Who Controls the West? Prayer on Trial
Long-form reporting + photography · Sierra Nevada Ally · March 22, 2026
At the center of the conflict over Thacker Pass, or Peehee Mu’huh, is a fundamental disagreement over what land is, who has the authority to determine its future, and whose interests it should serve. For Dean Barlese, a spiritual elder of the Northern Paiute people, the landscape is not simply a site of mineral deposits or a resource in the transition to clean energy. It is sacred ground, bound to generations of cultural memory, spiritual practice and ancestral history.
I spent time with Barlese and followed protests in and around Reno to understand what was at stake beyond the competing arguments over lithium development. His efforts to protect the land are rooted in a much longer history, including the 1865 massacre at Thacker Pass and the ongoing struggle to protect Indigenous cultural sites and sovereignty. Through Barlese's story and the broader public debate surrounding the mine, the article examines the tensions between federal energy priorities, environmental protection and the rights of Indigenous communities to determine the future of their ancestral lands.
Rather than treating the conflict as a simple contest between competing visions of the West, the reporting seeks to understand the histories and values informing those visions—and what gets lost when decisions about land are made without reckoning with the people whose lives, identities and histories are inseparable from it.
The published story:
Who Controls the West? Prayer on Trial
An exploration of Dean Barlese's fight to protect sacred Thacker Pass and the deeper questions of sovereignty, faith and land at the center of the conflict.
Read at Sierra Nevada Ally →
