Herbert Hoover used the Antiquities Act to set aside Death Valley as a national monument. It’s now one of the largest national parks — not to mention the hottest, driest and lowest.
While establishing the monument brought an end to prospecting and the filing of new mining claims in the area, it also meant the Timbisha Shoshone were forced from the last bit of their traditional territory. It took several decades for the tribe to regain a fraction of the land.
The Biden administration has made strides in working with some tribes on managing public lands and incorporating Indigenous knowledge into planning and policymaking. Biden cited the spiritual, cultural and prehistoric legacy of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante areas in southern Utah when he restored their boundaries and protections through his first use of the Antiquities Act in 2021.
Avi Kwa Ame National Monument was Biden’s second designation. The site outside of Las Vegas is central to the creation stories of tribes with ties to the area.
But conservationists say more strategic use of the Antiquities Act would be valuable going forward as developers look to build more solar and wind farms and mine for lithium and other minerals required for a green energy transition.
According to a 2016 state geological report, the Canyonlands are rich in minerals such as lithium, uranium, gold and silver. They also hold large grazing lands for cattle. Although most of the area is now managed by the Bureau of Land Management, advocates want greater protections. They fear that lithium mining interests will encroach on the wilderness.
Nevada is the richest source of lithium in the world and already hosts the only mine operating in the country — the Silver Peak mine, operated by Albemarle Corporation in the southern portion of the state. Thacker Pass near the Owyhee Canyonlands will soon be home to the second largest lithium mine in the U.S., operated by the Lithium Americas Corp. The project broke ground in 2024.
Lithium, a major component in the green economy, is used to make rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid electric cars and energy storage systems. The mineral stood to play an essential role in Biden’s push to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In October 2024, the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management announced approval of the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron mining project, describing it as a major step towards the nation’s efforts to strengthen domestic mineral supply chains. The mine is located in southern Nevada’s Silver Peak Range. According to BLM management director Tracy Stone-Manning, the decision to support the mine protects the environment while supporting the Biden-Harris administration’s climate goals.
Last year, a federal judge dismissed claims from The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Atsa Koodakuh Wyh Nuwu/People of Red Mountain that the mine is being built illegally near a sacred site of an 1865 massacre along the Nevada-Oregon line.
Will Fauk, who represents the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, told The Associated Press, “Despite this project being billed as ‘green,’ it perpetrates the same harm to Native peoples that mines always have. While climate change is a very real, existential threat, if government agencies are allowed to rush through permitting processes to fast-track destructing mining projects like the one at Thacker Pass, more of the natural world and more Native American culture will be destroyed.”
Acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said bolstering domestic lithium supplies is “essential to advancing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future.”
Environmental ‘balance’
The designation of the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9 came just weeks after Biden offered a formal apology on behalf of the United States for the nation’s ugly boarding school history.
Biden has also demonstrated support for using the Antiquities Act to honor the government’s federal trust responsibility to tribal nations. But taking the Owyhee Canyonlands out of the reach of lithium mining may run counter to his administration’s commitment to the Inflation Reduction Act, which has routed billions of dollars for renewable energy throughout the U.S.
Incoming President Donald Trump has vowed to reverse many of these policies, such as the electric vehicle tax credit. But the Wall Street Journal noted that many Republican-led states have received the lion’s share of IRA funding, raising questions about whether Republican leadership would support a complete reversal of these policies.
“There has to be a balance in mining lithium for current technology,” Thomas said. “This is a basic human being issue about protecting the environment and protecting the land and water for our children.”
Gary McKinney of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley described the rush to mine lithium as green colonialism.
“Protection of the Owyhee Canyonlands is [crucial] to the way that we want to preserve our lifestyles and teach them to our next seven generations,” McKinney said. “And to us, that is more important than anything.”
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.
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