“If I can but have trips to whip away the Apaches…you will, without the shadow of a doubt, find that our country has mines of the precious metals, unsurpassed in richness, number, and extent by any in the world.“ These words from Brigadier General James Carleton to his superiors in Washington may have been written in 1863 but they continue to play out today at a place called Chi'chil Biłdagoteel, or Oak Flat for us English speakers, in what is today Arizona.
For the Apache and other Native American people Oak Flat has been a sacred place since time immemorial; a place to pray, a place to collect medicinal plants, food and water, a place to perform religious ceremony, a place where their ancestors rest.
Today this place of immense cultural and religious significance is threatened by copper mining. If Resolution Copper (a “US” subsidiary of foreign mining corporations created solely for this project) has their way, Oak Flat will be turned into a crater 1,000 feet deep and nearly 2 miles wide. Just as General Carleton promised “precious metals, unsurpassed in richness,” Resolution Copper promises their mine will be the largest in US history.
Included with Carleton’s message were nuggets of gold. “Please give the largest piece of gold to Mr. Lincoln,” he wrote. “It will gratify him to know that Providence is blessing our country.”
Gold may have fallen out of favor as the medium for greasing political wheels but the practice hasn’t disappeared. Resolution Copper has spent millions on lobbying and campaign contributions in recent years to make this project go through. Arizona Rep Rick Renzi was even convicted on 17 counts of bribery and money laundering in connection with the deal. He was eventually pardoned by Trump.
After nearly a decade of unsuccessful attempts to pass legislation that would allow mining at Oak Flat (it's been protected on the National Registry of Historic Places since Eisenhower’s administration) Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake snuck a provision into the must pass 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that would give the land to Resolution Copper and wave all environmental and cultural protections.
It seemed that the deal would go through as soon as an environmental impact statement was released. Despite its immense importance to both, the nature of this federal legislation meant that neither environmental nor cultural or archeological challenges would be heard in court. The Apache leaders defending Oak Flat felt they had but one avenue left: a challenge on religious grounds. Today the case remains in the hands of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as they decide whether or not the freedom of religion clause of the US constitution protects traditional Native access to land that has been essential to their spiritual practice.
As the fight continued Wendsler Nosie, former chairman of the San Carlos Apache and founder of the group Apache Stronghold, decided he had had enough of waiting and that he had had enough of generations in exile to the San Carlos reservation. He decided to “go home” to Oak Flat to live and to pray and to be with the land as the fight continues.
This is how I found myself living in a tent 1,300 miles away from my family on Thanksgiving this year. Through a partnership with the Coalition to DIsmantle the Doctrine of Discovery and Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) an accompaniment program was started with the hopes to create a continual presence on the land and support for Nosie until the fight is won.
I, probably like most reading these words, don’t get too terribly excited for the myth of Thanksgiving. Though I recognize its origin story as “a feel-good narrative that rationalizes and justifies the uninvited settlement of a foreign people by painting a picture of an organic friendship,” (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker in All the Real Indians Died Off: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans), I missed being with the ones I love nonetheless.
But as I sat there eating my canned tomato soup for dinner I couldn’t help but feel I was in the right place. The Indians aren’t all gone and despite the simplistic tales we learned in grade school they aren’t happy to have us come and take their land.
As Nosie reminds anyone with the heart to listen again and again, this is a fight for all of us. It is a fight for what kind of future we want: one where land and history are considered worthwhile or one where the profits of mining companies reign supreme. It is a fight to defend our home, a fight to protect groundwater and rock climbing and to prevent millions of tons of poisoned waste from being left for future generations. And it is a fight for the right to form a spiritual connection with the land, to consider it sacred.
The courts have granted Resolution Copper the right to join the US government in the legal contest against Apache Stronghold and Oak Flat. It makes the realities of these battles explicit. The US government is on the side of giant corporations and both are against the just and sustainable world we hope to see.
Though it might cost us time or money or repute, those of us who've benefited from theft and genocide have a particular responsibility to join this fight, not just out of moral obligation but because we have a stake in this battle too.
“We’re at that turning point right now, this very moment. If we don’t do the right thing beginning now, there’s no turning back from the damages of the decisions we’ve made and the capitalist way of thinking,” Noise has said.
“We’re talking about the spirit of Earth and its survival.”
Theo Kayser is currently banned from Europe for protesting nukes. He’s been a part of the Los Angeles, Cherith Brook, and Karen House Catholic Worker Communities. Theo co-hosts the Coffee with Catholic Workers podcast, is the Catholic Worker page editor at Geez magazine, and can be found online at @theo_the_catholic_worker.
People often feel guilty about their ancestors killing all those Indians years ago. But they shouldn't feel guilty about the distant past. Recent years have seen a more devious but hardly less successful war waged against the Indian communities. -Vine Deloria Jr.
