Often, mining companies don’t work with tribes. This one is different | Opinion
The relationship between tribal nations and mining companies has long been defined more by conflict than collaboration. Decisions affecting tribal homelands have historically been made without opportunities for our meaningful involvement. Generations of this lived experience have created a distrust that I have spent almost two decades of my career navigating from both sides of the table.
Before serving as the chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, I spent 21 years in the United States Marine Corps. After leaving the military and earning degrees in business, marketing and international relations, I became interested in learning how I could serve my people by helping Tribes navigate the complex and contentious landscape of natural resource development. I believed the best way to see a change was by understanding the mining industry from the inside. I spent 15 years working for a major mining company in Nevada, where I led mine environmental compliance efforts and established the company’s Native American Affairs program.
That experience gave me a firsthand understanding of how mines are developed and permitted. More importantly, it showed me that relationships between tribes and industry break down because tribes are brought into conversations only after major project decisions have been made, leaving no room for us to advocate for our rights, culture and goals.
That is where the approach taken at the proposed DeLamar Mine, located on the ancestral homelands of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes in Owyhee County, is different.
As the DeLamar Project enters the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permitting process, it does so with an unprecedented relationship agreement between a mining company and a tribal nation in place. In August 2025, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes and Integra Resources entered a first-of-its-kind partnership in the lower 48, designed to reaffirm the tribes’ sovereignty with respect to the DeLamar Project.
Integra Resources began working alongside the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes long before formal consultation with our government was required. Over the past 5 years, Integra and our members have worked collaboratively on cultural resource monitoring, tribal-led cultural studies, long-term stewardship plans, project co-design and management principles. These efforts recognize that tribal nations carry generations of cultural knowledge and historical connections that should not be treated as an afterthought in land-use planning.
The partnership also recognizes that tribal sovereignty includes our right to economic self-determination. Many people do not realize that Tribal governments often operate very differently from surrounding communities. Tribal nations do not benefit from the same property tax structures and economic systems that many local governments rely on, making sustainable, tribally controlled revenue opportunities especially important for supporting infrastructure, health services, and economic development.
As outlined in the relationship agreement, the proposed DeLamar Mine would create economic opportunities for tribally owned businesses, provide a seat for the tribes at the decision-making table at Integra through equity ownership, and provide future benefit-sharing opportunities that would help support long-term investment in the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes to strengthen our ability to invest in our kids and elders, our community and our future.
That future includes preserving the language, culture and identity that connect our young people to who they are. This is why the agreement includes a comprehensive approach to supporting language revitalization programs, which recognizes that preserving our language is inseparable from preserving our culture and identity.
Too often, conversations about mining and tribal nations begin with the assumption that conflict is inevitable. That history is real, and the distrust that has been created is completely justified. But the agreement between the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes and Integra demonstrates that a different outcome is possible when authentic collaboration efforts are established early in the process, giving tribes a real role in both shaping and benefitting from select projects on their homelands.
As we collectively come to terms with how each of us utilizes these resources in modern day life — the question in my mind is can it be done responsibly with the environment, in a way that respects tribal sovereignty, ensuring we have a real voice in the decisions affecting our homelands and creating long-term solutions rooted in mutual benefit for the communities most connected to the land.
This should be the standard, not the exception.
Brian Mason is chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation and has served in tribal leadership since 2020. A retired U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Mason previously worked in environmental management and Native American affairs, bringing decades of experience in Tribal engagement, natural resource development and economic development.