Memoriam is an expansion of the series Kith & Kin, a series of illustrations about Peehee Mu’huh (Thacker Pass), Nevada. ​Currently, Peehee Mu’huh is being excavated and will become the largest open-pit lithium mine in North America. In addition to the development in Nevada, new mining explorations are occurring right across the state line in Southeastern Oregon. Lithium, a silvery white element, is a primary ingredient in the batteries needed to electrify the world. A transition away from fossil fuels is, on the surface, a noble and necessary effort. But digging deeper, one would find the highly extractive process required to obtain lithium is not as “clean” as is advertised. In fact, the process is not life-centered in the least, and is part of a new wave of green colonialism.

 

This delicate high desert sagebrush steppe ecosystem has been home to many unique creatures for millennia. It is the ancestral homeland of the Fort McDermitt Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock peoples, serving as a hunting and burial ground, obsidian collection site, and a corridor for travel. Two massacres of the original peoples have occurred here, including one perpetrated by the U.S. Cavalry on September 12, 1865, in which elders, women, and children were murdered while hunters were away. Their bodies are buried within and remembered by this landscape.

 

Memoriam deviates from early iterations of the project. Originally, drawings of the residents of Peehee Mu’huh were steeped in the style of scientific illustration, influenced by my coursework in college as an Environmental Studies major. Over time, they became more interpretive, decorative mosaic portraits. Most recently, these portraits employ memory and imagination, rather than live or photo references.

 

Memory is a means to talk about absence and that which lives on inside of us. The disruption of the landscape and the erasure of uniquely adapted cultures of Peehee Mu’huh is explored through negative space. Memoriam invites you to reflect on the rapidly developing and changing world and to grieve the losses underway. It is also an invitation to celebrate the many colorful, diverse residents of Peehee Mu’huh and to inspire creative action and resistance to industrial greenwashing.