‘Like putting a lithium mine on Arlington cemetery’: the fight to save sacred land in Nevada

Thacker Pass is rich in lithium deposits but is also a place of historical and cultural significance to the Paiute people

On a windy afternoon in northern Nevada, where her family has lived for generations, Daranda Hinkey stood before one of the largest lithium deposits in the world - the place where, as she puts it, there's so much lithium it makes people foam at the mouth," she says.

The area is known as Peehee Mu'huh - or Thacker Pass - and while it could be a lucrative resource for companies hoping to cash in on the electric vehicle revolution (lithium can be used to power rechargeable batteries), Hinkey and her peers say large-scale mining operations could irreversibly damage one of her community's most sacred sites.