"A Nevada federal judge on Friday rejected a legal effort by the Winnemucca Indian Colony to join a lawsuit attempting to stop a lithium mining project at Thacker Pass, a religiously and culturally significant area considered sacred to the tribe.

Also last week, Department of Interior attorneys urged the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reject tribal concerns and allow the mine developer to excavate as planned."

https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2022/03/15/federal-judg-rejects-nv-tribes-attempt-to-join-lithium-mine-suit/

What a pleasant surprise that the Dept. of the Interior took that position.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting Interior to be accomodating to that degree.  

The Secretary of the Interior has a lengthy set of "Standards and Guidelines":

 Secretary of the Interior's Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic Preservation

https://www.nps.gov/articles/series.htm?id=62144687-B082-538A-A0174FFF26496394

Deb Haaland is our current Secretary of the Interior.  Some bio:

https://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/2021/04/15/deb-haaland-secretary-of-the-interior/

I presumed that her background might involve a cultural bias (that might possibly be reflected in her official decisions) against any mining company that had a litigation where the plaintiff was a Native American Tribe or Tribes.

As per Wikipedia:  "In April 2021, Haaland announced a new unit within Bureau of Indian Affairs that plans to tackle the decades-long crisis of missing and murdered Native Americans, saying, "We are fully committed to assisting Tribal communities with these investigations, and the MMU will leverage every resource available to be a force-multiplier in preventing these cases from becoming cold case investigations".[64]

The current litigation against LAC's proposed Thacker Pass Project involves a Native American tribal claim that the area contested in the litigation is the site of a massacre of Native Americans dating to an event in 1865.

The following quote, below, is from an article by Scott Sonner published in October of 2021 and titled:  New evidence proves massacre was at Nevada mine site.

"Tribal lawyers are asking a U.S. judge in Nevada to reconsider her earlier refusal to block digging at a proposed lithium mine near the Oregon line where they say newly uncovered evidence proves it was the sacred site of a massacre of dozens of Native Americans in 1865.

The new motion filed in federal court in Reno includes an 1865 newspaper report and two eyewitness accounts of how at least 31 Paiute men, women and children were “murdered by federal soldiers” at Thacker Pass."

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/05/tribes-new-evidence-proves-massacre-was-at-nevada-mine-site/

The full Wikipedia bio on Secretary Haaland is informative in regards to any possibility of 

bias that might guide her decions in relationship to the Thacker Pass Project in particular:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_Haaland

So, it is within the context of the background of the present Secretary of the Interior that I, personally, was surprised to see:   "Department of Interior attorneys urged the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reject tribal concerns"

I would like to read more about the official opinion of the Department of the Interior 

in the matter of its decision to urge the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reject tribal concerns.

The members of this Hub are fastidious in their research efforts, so.. who has more information about the Dept of the Interiors deliberations and decision making in this matter?  Please share it here on this Hub.  Thanks!

Okiedo