I’m visiting San Carlos today watching
an environmental impact statement about the proposed copper mine on sacred Apache land at Oak Flat. There is a long legacy of settlers polluting Apache communities.

From a story @nigelduara and I worked on in 2017: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-agent-orange-arizona-2017-story.html

The U.S. tested defoliant sprays here on the San Carlos Reservation before using them in the Vietnam War, at the time more of a P.O.W. camp than a sovereign nation. Children would come out and play under the planes spraying chemicals—the sprays created rainbow refractions.

Today at the Apache Tribal Council meeting, Tonto National Forest representatives are presenting analysis from a draft environmental impact statement about Resolution Copper’s plan to mine at #OakFlat. This doesn’t even come close to conveying what is at stake religiously.

The Tonto National Forest study primarily looks at what to do with the toxic tailings from the copper mine. The mine is projected to produce 1.5 billion tons of waste. A pile 500 feet tall. A 50 story building. A 6 square mile area. No existing mine pits could contain it.

At #OakFlat, after about 41 years of block mining, the subsidence crater will be a 800-1000 ft. deep pit two miles across.

This mine land-exchange was approved under a midnight rider attached by Senators McCain and Flake (a former Rio Tinto lobbyist) to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act in December 2014. They each received campaign contributions from mining conglomerates.

Members of Apache Stronghold are here in attendance. Chich’il Biłdagoteel, or #OakFlat, is a sacred place where Apache people are said to have emerged from the earth. It is a place to gather medicine and hold coming of age ceremonies among other religious purposes.

The tribe’s concerns also include protection of ground water and over-committed Salt River Valley water supply for agriculture (a regional concern for everyone facing climate change in the desert). The mining company has already been pumping the aquifer at Oak Flat since 2009.

Water quality is also threatened from the copper tailings. “It could be sorta bad or really bad,” a Tonto National Forest rep says. The mining permit requires they don’t violate water quality standards, but levels of lead WILL go up downstream and still be within the standards.

There are other chemicals present in the runoff that the mining permit doesn’t even require the company to monitor.

Apache Chairman Terry Rambler reminds the room that when minerals were discovered on Apache land before the U.S. went to war with the five bands, the media portrayed the Apache as savages and the U.S. used soldiers to forcibly remove Apache people from their ancestral land.

Councilman Jonathan Kitcheyan asks how can the U.S. legislate religion. The Apache way of religion is in the mountains, and he reminds those in attendance that that doesn’t have to include a structure or a church to be a place of worship, to significant applause from the room.

Councilwoman Bernadette Goode: “It saddens me to see the desecration of our native lands”, speaks about the impacts of losing connection to sacred places of religious gathering, the detriments to the health of people who work in and live near the mines. “The fight is not over.”

Councilman Tao Etpison: “I’m happy to hear the council in support of fighting for Oak Flats. That means we still believe in who we are..continue to fight for what’s ours. Our land is all here in Arizona. This is Apache land.”

“Why was the American Indian Religious Freedom Act ignored?” Sandra Rambler, former tribal secretary, columnist for the Apache Messenger said. “They want us to go by the San Pedro river to gather acorns, perform ceremonies instead of Oak Flat. There’re no acorns there.”

The Apache Tribal Council unanimously votes (with one member missing today) to approve a resolution to continue to oppose Resolution Copper and the proposed mine at Oak Flat.