Category: Blog

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.”

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.

Hinkey and other tribal members say that, in 1865, a massacre took place at Thacker Pass, killing at least 31 members of the Paiute tribe. That there was a massacre in the area is not contested: Hinkey’s great-great-great grandfather, Ox Sam, was one of three survivors. But the location of the massacre is disputed, with the Indigenous groups recently losing a court case seeking to prove that Thacker Pass was the site.

Hinkey’s stance remains that “it’s like putting a lithium mine on Arlington cemetery. It’s just not fair” – a contention to which Lithium Nevada, the company proposing to mine in the locality, takes strong exception. The company points to a history of mining in its proposed project area since the 1970s, and points to the court judgment’s observation that no human remains have been found as evidence of a massacre site there.

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In addition to its historical significance, Thacker Pass plays an important role in the everyday lives of local Indigenous communities; it’s the region where they harvest traditional foods, medicines and supplies for sacred ceremonies.

Today, in order to guard the site, Hinkey and dozens of other local tribal members and descendants are camping near the proposed lithium mine, as a form of protest against extraction in the area. Some members of her coalition have gone so far as to quit their jobs to spend more time on-site. And while the number of campers varies from day to day, Hinkey said they plan to stay until the mine is halted.

While she and her peers are also exploring legal options, the group remains unsure of what comes next – whether their protest can make a difference in Nevada, in an area poised to be extremely important to the transition away from fossil fuels. But they aren’t giving up.

“I still think people think we’re ‘savages’ in some way. We still use the land, we still care for it. They see that as weak, but we see that as strength.”

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The global lithium-ion battery market is expected to grow by a factor of five to 10 in the next decade, according to the Department of Energy, in part because of the soaring demand for electric vehicles, as well as its use in personal electronics and renewable energy storage.

But despite having one of the largest lithium reserves in the world, the United States is not a major player in the extraction of the mineral. The Biden administration has called for an investment in “safe, equitable and sustainable domestic mining ventures”, as part of an effort to secure a larger share of the lithium-battery supply chain.

Lithium Nevada estimates that the project at Thacker Pass will produce roughly 60,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate a year once operational, increasing US production of the material roughly tenfold.

“It’s a gamechanger,” says Tim Crowley, the company’s vice-president of government affairs and community relations at . “It’s absolutely essential if we’re going to make America competitive and minimize the geopolitical challenges that we face in relying on other sources [of lithium].”

What ancestral homelands, what Indigenous lands are they taking from?

Daranda Hinkey

Hinkey, a graduate of Southern Oregon University’s environmental science, policy and sustainability program, says she understands the need to move away from fossil fuels. But she questions whether lithium mining is the best path to get there.

“A lot of environmentalists will argue that we do need that lithium, we do need that electric car. But I don’t think they’ve thought about the outcome of all of that [mining],” Hinkey says. “What ancestral homelands, what Indigenous lands are they taking from?”

According to the investor analyst firm MSCI, 79% of lithium reserves in the United States are within 35 miles of Native American reservations.

Payal Sampat, mining director at Earthworks, an environmental advocacy group, says Indigenous communities have often “already been pushed out of their homelands, affected by genocide”. For these groups to “have to pay the price for the transition to a low carbon economy – that perhaps those same communities are not even going to benefit from – is completely unacceptable”, she adds.

Recently, opponents of the project turned to the courts. Over the summer, several Indigenous groups – including the People of the Red Mountain, the group camping outside the proposed mine – joined an existing suit brought by environmentalists and a local rancher to stop the mine from going forward. A decision is still pending.

But activists have also faced legal setbacks; in November, a federal judge ruled that evidence provided by the Indigenous groups regarding the historical significance of Thacker Pass “does not definitely establish that a massacre occurred within the project area”.

Crowley said that the company is “going to great lengths to make sure that the environment is protected and that we’re being responsible”, in response to Indigenous concerns. “And we’re also going to great lengths to make sure that any historic artifacts are preserved and treated appropriately.”

Mine opponents are acutely aware the legal system may ultimately side against them. They are considering direct action tactics, the kind used by activists in the Dakota Access pipeline protest at Standing Rock.

“It’s really easy to think that if we just say the right things, if we just argue the right things, if we just have the best lawyers, we’re going to win these things, and this is going to go away,” said Will Falk, a lawyer for the People of Red Mountain and one of the first campers at Thacker Pass.

“That’s wishful thinking,” he said. “Eventually we’re going to have to be ready to physically block construction equipment. I think that one of the ways to wake up people in the United States [is seeing] people getting dragged away by the police for trying to protect their land. And I think that’s where this is going.”

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‘NUCLEAR FOR CLIMATE’ AS AN EXTRACTIVE STRATEGY

Last year’s COP meeting has just begun. Postponed due to the pandemic – Glasgow, Scotland, was to host the summit in November 2020 – representatives from around the world are once again turning their attention to the problem of climate change at the UN conference. COP26 in Glasgow will get a lot of attention, but probably not enough measured against the undisputed and enormous challenges of anthropogenic climate change. The year 2021 has – yet again – made it clear in many parts of the world, and in some cases cruelly[1], that urgent action is needed. The latest IPCC report once again provides the scientific insights, but the political and economic consequences remain controversial and the result is all too often inaction. The changes necessary to avert complete breakdown will have to be more profound than merely changing electricity suppliers. At stake is a profound change in the way we produce, consume and live. In short, the dominant paradigm in the fight against climate change lacks a post-growth strategy. But some propagate a supposedly simple carbon-free way out: nuclear power. For years now, a narrative has been gaining renewed support in certain corners, according to which the production of electricity through nuclear fission seems imperative for climate change mitigation. Against the backdrop of COP26, Beyond Extraction draws a line from nuclear lobbying in the name of climate protection to the centre of our collective’s work so far, the critical examination of the consequences and devastation of mining, exploration, and the speculation in raw materials.

In this brief article, we look at the link between the nuclear lobby, the mining industry and resource speculation and bring to the forefront the people and places who would be affected by uranium mining. While the nuclear industry is trying to present itself internationally as key to the energy solution of the climate crisis, the mining industry is waiting in the wings to offer new and old uranium mining projects as investment opportunities. But what about the people and places that would be affected by uranium mining? In order to answer this question, we need to focus on an area mostly ignored in the general debate: the initial stages in the nuclear fuel chain[2].

The various other reasons[3] for which nuclear power cannot be a valid answer to the climate crisis are unaffected by this.

Beyond Extraction therefore sought to amplify the voices of those campaigning against old and projected uranium mines and the devastating legacy of nuclear fuel production in Canada, Greenland, Namibia, Spain, and Tanzania. They are pushing for a carbon free, truly renewable future of energy production and against a false promise of nuclear power.

NUCLEAR ENTHUSIASM – NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE – NUCLEAR FOR CLIMATE

It is not the first time that nuclear power has been seen as a technological fix to major societal problems, nor the first time that climate change has been claimed as a problem to be solved by nuclear reactors. But all nuclear enthusiasm plays under the conditions and omens of its time. In the 1950s quasi-utopian future conditions were associated with the splitting of the uranium atom. The nuclear enthusiasm of the 1970s took place especially under the pretext of the oil crises and the subsequent debates on energy security. In both phases of great expectations in nuclear power, large mines were developed and uranium was explored across the globe. But the great expectations did not materialize as projected. This was no different in the overblown discourse of the ‘nuclear renaissance’ of the 2000s with its hyper ambitious growth scenarios. And yet, high future expectations in growing nuclear electricity production led to uranium exploration, mine expansions and new development activities. And this is precisely what we must be aware of today when governments, lobbying organizations and even some misguided environmentalists are talking about nuclear power being a potential force against the climate crisis. In fact, investing in uranium stocks is already being touted as a way to profit from climate policy[4].

GREENING NUCLEAR POWER’S FINANCES!?

For some years now, the COP summits have repeatedly become an arena of the nuclear lobby. Attempts to present itself as a potential solution to the climate crisis at the Glasgow summit already led to debates in the run-up to the summit[5].

Self-proclaimed pro-nuclear activists say they want to take the COP meeting by storm[6] and major nuclear companies and its lobby are represented in Glasgow and beat their radiant advertising drum. ‘Nuclear for Climate’ is their motto and it is echoed in different parts of the world. In the EU, for example, there is currently a serious debate under the slogan of a Green Deal about whether the design of a European sustainability label in the financial sector (the so-called EU taxonomy) should, in the future, treat the financial support for nuclear power as support for sustainability and climate neutrality. This would label subsidies for nuclear power as a supposedly sustainable technology[7]. Matter of fact, an assessment published in April 2021 by the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC)[8], concluded that nuclear energy is not harmful to humans or the environment. This assessment is, of course, a travesty for all those who have lost land, health and livelihoods to uranium mining or would be threatened by it to say nothing of those harmed by the various catastrophic meltdowns, the most recent being in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. But Europe is not alone in this: Canada provides significant support for the development of so called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)[9]. In the USA, too, plans are being discussed to provide financial subsidies and relief for nuclear energy, which would happen at the expense of the expansion of renewable energies[10]. One of the arguments is climate mitigation.

RESOURCE SPECULATION AND THE REVIVAL OF A DINOSAUR AT PDAC AND ELSEWHERE

Beyond Extraction’s central activities so far have focused on the critical monitoring of the annual Toronto-based Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention. PDAC is amongst the most important global investment conferences for the mining sector. During the 2000s, the nuclear renaissance discourse translated into talk about market fundamentals that would indicate that prices for uranium would definitely have to rise due to a definitely rising number of operating nuclear reactors. So naturally the idea of a materializing nuclear renaissance was greeted with enthusiasm amongst the speculative prospectors and developers.

Measured by the aims of its proponents, the nuclear renaissance remained rather limited, yet it resulted in rampant speculation with uranium inventories, stocks, futures, prospective geology and flushed investment money into uranium exploration ventures. PDAC is not only emblematic of this form of speculation but is also one of the most important sites and gatherings for those who seek to turn geological riches into private profits. In its coverage of the PDAC convention in 2007, while uranium spot prices were approaching their peak during the so called nuclear renaissance, the Northern Miner (2007) reported that “this was uranium’s year at the PDAC, with junior explorers touting hundreds of new uranium exploration and development projects located around the world”. The mining industry journal emphasized further, “there’s actually a lot of [uranium] lying around the planet; the tricky part is jumping through the regulatory hurdles, mining it and selling it at a profit”[11].

The nuclear renaissance talk ended with the aftermath of the reactor core meltdown in Fukushima, Japan in March 2011. Containing the damage to the industry’s image was the new motto and seemingly a job as hard as containing radiation in and around Fukushima Daiichi – which, even a decade after the accident, poses major challenges. Momentum in the nuclear industry today is undoubtedly linked to a collective amnesia about the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima, coupled with the return of the renaissance discourse in the face of climate change.

Central to this is the investment in research and development of SMRs. For years now, PDAC has offered a platform for the nuclear industry and its most committed partners, such as the Government of Canada, to offer a vision of the nuclear industry that is more subtle and, crucially, more mobile. In Canada’s Roadmap to SMR’s[12] and its Minerals and Metals Plan, small and modular reactors are positioned as a powerful way for the mining industry to reduce its carbon emissions and the overall footprint of a project. Similarly, French president, Emanuel Macron, has recently spoken in favour of continuing down the nuclear path, with reference to the presumed developments of SMRs as a way of combatting climate change. Yet, as is usual, the promotion of this re-imagined dinosaur fails to account for the risks associated with both increasing demand for uranium and the danger of making nuclear reactors mobile. Take, for example, the ‘Akademik Lomonosov,” the only floating, and therefore mobile, nuclear power plant today. Built by Rosatom, the Russian state-owned Nuclear Corporation it is stationed at the arctic port town of Pevek. Rosatom claims that the power station was good to avoid C02 emissions, yet as an enabler of enhanced oil, gas, and mineral exploration and potential extraction in the Arctic region it is effectively a means to dig out more hydrocarbons.

TESTIMONIES FROM NUCLEAR POWER’S EXTRACTIVE FRONTIER AND THOSE ACTIVELY RESISTING ITS EXPANSION

Nuclear power is effectively on the decline[13]. Industry’s repeated rescue attempts, however, are misleading, they waste time and resources, and they slowly start to inflate a speculative bubble around uranium resources. It is worrying that the narrative of a possible, albeit nuclear, “business as usual” could gain momentum in the face of increasingly severe climate change impacts. This is perhaps especially so for the communities affected by uranium mining or exploration whereby the threats of extraction are dangerously high. This list of testimonies is limited and would have to be expanded in order to do justice to the global spread of experiences with uranium mining and exploration. Yet here campaigners from across the globe offer their rich insights about the climate crisis and its mitigation.

GREENLAND

My name is Niels Henrik Hooge and I am from NOAH Friends of the Earth Denmark. NOAH opposes uranium mining as well as any type of large-scale mining in the Arctic region. Currently, there are about 90 active large-scale exploration and exploitation licenses in Greenland, covering thousands of square kilometres, and almost all related to surface mining projects. Most of them are located in Southern Greenland, which has the country’s richest biodiversity and all of Greenland’s farm land.

The Arctic environment is particularly vulnerable to pollution, because it recovers very slowly. The long-term economic costs of pollution in Greenland could be so high that they by far exceed the short-term economic benefits of large-scale mining and not least uranium mining.

Many other countries have experienced negative impacts, including widespread pollution of water, land and air, and the destruction of pristine nature and precious habitats.

For these reasons, NOAH calls on the Greenlandic and Danish governments, the European Union, and everybody else who takes an interest, to help establish an Arctic sanctuary. The inspiration could be the Antarctic Treaty, as supplemented by the Madrid Protocol signed in 1991, but respecting the fundamental difference represented by the populated nature of Greenland and the Arctic and the rights and needs of the peoples and nations of the Arctic region.

NAMIBIA

My name is Bertchen Kohrs, I am the chairperson of Earthlife Namibia, a voluntary non-profit, non-governmental organisation, concerned about environmental and social justice and sustainable development. Earthlife is located in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

The nuclear cycle starts right here in Namibia where uranium is extracted by several foreign companies. Presently two open-pit uranium mines are fully operating, one mine is put under care and maintenance, and one mine will reopen soon.

In the face of a major number of uranium exploration licenses granted in 2006 /2007 by the Namibian government, Earthlife Namibia saw the need to research on the issue of uranium mining, raise awareness in the public and with politicians about the dangers and risks connected to uranium mining and the nuclear industry in general and initiate public debates on the issue.

We conducted studies with the assistance of radiological scientists on the impact on the environment and on the health of mine workers. The studies clearly show significant environmental damage; contamination with uranium and other toxic substances were detected in soil and groundwater.

The health study clearly indicates that many workers develop severe disease symptoms from exposure to radiation and dust that are not recognized by the mines as occupationally related diseases. The workers pay a high price for being employed.

Uranium mining companies are inaccessible, non-transparent and spread humiliating lies to silence the population. Namibia is a desert country with an abundance of sun and wind, thus has the top conditions for renewable energy. The past has proven many times that nuclear energy is dangerous, dirty, not sustainable, too expensive, extremely risky, and generates non-manageable waste. Proliferation of nuclear weapons and munitions is a permanent threat to the planet. Nuclear energy is not at all climate friendly, on the contrary, nuclear industry hinders the development of renewable energy.

The only sensible solution is to leave the uranium untouched in the ground. This is what Earthlife Namibia fights for.

TANZANIA

My Name is Anthony Bonifasi Lyamunda, I live in Dodoma, the Capital City of Tanzania and I am the founder of CESOPE (Civil Education is the Solution to Poverty and Environmental Management). Our organization has long supported the people of Bahi, an administrative district very close to Dodoma and the place where I grew up. But since the mid-2000s, we have been confronted with a threat that was previously unknown to us. In the places where the people of Bahi and neighbouring districts live and work, farm and fish, uranium has been explored and mining has been considered. In 2009 CESOPE started an advocacy campaign against the plans to mine uranium. We succeeded in creating substantial awareness about the problems coming with uranium mining among the people living in the area.

We oppose uranium mining because of the negative impact it would have. The central Tanzanian Bahi depression and its wetlands are of great importance for our livelihoods and for food security in the region more generally. Uranium mining remains a potential threat in Tanzania and worldwide as long as nuclear energy is still desired by various countries. Now that prices are slowly recovering we fear that the plans will be resumed and the ecological diversity in Bahi and the livelihood of many people will be threatened again. For us, uranium mining means the violation of human rights, land grabbing and all the many environmental problems that go along with it. When the Bahi wetlands are drained, that would contribute to climate change. Nuclear energy is not the solution, it is part of the problem. That’s why we are standing up for the ecological and socially just improvement of the living conditions in Bahi and Tanzania as a whole, without uranium mining.

SOUTHERN TANZANIA

Anonymous

I don’t want to reveal my name because otherwise I would be threatened with repression, as it was the case in the past, but I continue to oppose uranium mining because it destroys our environment and is harmful for all living beings.

My activities and those of my fellow campaigners are directed against uranium exploration and mining projects in southern Tanzania. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that some of the projects are located within and on the periphery of a protected area, the Selous Game Reserve. Today, only one project remains, and it may start mining soon, but others could also be revived if uranium demand increases[14].

But at the beginning of these plans, all this was unknown to us. For example: When the plans to mine uranium here became public people were only informed about the benefits they will get from uranium mining and that the mineral has no effect on humans. During some of the explorations, local workers have not even been provided with protective gear. Our campaigns are directed against such misinformation and its consequences. We have made and continue to make every effort to inform our communities about the consequences of mining projects in all transparency. We would like to see a future that is not oriented toward the temptations of short-term revenues from uranium mining and that ignores its dire consequences.

SPAIN

My name is José Ramón Barrueco and I am the spokesman for the Stop Uranium Platform, an organization that has been fighting against an Australian multinational, Berkeley Energia Limited, which intends to open uranium mines in the province of Salamanca, as well as a uranium processing plant in the town of Retortillo.

We oppose uranium mining for health reasons for the inhabitants of the area, for environmental reasons as the mining facilities are located next to areas protected by the Natura 2000 Network and for economic reasons as it destroys more jobs than it can create. Nuclear energy is tremendously unsupportive of future generations, as it leaves radioactive waste that will take thousands of years to lose its harmful effects, so it should not be exploited by the current generation.

CANADA

My name is Angela Bischoff and I work with the Ontario Clean Air Alliance. Industry efforts to “greenwash” nuclear energy make a mockery of clean energy goals.

All stages of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining, processing, refining, fuel fabrication, reactor operations and nuclear waste handling, all emit radioactive, carcinogenic pollutants, and leave a toxic legacy of radioactive wastes. 

Nuclear is not a climate solution – it’s too slow to make a difference during this climate decade and diverts valuable investment from renewable energy technologies.

In Ontario, for example, the Doug Ford government cancelled 758 renewable energy projects and slashed the budget of our conservation programs by 60%. It then quietly bought up 3 gas plants, committing to ramp up gas power pollution by 500% or more by 2040, and proceeded with plans to rebuild 10 of our aging nuclear reactors and build a new SMR (small modular nuclear reactor) in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).

Meanwhile, conservation and renewables are now less than half the cost of a new nuclear reactor and even lower cost than running our existing reactors – with no radioactive waste legacy to leave for untold future generations.

The good news is we don’t have to settle for nuclear and fossil fuels, both which are on the decline globally. In Ontario we can replace our gas power by 2030 and all nuclear extensions and rebuilds with a combination of made-in-Ontario wind and solar, conservation, and Quebec water power and storage imports. QC has massive surplus water power and storage that could turn Ontario’s intermittent wind and solar energy into a firm 24/7 source of baseload electricity supply for Ontario – at a fraction of the cost and time of nuclear.

The world is moving to wind/water/solar. Wasting more dollars and time on nuclear would be a travesty. Nuclear is a dirty, dangerous, expensive false solution.

THE CLIMATE CRISIS NEEDS URGENT ACTION – NUCLEAR IS A BRAKE PAD

Anyone who claims to be able to protect the climate with nuclear power fails to grasp the disastrous consequences of uranium mining, the nuclear fuel chain, and the various and overlapping environmental crises the planet currently faces. It is well evidenced that climate change does not affect everyone equally, its consequences unequally distributed globally. The nuclear lobby’s motto “Nuclear for Climate” is yet another example of how this dinosaur of an industry is trying to shirk responsibility at the expense of those who are already affected by climate change and who contribute very little to its underlying conditions. After all, the major uranium mining areas are rarely located where their products are to be converted into electricity. Of course, the industry’s narrative catches on with those who believe in a “business as usual” utopia. But, we cannot mine our way out of the climate crisis[15] and while it may not be perceived as such, nuclear power would be one attempt to do just that. “Nuclear for Climate” is merely a continuation of the same logics that have landed us in the climate crisis to begin with. It is oriented around the idea that we can dredge our way out of the crisis at the expense of others, who are too often hidden from view. Simply put, “Nuclear for Climate” is another inequitable and unjust approach to global environmental breakdown. Those pushing for nuclear “solutions” to the climate crisis must realize that environmental breakdown requires a post-growth strategy that moves beyond extraction – nothing less. Greening the surface of nuclear power won’t do the job.

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[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-natural-disasters-beg-climate-action

[2] For more ‘Facts and Data about the Raw Material of the Atomic Age’ consult the ‘Uranium Atlas’: https://www.nuclear-free.com/uranium-atlas.html

[3] For a summary of the counter-arguments (too dirty, too dangerous, too expensive, too slow) see: https://dont-nuke-the-climate.org/

[4] https://www.ft.com/content/46c63e13-142b-4e18-b141-b621023e8073

[5] Nuclear power wants to enter the ‘Green Zone’, but is not admitted: https://theferret.scot/were-barred-from-cop26-nuclear-industry-complains/

[6] https://medium.com/generation-atomic/these-young-pro-nuclear-campaigners-promise-to-take-cop26-by-storm-133d8502c4ca

[7] For “[a] critical analysis of the EU Joint Research Centre technical assessment of nuclear energy” see: https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/09/01/nuclear-energy-eu-taxonomy and https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2021-lr.pdf from page 38.

[8] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/business_economy_euro/banking_and_finance/documents/210329-jrc-report-nuclear-energy-assessment_en.pdf

[9] See for example: https://dont-nuke-the-climate.org/blog/dirty-dangerous-destruction

[10] For more on this see: https://www.nirs.org/category/greenworld/

[11] The Northern Miner (2007): Editorial: New uranium, moly projects flood PDAC. In: The Northern Miner 2007, 19.03.2007. Online verfügbar unter https://www.northernminer.com/news/editorial-new-uranium-moly-projects-flood-pdac/1000210861/

[12] See: https://smrroadmap.ca/

[13] For an overview of the state of the global nuclear industry consult the World Nuclear Industry Status Reports: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-The-Annual-Reports-.html

[14] For more information on the situation in the Tanzanian south see: https://uranium-network.org/current-projects/mkuju-river-uranium-project/

[15] https://theecologist.org/2021/may/25/we-cant-mine-our-way-out-climate-crisis /// https://cop26coalition.org/peoples-summit/extractivist-growth-and-alternatives-from-below-why-we-cant-mine-our-way-out-of-the-climate-crisis/

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• Many of the remaining untapped deposits of the metals critically needed for U.S. energy to transition from fossil fuels are located either near or within areas of cultural and environmental importance to Native Americans.
• Among these key energy-transition metals, 97% of nickel, 89% of copper, 79% of lithium and 68% of cobalt reserves and resources in the U.S. are located within 35 miles of Native American reservations.
• Mining companies have already faced opposition to mine development in many of these areas, reflecting the heightened risk to companies and investors arising from these conflicting priorities.

With the Biden administration seeking to slash U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and support a rapid move to electric vehicles and renewable-energy technology,¹ many investors are looking closely at the metals needed in new energy technologies. Copper is one key metal, and its demand may rise as much as 350% by 2050, according to one estimate.² For investors looking through an ESG lens, however, not all metal mines are created equal or pose the same risks. Some mining projects, while providing metals key to addressing the global challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels, may face strong and increasing opposition from Native Americans for threatening sacred areas or traditional ways of life.³

Not only could local cultures be at risk, but investors too. Local opposition increases risks that a mining asset could lose its license to operate and its value to investors. The risks may be even greater since the new administration, in its election materials, has indicated that protection of Native American culture is a priority.⁴ COVID-19’s devastating impact on Native Americans⁵ was a sad reminder of the disparities faced by many Native American communities.

Key Mines Are Located Near Native American Reservations

We analyzed 5,336 U.S. mining properties in the S&P Global Market Intelligence database (as of March 15, 2021) and found the majority of U.S. reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel are located within 35 miles of Native American reservations. The same is true for the total count of U.S. mines with primary commodities of copper, lithium and nickel.

US Transition-Metal Reserves Within 35 Miles of Native American Reservations

Most of these mines are not located on Native American reservations. But for people with a history of being forced onto settlements, many of which have been compressed over time, culturally significant areas are not limited to reserved lands. We looked at all mines located within 35 miles of a reservation, noting that two prominent mining projects facing strong opposition from Native American groups – Lundin Mining’s Eagle mine in Michigan and the Resolution copper mine in Arizona – are both less than 35 miles away from the nearest reservation.

The Resolution mine, owned jointly by Rio Tinto (55%) and BHP Billiton (45%), has already spent over USD 2 billion on development and permitting.⁶ It could eventually supply up to a quarter of the country’s copper demand.⁷ However, Native American communities such as the San Carlos Apache have opposed the alleged threat it poses to the Chich’il Bildagoteel, otherwise known as Oak Flat, a place with spiritual significance to the Apache for generations.⁸

US Mines’ Proximity to Native American Reservations

Rio Tinto already experienced a stakeholder uproar and harsh repercussions after a failure to protect places of indigenous significance in May 2020, albeit on the other side of the world. Three executives, including the CEO at the time, were forced to leave the company, among other leadership changes, after the company bulldozed the ancient Juukan Gorge rock shelters, a site of both indigenous and archaeological value in Australia.⁹

There, as at the Resolution mine, the company obtained government approval to move on the areas of concern, putting sacred areas at risk. Nonetheless, civil-rights activism, social-media scrutiny and the momentum for social justice have amplified calls to defend indigenous cultures. Scenarios where mines obtained permits — only to have them later taken away, after much investment, due to alleged failures to address indigenous issues — have played out around the globe in recent years. A stronger focus on local concerns may be warranted.

¹“Fact Sheet: President Biden Sets 2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target Aimed at Creating Good-Paying Union Jobs and Securing U.S. Leadership on Clean Energy Technologies.” White House, April 22, 2021.

²Elshkaki, A., Graedel, T.E., Ciacci, L., and Reck, B. “Copper demand, supply, and associated energy use to 2050.” Global Environmental Change, June 22, 2016.

³Davidse, A. And Guzek, J. “Trend 10: Meeting demand for green and critical minerals.” Deloitte Insights, Feb. 1, 2021.

⁴“Biden-Harris Plan for Tribal Nations.” JoeBiden.com.

⁵An estimated 1 in 475 Native Americans died from the disease. “COVID’s Assault on Native Americans.” The Week. March 7, 2021

⁶“History.” ResolutionCopper.com. Accessed March 22, 2021.

⁷“Land Exchange.” ResolutionCopper.com. Accessed March 23, 2021.

⁸“San Carlos Apache Tribe Sues US Forest Service to Stop Resolution Copper Mine.” San Carlos Apache Tribe, Jan. 15, 2021.

⁹Butler, B. and Wahlquist, C. “Rio Tinto investors welcome chair’s decision to step down after Juukan Gorge scandal.” Guardian, March 2, 2021.

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What exactly does the oil industry have in store for charging companies?

It sounds like the perfect plot for a conspiracy thriller: the giant oil companies are buying up electric vehicle charging companies as fast as they can. Do they mean to shut ‘em all down, or just to make sure that the price of charging is high enough that driving an EV won’t deliver any savings over driving a fossil-fueled vehicle? (Shell is one of the world’s largest providers of hydrogen, made from natural gas.) 

Or, could there be a surprise ending? Perhaps the oil execs have the good of mankind at heart—they realize that the Oil Age is ending, and want to be in position to profit from the next energy era.

We’ll have to wait for the next episode to find out about that—what we do know is that three Europe-based oil multinationals (Shell, Total and bp) started getting into the charging game back in 2017, and now own companies at every stage of the charging value chain.

Shell is rapidly becoming a major player in the UK charging market—the company now offers charging at numerous petrol stations (aka forecourts), and will soon be rolling out charging at some 100 supermarkets.

The latest news is that Shell aims to install 50,000 on-street public charging points in the UK over the next four years (as reported by The Guardian). Earlier this year, the oil giant acquired ubitricity, which specializes in integrating charging into existing street infrastructure such as lamp posts and bollards, a solution that could make EV ownership more attractive to city dwellers who don’t have private driveways or assigned parking spaces.

This is a big deal—according to the UK’s National Audit Office, over 60% of urban households in England do not have off-street parking, meaning that there’s no practical way for them to install a home charger. A similar situation prevails in many regions, including China and parts of the US.

In the UK, local councils have emerged as something of a bottleneck for installing public charging. Shell has a plan to get around this by offering to pay the upfront costs of installation not covered by government grants. The UK government’s Office for Zero Emission Vehicles currently pays up to 75% of the installation cost for public chargers.

“It’s vital to speed up the pace of EV charger installation across the UK and this aim and financing offer is designed to help achieve that,” Shell UK Chair David Bunch told The Guardian. “We want to give drivers across the UK accessible EV charging options, so that more drivers can switch to electric.”

UK Transport Minister Rachel Maclean called Shell’s plan “a great example of how private investment is being used alongside government support to ensure that our EV infrastructure is fit for the future.”

Shell continues to invest in clean-energy businesses, and has pledged to make its operations net-zero-emissions by 2050. However, it has shown no intention of scaling back its oil and gas production, and some environmental activists are not convinced. Recently, members of the group Extinction Rebellion activists chained and/or glued themselves to railings at London’s Science Museum to protest Shell’s sponsorship of an exhibition about greenhouse gases.

“We find it unacceptable that a scientific institution, a great cultural institution such as the Science Museum, should be taking money, dirty money, from an oil company,” said Dr Charlie Gardner, a member of Scientists for Extinction Rebellion. “The fact that Shell are able to sponsor this exhibition allows them to paint themselves as part of the solution to climate change, whereas they are, of course, at the heart of the problem.”

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Climate change is rattling the world’s central bankers. With unprecedented heat and wildfires in the American West and southern Europe, and record floods racing through German towns and Chinese megacities in recent weeks, fears are growing among regulators of a coming cascade of climate-induced economic blows potentially more far-reaching and intractable than the financial crash just over a decade ago.

In the past two months, the central banks of the world’s five largest economies — the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, and the United Kingdom — have all raised the stakes in their demands for the commercial banks they regulate to make public the looming risks they face as wild weather takes hold.

Their calls show that central bankers are already responding to concerns about their past passivity on climate — concerns reflected at a G7 meeting in June, where Western industrial leaders issued a final communique that declared, “We emphasize the need to green the global finance system … We support moving towards mandatory climate-related financial disclosures.” That means requiring commercial banks to reveal the risks to their balance sheets — and those of their clients — of both a changing climate and any rapid collapse of markets for fossil fuels as governments try to head off disaster by weaning off fossil fuels.

The world’s major central banks, which control the production and distribution of money on behalf of national governments, have traditionally sought to remain “market neutral” when carrying out their responsibilities. That means they avoid favoring one part of the economy over others. But now the biggest central banks appear to be concluding that carbon neutrality is more important than market neutrality.

In June, the Bank of England launched mandatory disclosure of climate risks by big British banks, with the U.S. Federal Reserve indicating that it intends to follow suit. Meanwhile, the People’s Bank of China said it was making green loans in line with its government’s policy on climate change. In July, the Bank of Japan began offering no-interest loans to commercial banks funding green projects, and the European Central Bank announced that it was looking to gauge the carbon footprint of financial institutions and their vulnerability to climate change.

In addition, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak recently updated the Bank of England’s responsibility “to reflect the government’s economic strategy for … the transition to a net-zero economy.” Since then, said economist Yannis Dafermos of SOAS University of London, the bank has changed its approach, “going beyond market neutrality to being much more interventionist in the fight against climate change.” In May, it published a discussion paper on options for greening its bond buying, which included setting targets for emissions from its corporate bonds.

Not to be outdone, in July the European Central Bank announced that it intends to “adjust the framework guiding the allocation of corporate bond purchases to incorporate climate change criteria.” Those criteria include European Union legislation to cut EU emissions by 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, its target under the Paris Agreement.

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The debate among central bankers about how to address climate change was kicked off in 2015 by Mark Carney, then governor of the Bank of England and chair of the Financial Stability Board, an international body that coordinates central banks and financial regulators. At the Paris climate conference that year he warned that climate change was a “systemic risk” to the world financial system.

Carney called for central bankers to chart a course for a net-zero world that would not crash capitalism, instead making it part of the solution, and announced that the Financial Stability Board was setting up a task force to develop a carbon-disclosure system — essentially carbon footprinting for financiers.

In a speech to Lloyd’s of London earlier that year, Carney identified two kinds of risks to bankers: “physical risks” to their investments from raging storms, wildfires, flooding river valleys, eroding coastlines, heat waves, and droughts; and “transition risks” arising from the falling value of coal mines, oil wells, pipelines, and other fossil fuel infrastructure plummeting as the world cuts carbon emissions. These could become “stranded assets,” he said.

Carney warned that losses from weather-related natural disasters had risen threefold in the past 30 years. In one particularly stark example of the impact of climate change, a largely unnoticed 8-inch rise in sea levels around Manhattan had increased the losses from Superstorm Sandy in 2012 by 30 percent. His researchers also flagged financial disruption caused by crop failures during droughts in 2007 and 2010. Since his warnings about transition risks, falling demand for coal has forced several major coal companies — including Peabody, the world’s largest — to file for bankruptcy.

Even so, central bankers have generally been slow to smell the coffee. Traditionally, Carney said, bankers simply don’t look far enough ahead or widely enough to see the significance of climate change, noting that the horizon for monetary policy is only two to three years. “In other words, once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late,” he said.

Since he raised the warning flags, Bank of England researchers have emphasized the growing threats. “A weather-related natural disaster could trigger financial and macroeconomic instability if it severely damages the balance sheets of households, corporates, banks and insurers,” Sandra Batten and colleagues concluded in a 2016 internal paper.

The flight of capital could become a stampede, said Sarah Dougherty, a former staffer at the Federal Reserve who now works on green finance for the Natural Resources Defense Council: “The crash of 2008 is seen as the model for what could happen with climate change.”

If one coastal town is washed away by rising tides, or one mountain resort is consumed by wildfires, it could stunt investor interest in hundreds of others. When the value of assets held by a bank falls, it becomes unable to invest elsewhere in the economy. And if one bank rocks, then others look vulnerable too. Additionally, if climate disasters bankrupt insurance companies or lead them to pull out of high-risk areas, it could further inhibit lending.

A modeling study on the interactions between ecosystems and financial systems, co-authored by Dafermos, shows that economic and financial conditions are likely to deteriorate badly at warming above 2.5 degrees C (4.5 degrees F). Since 1900, the world has warmed around 1.1 degrees C. “Declining economic growth and the destruction of capital” will cause corporate defaults and credit rationing, “giving rise to a vicious financial cycle” that will end up stifling green investment along with the rest, “disrupting the transition to a low-carbon economy,” the study found.

So what do central bankers say should be done? Their first step has been to gain information through requiring big financial houses to investigate and disclose the risks that climate change poses to their solvency. The Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures developed best practices, and many central banks are now adopting its proposals.

In its June announcement on climate change, the Bank of England, under its new governor Andrew Bailey, said climate disclosures would be mandatory across the U.K. economy. In the U.S., disclosure is the province of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, suggested in July that the U.S. will probably end up requiring banks to disclose data to allow the running of climate stress scenarios, as carried out in Europe. “My guess is that’s the direction we’ll go in, but we’re not ready to do yet,” he told the Senate Banking Committee.

Former Fed staffer Dougherty has no doubts: “They plan to do it. It will be announced almost certainly this fall.”

As disclosure becomes de rigueur, a new cottage industry of advisors is emerging to help corporations and financial houses alike through the minutiae of assessing climate risks to their assets, whether flooding of a coastal industrial facility, drought threatening crops, or wildfires ripping through forests. Insurance companies may be at greatest risk, and their collapse would pose systemic risks to the wider financial system, management consultants McKinsey concluded last year.

Beyond disclosure of risk lies stress testing to see if a company or bank stays afloat under different scenarios, ranging from extreme weather to fossil fuel bans, from carbon pricing to litigation based around responsibility for climate damage. Banks are already required by regulators to carry out stress tests for a range of financial risks. They are usually also required to have enough capital to survive a crisis scenario, and if not, to set aside more. There are now strong moves to add climate risk.

Several major U.S. commercial banks declined to comment on their approach to climate risk for this article. But in a blog post for American Banker last year, Greg Baer, the CEO of the lobbying group Bank Policy Institute, whose members include Bank of America and Citibank, said they were “fully engaged on assessing and disclosing climate risks.” However, he said, formal stress testing of their operations by central banks “is one idea that does not appear ready for prime time.”

The Bank of England, which has generally been ahead of the curve on the issue, announced in June that it was undertaking the first comprehensive stress test of climate risks to Britain’s biggest banks and insurers, to be published in May 2022. It would test their viability under three scenarios: early global action to cut carbon dioxide emissions, delayed action, and no action beyond what is already committed, which Carney, now a UN special envoy on climate action and finance, recently termed the “catastrophic business–as-usual scenario.”

The European Central Bank is also aiming to undertake stress tests starting in 2022, while the People’s Bank of China has already conducted stress tests, though it has yet to publish the results. Leading central banks could, as with other stress tests, use the results to impose new requirements on commercial banks to hold more capital if their existing investments are considered high risk, but it’s not clear if or when they will do so. The Bank of England has said that its stress tests are for the moment “exploratory” and would not be used in this way, drawing ire from critics.

The bank is “stalling,” said David Barmes of the London-based advocacy group Positive Money. “Every day the Bank delays the implementation of climate capital rules, it further undermines its remit to protect financial stability and support a net-zero transition.”

The presumption behind disclosure and stress testing is that if they reveal potentially scary outcomes, this will change investment behavior and allow what economists see as a more efficient allocation of capital in a world in which climate change increasingly dominates economies.

But is efficient allocation of capital the same as an efficient response to climate risk? Dafermos says no. “When finance institutions start protecting themselves from risk, they will start selling government bonds and ending investments in climate-vulnerable countries — those that need more support, especially for adaptation,” he said. “That will make matters worse.”

Rather than protecting the financial system from climate change, “what we need is to protect climate from the finance system,” he said. That will require a much more interventionist approach from central banks.

The possibilities here are huge. Most central banks are big investors. As part of their core responsibilities to maintain economic growth, they routinely buy bonds and other financial products. The Bank of England, for instance, currently holds more than $20 billion in corporate bonds. Central banks usually claim they make these investments in a “market-neutral” way. But critics say this is disingenuous. It reinforces the status quo. Market neutrality “hardwires a carbon bias,” Dafermos said.

A 2017 study by Emanuele Campiglio, then at the London School of Economics but now at the University of Bologna, and others found that more than half the Bank of England’s bond purchases were in carbon-intensive sectors of industry. It had not invested in renewable energy at all. The Bank itself in 2020 revealed that its asset holdings were “consistent with” a more than 3.5-degree C temperature rise by 2100. Most other central banks will probably have a similar record.

“This is highly problematic,” Dafermos said. “We have governments trying to get to net zero while central banks are undermining them. Central banks should target carbon neutrality, not market neutrality.” He said the holders of national purse strings should be buying climate-friendly bonds and shunning those inconsistent with the Paris Agreement, which aims to hold temperature increases to below 2 degrees C.

Nick Robins of the London School of Economics, who was formerly in charge of sustainable finance at the UN Environment Programme, agrees. “At a minimum, central bank actions should not be working against net-zero plans,” he said.

But Campiglio said that “there are good reasons behind keeping central banks independent [of government policies]. Moving towards a system with stronger government control — as in China — might help with supporting a low-carbon transition but could be a risky path for institutional legitimacy and credibility.”

Across the Atlantic, Powell remains much more cautious about such market interventions. He insisted in June that climate change remains a matter for the government rather than the Fed’s monetary policy. But that could change. As Dougherty wrote in a blog post in March, the Fed’s self-described goal “to promote the effective operation of the U.S. economy and, more generally, the public interest” means that it “has the authority — and the duty — to use all the tools at its disposal for climate change work.”

It is now 14 years since the former chief economist at the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, wrote an influential report for the British government which concluded that, as he told the London Times, climate change was “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.” Central bankers are still grappling with the implications. But Dougherty believes change is coming. “In five years, I would be very surprised if climate change wasn’t a major consideration in all Fed regulation,” she said.

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An expanded meeting of the Public Chamber of the city of Norilsk, dedicated to the activities of Norilsk Nickel and «improving the quality of life in Norilsk,» took place in Taimyr in the last days of July. It was a fairly large meeting attended by representatives of public organizations, ecologists, top managers of Norilsk Nickel, and representatives of federal, regional and municipal authorities. Anfisa Nikiforova represented indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North of Taimyr.

Overall, it was an interesting and, at the same time, amusing and sad event. First of all, the status of Anfisa Nikiforova as a meeting participant was unclear. On the one hand, she introduces herself as a representative of the Association of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North, but from a variety of regions (sometimes from urban Dudinskaya, sometimes from regional Taimyr, and sometimes from regional Krasnoyarsk — I’m confused). On the other hand, there was a message stating that she is also an employee of Norilsk Nickel, where she works as an advisor to the Deputy Director of the Polar Division of Norilsk Nickel for regional policy and corporate projects. In general, her participation in all Norilsk Nickel events resembles the old saying – to have your cake and eat it too. But more on that later.

I managed to get a link to the live YouTube broadcast of the event, but as soon as viewers started asking questions in the comments (technical questions related to the organization of event), the organizers suddenly turned off the live broadcast and then deleted all of the comments.

Later on, I was able to get one more link after the event ended — a recording of the broadcast on YouTube. However, I found that that the recording was unlisted, meaning it can be accessed and viewed only by those who have the direct link. I am writing this merely to paint the picture of Norilsk Nickel’s transparency and how it organizes such events.

We agreed to enable public access to the meeting as well as certain parts related to indigenous peoples which we started to publish on our YouTube channel. 

The meeting can hardly be called a discussion because these were mainly presentations with 5 minutes allocated to discussion afterward, which coincidentally concerned the problems of the indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North. After watching a 3-hour of YouTube broadcasting a fundamental gap in the understanding of reality between the management of Norilsk Nickel, environmentalists, government officials, and the indigenous peoples became clear. 

This gap is easily observed just by watching two short presentations. The first one is the presentation by Svetlana Ivchenko, the Director of the Department of Social Policy of Norilsk Nickel, in which she talks about the ways the company is going «to struggle for» free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples. 

The other one is the presentation by Elena Shumilova, a member of the Federation Council (which is the upper house of the Russian parliament) in which she talks about her wish to «go in the fields» to see what “is being built in the interests of the indigenous peoples who traditionally live on the territory» and to talk with people, because «the meeting here is for those who analyze all of this,» while she wants to «hear the consumers’ voice — those who will use all of this».

If we look at each of these factors separately: ending the live broadcasting, deleting comments, uploading an unlisted video of the meeting and making it accessible through the direct link only, Ivchenko’s presentation, Shumilova’s presentation, the fact that no indigenous representatives were invited to the meeting, except for the very Anfisa Nikiforova, who is an employee of Norilsk Nickel – they look like coincidences, separate statements of separate individuals. 

But if we look at these factors cumulatively, they paint a clear picture of Norilsk Nickel managers’ and staff’s worldview and their perception of indigenous peoples. For them, indigenous representatives are not legal subjects. Moreover for Nornickel indigenous peoples are not subjects with specifically indigenous people’s rights, as well as they are not legal persons with general rights living in a specific territory.

For the Norilsk Nickel leadership, indigenous peoples are legal objects — “consumers” (according to Elena Shumilova) — those with whom it is necessary to «to struggle for» (according toSvetlana Ivchenko) the «free, prior and informed consent,” and even then, only because some unknown international standards require it. 

It’s like with small children in kindergarten. Yes, sometimes you have to ask whether Vasya or Petya wants to eat and whether they need to go to the toilet. But more serious issues such as when breakfast will be served or when new curtains for the kindergarten’s sleeping room will be delivered are not discussed with the children by teachers. Why should children know about such serious things? After all, this is the business of those «who analyze all of this.»

In her speech, senator Shumilova argued with clearly good intentions. She wanted to help and cared that such roundtable discussions must provide some benefits for the “consumers” as well, but at the same time, she naively revealed the main secret and the main message of the Russian state and business in relation to indigenous peoples.

This reminded me of something that happened to me personally several years ago. In days of old, when Dmitry Kobylkin had just replaced Yury Neelov in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, some Moscow guys were working on creating a new strategy for the development of the Yamal region. And I had become friends with some of them along before — just personally without professional relations. They learned that I also come from the indigenous peoples’ environment and that I work in Raipon, so they invited me to a couple of meetings in Moscow and then invited me to visit Salekhard where they organized a final discussion on Okrug’s development strategy.

All of us, Raipon’s staff, in those days knew that Yamal is the most advanced region of Russia with great aid programs for indigenous peoples’ development, the strongest legislation on indigenous peoples’ rights, with a fraction of indigenous representatives in the regional parliament. By that time, I had also read the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, knew about the right to free, preliminary, and informed consent, and had attended several UN and Arctic Council meetings.

The meeting started and there were discussed strategic things for indigenous peoples, such as the development of Bovanenkovo, Sabetta, pipelines through the Baydaratskaya Bay, through the Ob Bay, etc. — the issues on which the life of the indigenous population, reindeer herders, fishermen literally depends. And gradually I realized with horror that I am the only indigenous person at this meeting, and that none of my colleagues from Yamal, are present. Later I asked the guys from the regional indigenous peoples’ association “Yamal potomkam” — “Were you invited, did you know, could you participate?” They said, “No, they did not invite us, and they never invite us for such meetings.”  

If the question is about reindeer husbandry, indigenous culture, or native languages – then it’s “yes.” — they invited us to participate. And if the question being discussed is where to lay a pipeline or construct a road — it never occurs to anyone from the government or business to discuss such «serious issues» with indigenous peoples.

And this is the fundamental nature of the contradiction between indigenous peoples and the Russian state or business. 

Indigenous peoples demand respect of their rights to lands, resources, and traditional nature use, but those supposed to observe these rights do not perceive representatives of indigenous peoples as legal subjects, as rightful participants in the dialogue who must take part in the decision-making.

I have to admit, in many ways this is due to the unpreparedness of the indigenous leaders themselves (at least many of the leaders), to perceive and analyze such information. This is a misfortune, and it needs to be dealt with systematically. Education is necessary, but not the kind that the current leader of Raipon, another senator Grigory Ledkov suggested for «the leaders of future». 

Indigenous youth in Russia needs real international education so they will learn how such values as free, prior, and informed consent work in the other world.

And, of course, it is necessary to educate the representatives of business and the state, such as the leadership of Norilsk Nickel, even despite their resistance. They don’t know how to do it right — they need to be taught, even if they don’t want to be taught.

That was a story about interesting and sad things out of the meeting in Norilsk. But speaking of the amusing things, it was funny to hear some «ecologists» singing glory about Norilsk Nickel. Everybody knows in Russia about the subservience abilities of the PORA office (Project Office for Arctic Development) or Russian WWF (World Wildlife Fund) which love to ranking oil and mining companies in Russia according to their «environmental transparency» and which usually gave to Nornickel the highest positions in such «rankings» (before the environmental disaster of 2020 in Taimyr). 

But even they could not surpass this masterpiece of Konstantin Prosekin — the director of the Taimyr natural reserve network «Zapovedniki Taimyra» who said during the meeting: «Norilsk Nickel is the largest in Russia and one of the largest companies in the world for the production of precious and non-ferrous metals such as palladium, nickel, cobalt, platinum, copper. The strategic importance of Norilsk Nickel for the national economy is beyond doubt. The company is among the leading export industrial companies in Russia. The share of Norilsk Nickel in the GDP of the Russian Federation is almost 2 percent. This, in turn, imposes an enormous responsibility on the company as its activity can be used as a tool in both internal and external political relations. I suppose we all understand what this means.»

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In 2021 a modest long-haired Sakha man named Alexander Gabyshev was arrested at his family compound on the outskirts of Yakutsk in an unprecedented for Sakha Republic (Yakutia) show-of-force featuring nine police cars and over 50 police. For the third time in two years, he was subjected to involuntary psychiatric hospitalization. Some analysts see this medicalized punishment, increasingly common in President Putin’s 4th term, as a return to the politicized use of clinics that had been prevalent against dissidents in the Soviet period. Alexander’s hair was cut, and his dignity demeaned. By April, his health had seriously deteriorated, allegedly through use of debilitating drugs, and his sister feared for his life. A private video of his arrest (possibly filmed by a sympathetic Sakha policeman) shows police overwhelming him in bed as if they were expecting a wild animal; he was forced to the floor bleeding, and handcuffed. Official media claimed he had resisted arrest using a traditional Sakha knife, but this is not evident on the video. By May, a trial in Yakutsk affirmed the legality of his arrest, and a further criminal case was brought against him using the Russian criminal code article 280 against extremism. Appeals are pending, including one accepted by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

What had elicited such official vehemence against an opposition figure who had dared to critique President Putin but whose powers and influence were relatively minor, compared to prominent Russians like Aleksei Naval’ny? How did a localized movement in far-from-Moscow Siberia become well-known across Russia and beyond? 

In his 2018–2019 meteoric rise to national and international attention, Alexander Prokopievich Gabyshev, also called “Shaman Alexander,” “Sasha shaman,” and “Sania,” came to mean many things to many people. For some, he is a potent symbol of protest against a corrupt regime led by a president he calls “a demon.” For others, he has become a coopted tool in some part of the government’s diabolical security system, set to attract followers so that they can be exposed and repressed. Some feel he is a “brave fellow” (molodets), “speaking truth to power” in a refreshingly articulate voice devoid of egotism. Others see him as misguided and psychologically unstable, made “crazy” by a tragic life that includes the death of his beloved wife before they could have children. Some accept him into the Sakha shamanic tradition, arguing his suffering and two–three years spent in the taiga after his wife’s death qualify him as a leader and healer who endured “spirit torture” in order to serve others. Others, including some Sakha and Buryat shamans, reject him as a charlatan whose education as an historian was wasted when he became a welder, street cleaner, and plumber.

These and many other interpretations are debated by my Russian and non-Russian friends with a passion that at minimum reveals he has touched a nerve in Russia’s body politic. It is worth describing how Alexander, born in 1968, describes himself and his mission as a “warrior shaman” before analyzing his significance and his peril.

Alexander’s Movement

Picture Alexander on foot pushing a gurney and surrounded by well-wishers, walking a mountainous highway before being arrested by masked armed police for “extremism” in September 2019. Among over a hundred internet video clips of Alexander’s epic journey from Yakutsk to Ulan-Ude via Chita, is an interview from Shaman on the Move! (June 12, 2019):

I asked, beseeched God, to give me witness and insight….I went into the taiga [after my wife had died of a dreadful disease ten years ago]….It is hard for a Yakut [Sakha person] to live off the land, not regularly eating meat and fish….I came out of the forest a warrior shaman….To the people of Russia, I say “choose for yourself a normal leader,… young, competent”….To the leaders of the regions, I say “take care of your local people and the issues they care about and give them freedom.”…To the people, I say “don’t be afraid of that freedom.” We are endlessly paying, paying out….Will our resources last for our grandchildren? Not at the rate we are going… Give simple people bank credit.. . Let everyone have free education and the chance to choose their careers freely.. . There should not be prisons….But we in Russia [rossiiane] have not achieved this yet, far from it…Our prisons are terrifying….At least make the prisons humane…. For our small businesses, let them flourish before taking taxes from them. Just take taxes from the big, rich businesses….For our agriculture, do not take taxes from people with only a few cows….Take from only the big agro-business enterprises.[1]

In this interview and others, Alexander made clear he is patriotic, a citizen of Russia, who wants to purify its leadership. “Let the world want to be like us in Russia,” he proclaimed, “We need young, free, open leadership.” While he explains that “for a shaman, authority is anathema,” he has praised the relatively young and dynamic head of Sakha Republic: “Aisen [Nikolaev] is a simple person at heart who wants to defend his people, but he is constrained, under the fear of the demon in power [in the Kremlin].” Alexander acknowledges the route he has chosen is difficult, and that many will try to stop him. Indeed he began his “march to Moscow” three separate times, once in 2018 and twice in 2019, including after his arrest when he temporarily slipped away from house arrest in December 2019, was rearrested and fined.

Alexander’s 2021 arrest, described in the opening paragraph, was hastened by his refusal to cooperate with medical personnel as a psychiatric outpatient, and further provoked when he announced he would once again try to reach Moscow, this time on a white horse with a caravan of followers. His video announcement of the new plans, with a photo of him galloping on his white horse carrying an old Sakha warrior’s standard, mentioned that he would begin his Spring renewal journey by visiting the sacred lands of his ancestors in the Viliui (Suntar) territories, “source of my strength.” He encouraged followers to join him, since “truth is with us.”[2] A multiethnic group of followers launched plans to gather sympathizers in a marathon car, van and bus motorcade. Their route was designated to pass through the sacred Altai Mountains region of Southern Siberia. What had begun as a quirky political action on foot acquired the character of a media-savvy pilgrimage.

At moments of peak rhetoric, Alexander often explained that “for freedom you need to struggle.” Into 2021, he hoped to achieve his goal of reaching Red Square to perform his “exorcism ritual.” But his arrests and re-confinement in a psychiatric clinic under punishing “close observation” conditions make that increasingly unlikely, especially given massive crackdowns on all of President Putin’s opponents, including Aleksei Naval’ny and his many supporters. One of Alexander’s most telling early barbs critiqued the “political intelligentsia,” who hold “too many meetings” and do not accomplish enough. He told them: “It is time to stop deceiving us.” Yet he repeated in many interviews that numerous politicians in Russia, across the political spectrum, would be better alternatives than the current occupant of the Kremlin.

Among Alexander’s most controversial actions before he was arrested was a rally and ritual held in Chita in July 2019, on a microphone-equipped stage under the banner “Return the Town and Country to the People.” After watching the soft-spoken and articulate Alexander on the internet for months, I was amazed to see him adopt a more crowd-rousing style, asking hundreds of diverse multiethnic demonstrators to chant, “That is the law” (Eto zakon!) even before he told them what they would be answering in a “call and response” exchange. He bellowed, “give us self-determination,” and the crowd answered, “That is the law.” He cried, “give us freedom to choose our local administrations,” and the crowd answered, “That is the law.” His finale included “Putin has no control over you! Live free!” Only after this rally did I begin to wonder who, if anyone, was coaching him and why. Had he changed in the process of walking, gaining loyal followers, and talking to myriad media? The rally, with crowd estimates from seven hundred to one thousand, had been organized by the local Communist Party opposition. Local Russian Orthodox authorities denounced it and suggested that Alexander was psychologically unwell. Alexander himself simply said, after his arrest, “It is impossible to sit home when a demon is in the Kremlin.”

How and why was Alexander using discourses of demonology? He seemed to be articulating Russian and Sakha beliefs in a society that can be undermined by evil out of control. When he first emerged from the forest, he built a small chapel-memorial in honor of his beloved wife and talked in rhetoric that made connections as much to Russian Orthodoxy as to shamanic tradition. He wore eclectic t-shirts, including one that referenced Cuba and another the petroglyph horse-and-rider seal of the Sakha Republic. Once he began his trek, he wore a particularly striking t-shirt eventually mass-produced for his followers. Called “Arrive and Exorcise,” it was made for him by the Novosibirsk artist Konstantin Eremenko and rendered his face onto an icon-like halo.

Another popular image depicts Alexander as an angel with wings. He has called himself a “Holy Fool,” correlating his brazen actions and protest ideology directly to a Russian iurodivy tradition that enabled poor, dirty, beggar-like tricksters to speak disrespectful truths to tsars. His appeals to God were ambiguous—purposely referencing the God of Orthodoxy and the Sky Gods of the Turkic Heavens (Tengri) in his speeches. During his trek, and in some of his interviews, he has had paint on his face, a thunderbolt zigzag under his eyes and across the bridge of his nose that he calls a “sign of lightning,” derived from his spiritual awakening after meditation in the forest. He has claimed, as a “warrior shaman,” that he is fated to harness spirit power to heal social ills. While his emphasis has been on social ills that begin with the top leadership, he also has been willing to pray and place healing hands on the head of a Buryat woman complaining of chronic headaches, who afterwards joyously pronounced herself cured.

During his trek, on camera and off at evening campsites, Alexander fed the fire spirit pure white milk products, especially kumys (fermented mare’s milk), while offering prayers in the Sakha “white shaman” tradition that he hoped to bring to Red Square for a benevolent ritual not only of exorcism but of forgiveness and blessing. He chanted: “Go, Go, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]. Go of your own free will . . . Only God can judge you. Urui Aikhal!” He expressed pride that some of the Sakha female shamans and elders have blessed his endeavor.

Resonance and Danger

Russian observers, including well-known politicians and eclectic citizens commenting online or on camera, have had wildly divergent reactions to Alexander, sometimes laughing and mocking his naïve, provincial, or perceived weirdo (chudak) persona. But some take him seriously, including the opposition politician Leonid Gozman, President of the All-Russia movement Union of Just Forces. Leonid, admiring Alexander’s bravery, sees significance in how many supporters fed and sheltered him along his nearly two-thousand-kilometer trek before he was arrested. Rather than resenting him for insulting Russia’s wealthy and powerful president, whose survey ratings have plummeted, Alexander’s followers rallied and protected him with a base broader than many opposition politicians have been able to pull together.

As elsewhere in Russia, civic society mobilizers, whether for ecology protests, anti-corruption campaigns or other causes, are becoming savvy at hiding and sharing leadership.  By 2021, Alexander had become one of many imprisoned oppositionists, whose numbers throughout Russia have swelled beyond the prisoners of conscience documented when the great physicist Andrei Sakharov was exiled to Gorky in 1985.[3]

Alexander, despite being subdued beyond recognition after multiple arrests, has affirmed that he was hoping for “neither chaos nor revolution, [since] this is the twenty-first century.” He advocates for his followers an “open world, [of ] peace, freedom and solidarity,” one where all people believing in benevolent “higher forces” can find them. His significance is that he is one of the credible politicized spiritual leaders to emerge from Russia in the post-Soviet period, when in the past twenty years the costs of independent leadership have become increasingly dire, self-sacrifice is increasingly necessary, and multi-leveled community building with horizontal interconnections is increasingly risky.

Whether or not defined as religious or shamanic, the bravery and force of individuals willing to risk everything to change social conditions is awesome, transcending and human wherever we find it. Far from insane, these maverick societal shape-changers, tricksters and healers may represent our best power-diversifying hopes against systems that pull in directions of authoritarian repression. Perhaps once-populist power consolidating leaders like Vladimir Putin, who warily watch their public opinion ratings, are insecure enough to understand the deep systemic weaknesses that oppositionists like Alexander Gabyshev and Alexei Naval’ny expose, using very different styles along a sacred-secular continuum. President Putin’s insecurities magnify the importance of all political opposition, creating vortexes of violence and dangers of martyrdom in the name of stability.

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Notes

[1] Many Alexander videos have disappeared from the internet, and others are private access. The series “Shaman idet!” [Shaman on the Move], and “Put’ shamana,” [Shaman’s Path] are especially relevant, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1jE71TAqZw, July 22, 2019 (accessed 6/18/2021). Shaman idet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPrb_1nWXtE, June 12, 2019 was accessed when released and 3/19/2020. See also “Shaman protiv Putin” [Shaman vs. Putin], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfTEtiqDf6U, June 24, 2019 (accessed 7/3/2019); “Pochemu Kremlin ob”iavil voinu Shamanu—Grazhdanskaia oborona” [Why Did the Kremlin Fight the Shaman- Civil Defense] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7OVy2ROASQ  (accessed 3/15/2020); and Oleg Boldyrev’s BBC interview September 24, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0LaLhkKj2g  (accessed 3/15/2020).

[2] Alexander described plans for the aborted 2021 journey: youtube.com/watch?v=YK0LlFAjx3E (accessed 1/15/2021).  See also https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/01/12/yakut-shaman-alexander-gabyshev-announces-new-cross-country-campaign-on-horseback (accessed 6/4/2021).

[3] This Soviet and post-Soviet imprisonment comparison comes from brave opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, himself poisoned twice, in a human rights review for the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/heightened-political-repression-russia-conversation-vladimir-kara-murza (accessed 6/18/2021).  

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