This Native Elder is Being Sued by a Mining Company

“We used the lawsuit papers in our sweat fire”

Dean Barlese prays in front of Lithium Nevada’s halted construction equipment on April 26th, 2023. Photo by the author.

This is the first 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.

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This is Dean Barlese, a traditional knowledge-holder from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, an elder who was raised on old stories told by his father and grandparents. He’s the leader of the Pyramid Lake Spiritual Healing Center, and his ancestors fought in Snake War (1864-68) to protect Northern Paiute homelands from settler-colonial incursions.

I met Dean in the spring of 2021, when he first visited the protest camp that my friend Will Falk and I established on the proposed site of an open-pit lithium mine at Peehee Mu’huh (known as Thacker Pass, Nevada in English). Dean was in a wheelchair and traveled for hours to get to camp, visiting with his relatives from nearby reservations around the fire.

Soon after his first visit, Dean’s health deteriorated, leading to the amputation of his foot. Yet Dean kept coming to camp. Not only that, he was on the front lines of the prayer actions that took place in spring 2023, sitting in front of heavy equipment destroying the land his ancestors fought and died to protect.

Now, Dean is being sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation, a fully-owned subsidiary of Lithium Americas. The suit is a civil case, which means that the company is seeking to get money from Dean.

Lithium Americas is a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and Dean is a retired and disabled Native American elder. He provides spiritual healing to people in his community for free. When Dean’s roof leaks, when he needs a ride to a medical appointment, or he needs to put away firewood for the cold Pyramid Lake winter and for ceremonial sweats, he asks for help from his friends and people he has helped. What little money Dean has is used for food and utilities.

Lithium Nevada can’t get any money from Dean, because he doesn’t have any. The goal of their lawsuit against him is simple: intimidation and violence. If they cannot stop Dean from taking action to protect his ancestral lands, if they cannot undermine his courage, if they cannot break his spirit, they will talk the only language they truly understand: money. They will attempt to destroy his finances, and thus undermine his ability to live.

Here is Dean’s statement, in his own words:

“My name is Dean Barlese. I am age 66. I was born on 9-14-1957.

I am from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. And my background is knowledgeable person, keeper of stories and family history. Our family is part of, descended from, the Winnemucca family here in Pyramid Lake.

I love doing and sharing history and culture with our people, the ones who want to learn. I'm willing to share beadwork, many different things with them on the cultural side.

I want to protect Peehee Mu’huh, Thacker Pass, because our ancestors are still out there. They were not given the privilege of being buried. So like many, many places during the Snake War, our people were just brutally massacred. And the massacre that happened at Thacker Pass was in 1865 when the military came in and massacred our people.

Sentinel Butte is a sacred place, a place of prayer. And that's another reason we are standing up and protecting these sites from the greed and ignorance of these corporations that are coming in.

The lawsuit, it's not much. Piece of paper, waste of paper, waste of ink. When they brought the papers in, we were having a sweat that day, that evening. So we used the papers to build our sweat fire. And that was the prayer started right there.

We started using our spiritual ways to help us. But people can support us by donating. We have to pay our lawyers. So any way that you can help us, that would be good to help pay the lawyer fees. And that's it.”