Nikki Hill with Sigh Moon on Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine

The Ground Shots Podcast

Episode #69 of the Ground Shots Podcast was recorded in southern Oregon this past August among old Juniper trees tucked just below a special Tableland mesa, with Nikki Hill of Walking Roots, and Sigh Moon assisting in the conversation.

Link to our website where you can donate to the podcast, and find the blog post on the podcast episode with photos and bios of Nikki and Sigh Moon as well as a few photos from where we recorded the episode: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/lithiummine

We talk about:

• What is a tableland or mesa?

• Nikki’s intention in doing survey work at Thacker Pass, a place in Nevada slated to become a large lithium mine

• Questioning the sustainability of lithium

• Seeing wild gardens and patterns on the landscape that reflect historical relationships of indigenous peoples and places

• How deserts have been hard for European ancestored folks to conceptualize and how this makes it easy for us to consider it a wasteland to be inverted to perpetuate modern culture

• Considering certain lands sacrifice zones comes from the idea that we are separate from land and that we can actually have an effect

• the effects of private land ownership on the water table and water flows on land

• seeing through a lens of botanical archaeology

• how archaeology is often focused on ‘settled’ life evidence not nomadic life evidence

• how do we start to re-see why plants are on the landscape in relationship to human historical tending of those plants?

• the misinformed idea that hunter-gatherers (gatherer-hunters) were not sophisticated in their tending

• what is the point in caring about anthropogenic landscapes?

• Nikki’s plant survey process at Thacker Pass in Nevada and some of the plants she found like Yampah, Biscuitroots, Mariposa Lilies and more.

Links:

Nikki’s Website: Walking Roots

Counterpunch article by Nikki: “Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine’

Nikki’s instagram page: walking.roots

Sigh Moon’s Instagram page: tenderwildeyes

Sigh Moon’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmu0A77ja3o8DZ32ttOsIA/videosSave

Thacker Pass Campaign website

‘The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature’ book by Evan Eisenberg, a book I read in college on critical ecology that feels relevant to this episode

“The Void, The Grid & The Sign: Traversing The Great Basin” by William Fox, all about concepts of void and land value in the Great Basin Desert, a fascinating book

“1491” and “1493” by Charles Mann, alternative histories to North and South America mentioning anthropogenic landscapes including ‘terra preta’ in the Amazon, mentioned on the podcast

Save Oak Flat and the Apache Stronghold Campaign

Angela Moles Ground Shots Podcast interview mentioned on the podcast: Episode #57: Gabe Crawford interviews Angela Moles P.h.D. on the rapid evolutionary responses of plants due to climate change, challenging scientific dogma

Past episodes of the podcast featuring Nikki Hill:

Episode #31: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on the basics of wild-tending

Episode #33: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on re-thinking the concept of invasive plants

Episode #59: Is there such a thing as an "Invasive Species"? A conversation with Matt Chew Ph.d. hosted by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford

Music for this episode: Reverie, Spires and The Undergrowth by Juniper Blue This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody