The comment from Sue Slaughter are the most concerning to me. I dont know how we went from being viewed as one of the more green, carbon neutral clean sources of lithium, to being seen as "pushing Indigenous tribes out" or "poisoning their water". LAC really needs to be engaging these Indigenous groups in a meaningful way to change that perception so that they offer real commitments to them and possibly even compensate them in some way if appropriate (perhaps some of this is already happening that I am not aware of).  In today's internet social media climate, when these types of narratives start taking flight big "woke" corporations have a lot of pressure to not associate with 3rd party companies/suppliers that are perceived and not doing things responsibly.

Here's her quote at the very end of the article:

“Indigenous tribes being pushed out or their water being poisoned or any of those types of issues, we just don’t want to be party to that,” said Sue Slaughter, Ford’s purchasing director for supply chain sustainability. “We really want to force the industries that we’re buying materials from to make sure that they’re doing it in a responsible way. As an industry, we are going to be buying so much of these materials that we do have significant power to leverage that situation very strongly. And we intend to do that.”