Inside Climate News
How the Rush to Mine the Metal of the Future Echoes America’s Colonial Past
Lithium exploration in South Dakota's Black Hills is reviving long-standing tensions between mining interests and the Lakota Sioux, whose sacred lands have been targeted by extractive industries for generations. The push for lithium — a critical component in electric vehicle batteries and the clean energy transition — is raising urgent questions about whether environmental progress is being built on the same colonial patterns that stripped Indigenous communities of land and resources in the past. For tribes already bearing the scars of gold and uranium extraction, the green energy boom is looking less like a solution and more like a familiar threat.
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What the US Could Learn About Mining on Indigenous Peoples’ Ancestral Lands
The United States is experiencing a lithium mining surge governed largely by an 1872 law that predates any meaningful tribal consultation requirements, leaving Native American communities with little legal standing to protect ancestral lands beyond reservation boundaries. This regulatory gap means sacred and historically significant sites can be developed without the federal government ever formally engaging the tribes connected to them. As demand for battery minerals accelerates, the absence of modernized consultation frameworks is emerging as one of the most consequential gaps in American mining policy.
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Mongabay
RJ Nichole Ledesma, chronicler of unsettled ground on Negros Island, was killed last month. He was 30.
RJ Nichole Ledesma spent his short career documenting the human cost of land displacement on Negros Island, one of the Philippines' most contested agricultural regions. His reporting gave voice to communities blindsided by development projects and caught in cycles of labor exploitation and environmental upheaval. He was 30 years old when he was killed last month, a loss that leaves a critical beat uncovered in a place that desperately needs it covered.
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Mining the Metal of the Future
Lithium mining in the U.S. is set for a dramatic expansion, growing from a single operational mine today to potentially over 100 staked claims in the pipeline. At least six new projects are expected by 2030, concentrated in the arid Southwest, with 13 more close behind. As demand for batteries and clean energy technology surges, domestic lithium production has become a strategic priority that will reshape American mining for decades to come.
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How We Tracked the Lithium Rush
Lithium mining is accelerating across the U.S. as demand for green-energy batteries drives a global scramble for the critical metal. Columbia Journalism Investigations and Inside Climate News built a first-of-its-kind dataset to map emerging lithium projects and identify the communities in their path. The investigation offers a rare look at both the methodology behind the reporting and the human stakes of the energy transition.
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