![]() (The San Carlos Apache Tribe and a coalition of tribes and environmental groups have also sued the Forest Service over a flawed environmental protection process and lack of adequate tribal consultation. But that same month, Apache Stronghold sued the United States to halt the transfer on the grounds that the mine would inhibit the tribe’s religious freedom. was given 60 days to turn the land over to the mining company, as stipulated by the 2014 legislation. ![]() Forest Service completed a final environmental impact statement. In January 2021, five days before then-President Donald Trump left office, the U.S. “Rio Tinto destroyed a sacred site at Juukan Gorge because the laws allowed them to do it, and the people responsible for developing and overseeing those laws did not stop them,” Carol Meredith, the former chief executive of PKKP Aboriginal Corporation, told The Guardian last year. In the last few years alone, both BHP and Rio Tinto have admitted to damaging Aboriginal cultural sites during mining operations in Australia, in one case a 46,000-year-old cave system. The legislation was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama, notwithstanding the objections of tribal nations and coalitions, conservationists, retired miners and the nearby town of Superior, which cited the impacts that the mine and its sunken aftermath would have on the area’s landscape, wildlife and water supply. The legislation mandated a trade of 2,422 acres of Tonto National Forest land, which contained parts of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, for 5,460 acres of private land owned by Resolution Copper, a joint venture by international mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP. John McCain added a land exchange to a must-pass military appropriations bill. While the copper deposit - one of the largest in the world - was first detected in 1995, the current battle over the Resolution Mine was set into motion in 2014, when the late Arizona Sen. “As a practical matter, this sounds the death knell for all Native American religious practices that are tied to federal lands.” “If this decision holds up, then the law offers virtually no protection to Native American place-based religious exercise,” says Luke Goodrich, an attorney at Becket Law who represents Apache Stronghold in court. What is happening at Oak Flat exemplifies the larger struggle that tribes face over protecting off-reservation lands, caught between laws rooted in colonial ideology, an inactive Congress and an unpredictable Supreme Court. Still, the 9th Circuit's decision - which effectively admits that its hands are tied because Indigenous religious practices and cultures are not fully protected under current U.S. ![]() Should the appeal prove unsuccessful, separate lawsuits are pending, focused on environmental concerns and a renewed tribal consultation process with the Biden administration. The lawsuit hinged on arguments involving religious freedom and the First Amendment, and the fact that, if the mine is developed, Indigenous people will lose access to physical and cultural landscapes central to their way of life.Īpache Stronghold will now appeal to the Supreme Court - one strategy among the many that tribes, conservationists and others are employing to stop the mine. In late June, the Resolution Mine inched closer to reality when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a case brought by Apache Stronghold, a grassroots group of Apache tribal members and their allies. And for the past decade, a proposed copper mine has threatened to permanently alter the area through an underground mining technique that would cause the earth to sink, up to 1,115 feet deep and almost 2 miles across. Oak Flat - the ancestral homeland of numerous Southwestern tribal nations and pueblos - is currently managed by the United States federal government as Tonto National Forest. ![]() Spiky tufts of agave and cactus spring from ochre hillsides near the sites where the San Carlos Apache hold their coming-of-age ceremonies. In southeast Arizona, the flat-topped mesas and rocky spires of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel (known in English as Oak Flat) give way to grassy basins where Emory oak trees grow, shedding acorns every year that are collected by members of Western Apache and Yavapai tribes. ![]()
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