Tribes navigating the U.S. lithium boom have little power to influence decisions on homelands seized from them. Governments in other countries have begun to build systems that offer stronger legal protections.

By Johanna Hansel, Carla Samon Ros, Wyatt Myskow

In the U.S., many Native American tribes maintain deep cultural and historical ties to ancestral lands outside of reservation boundaries. A 19th-century mining law still governs much of today’s lithium boom—and it doesn’t require the federal government to consult tribes before mining projects advance on these ancestral lands.

What the US Could Learn About Mining on Indigenous Peoples’ Ancestral Lands

More than 100 projects to mine for the metal powering the green-energy transition have been proposed in the U.S. alone.

By Johanna Hansel, Carla Samon Ros, Wyatt Myskow

There’s a global rush for new sources of lithium to power the green-energy transition, including a major push for mining the critical metal in the U.S. Columbia Journalism Investigations and Inside Climate News teamed up to track this development trend. Here’s how we collected and analyzed data on new lithium projects—and examined which communities may be most affected by them.

How We Tracked the Lithium Rush

Go behind the scenes with senior editor Michael Kodas, ICN reporter Wyatt Myskow and Columbia Journalism Investigations reporter Johanna Hansel as they discuss the complicated push to build up lithium mining in the United States.

By Wyatt Myskow

Today, just one lithium mine operates in the U.S. By 2030, at least six new projects are expected on American soil, with 13 more close behind, mostly in the dry Southwest.

Mining the Metal of the Future