Oak Flats – Apache Stronghold Site Visit
The ISSRNC’s 2023 After Earth? Conference concluded with a group field trip to Oak Flat, the site of a struggle over a proposed copper mine near the town of Superior, AZ. Called Chi’chil Bilgagoteel, this place is sacred to the Apache people and is imperiled by a controversial addendum to a 2014 defense spending bill that gave the land to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the international mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. This copper mine would be one of the largest in the United States and would desecrate a sacred site, disrupt public recreation, and allow toxic waste to seep into regional hydrologic systems.
Wendsler Nosie speaks to university students and teachers at the Oak Flat campground. ©Molly Peters / Courtesy of the Apache Stronghold.
Conference attendees listened to Wendsler Nosie Jr., former Chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and founder of Apache Stronghold, the Native organization leading the fight to protect this beautiful place. Nosie spoke of his decades of activism working to protect Mother Earth and the ancestral territories of the Apache people, dating back to his involvement in efforts to block the Vatican Observatory and the University of Arizona from building several large telescopes atop Mount Graham in the 1980s. He also shared stories about his attempts to win allies in state and federal government and the organization’s partnership with faith groups, including the Poor People’s Campaign.
Apache Stronghold’s prioritize a spiritual approach to protecting Oak Flat, an area intimately linked to Apache creation stories, ceremonial activities, as well as significant to the ecological health the entire region. Conference attendees learned firsthand from Nosie about the latest developments in the religious freedom lawsuit against the U.S. Government. After an 2022 ruling against Apache Stronghold at the Ninth District Circuit Court, a majority of judges on that court have now recalled the case, which will be reheard in March 2023.
