Meet the Uncle, Author, and Community Organizer Being Sued by a Mining Company

“I keep fighting to make a better world, because I love my family, my community, and our world.”

Max Wilbert at Thacker Pass. Photo by Olivier Touron.

Welcome to Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, overshoot, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written by me, Max Wilbert, the co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass, and organizer with the Community Legal Environmental Defense Fund.

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This is the fourth in a series of articles introducing the Thacker Pass Six, a group of traditional indigenous people and grassroots activists who are being sued by a Canadian mining company called Lithium Nevada Corporation. This piece is guest authored by Will Falk.

This is Max Wilbert.

I first met Max in 2014 at a small gathering of biophilic activists in Moab, Utah. Over the last ten years, Max has become one of my dearest friends. So, when he called me in 2020 and asked me to join him in trying to stop a lithium mine, I was immediately interested. Here we are, four years later, and the fight continues.

I am constantly in awe of Max’s skills as a community organizer and the way he shows up to do the difficult work of grassroots environmental activism day in and day out.

Max explained to me:

“I'm 36 years old. I work part-time on a bunch of different projects. I work as a wilderness guide taking middle-school kids into National Parks on backpacking expeditions. I’m also the co-author of a book called “Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It,” and I write a newsletter on Substack called Biocentric. I also run an educational mentorship for activists, and I have a part-time job with a small non-profit organization called the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

I grew up in Seattle, Washington. We didn’t have much money, but my parents prioritized taking us camping and hiking as much as possible, so I came to love nature and animals. I started guiding people into nature when I was in high school through a student-led outdoor program, and never stopped.

I was 11 years old when the World Trade Organization held their conference in Seattle. In response, a major protest movement formed which brought together unions, environmentalists, indigenous people, anti-imperialists, and normal people from every walk of life. We all had a shared understanding that more power for corporations and the wealthy meant bad outcomes for the rest of us and the planet.

This had a huge influence on me, even though I was young. To me, the transition from loving nature to defend it was simple. I started writing papers on the destruction of the planet and the need for people's movements to resist and build alternatives by the time I was fourteen.

A big reason for me to do this work is my family. I don’t have any kids of my own, but I have two young nephews, age seven and four. I’m really worried about their future. Our planet is being destroyed. Between global warming, chemical pollution, biodiversity collapse, and all the other issues, the future is scary.

But I keep fighting to make a better world, because I love my family, my community, and our world. There is so much worth fighting for. Clean water, clean air. Healthy habitat and wildlife populations. I’m a hunter, so I feed myself and my loved ones from intact habitat that can support healthy herds.

The first time I visited Thacker Pass, I completely fell in love with the place. The land is so incredibly beautiful and vibrant. I still remember the first sunset, wild bees pollinating the blooming rabbitbrush, and the stars coming out as night fell. The sky up there is so incredibly dark. At least, it was before Lithium Nevada Corporation started bulldozing the land and building the industrial facilities in 2023.

Being sued by a mining company is awful. It's stressful and I'm facing the reality that they could take every penny that I have. This intimidation tactic is being used to keep us away from the land, and if we go back, we'll get changed with a felony for violating a court order.

But even if Lithium Nevada Corporation takes every dollar and every possession I have, I'll still be better off than the people who were slaughtered at Thacker Pass in 1865, the child slaves laboring in Congolese mines for cobalt to go alongside lithium in electric car batteries, and the wildlife being driven to extinction by this mine.

I have friends who are involved in environmental protection work in places like the Philippines, where they're risking their lives by simply speaking out. So my feeling is that the least I can do here is risk my money. The least I can is risk arrest and do all the other things that we have done to defend the land. We're going to have to make sacrifices if we want to make the world a better place — just like folks did during the Civil Rights Movement, during the struggle to abolish slavery, during the struggle for women's suffrage.

But we still need support. We need people to donate to our Legal Defense Fund. We need people to sign up to our email list and follow our story. We need people to write and tell their friends and help amplify this issue. We need people to tell the truth about lithium mining and greenwashing. We need people to prevent and fight the next mining projects. And we need people to take action in their own communities all over the world. That’s what’s most inspiring to me.”

Self-portrait at Peehee Mu’huh, Thacker Pass, in February 2022.