1:09
The group Apache Stronghold filed a federal lawsuit against the Forest Service this week along with a lien and restraining order. It’s all aimed at preventing the agency from releasing the final environmental impact statement for the mine, which would begin the process of transferring ownership of Oak Flat to the company Rio Tinto.
Apache Stronghold argues the federal government is violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the San Carlos Apache Tribe’s rights to religious freedom and due process. The bottom line is, this is a sacred place. You can’t tamper with a sacred place, says Wendsler Nosie, a former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and leader of the group. If this goes through then all these sacred places that means so much to all of us will be gone.
John McCain’s Apache Land Grab Is Finally Happening
The fight for a copper deposit beneath sacred lands shows the extent of the government’s extractive greed.
Eric Thayer/Getty Images
In 2014, the late Senator John McCain quietly slid a dagger into the backside of the Arizona tribal nations he was ostensibly elected to represent. Deep in an appropriations package for military funding, McCain tacked on a rider, known as Section 3003. The rider accomplished what the Arizona Republican had been trying to do through standalone legislation since 2005 hand over 2,400 acres of sacred Apache lands to the mining company Rio Tinto, which has long eyed an area known in the English tongue as Oak Flat for the massive deposits of copper that rest miles beneath its surface. Speaking with the
San Carlos Apache Tribe Sues US Forest Service to Stop Resolution Copper Mine
News provided by
Share this article
Share this article
SAN CARLOS, Ariz., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ The San Carlos Apache Tribe filed a federal lawsuit late Thursday seeking to stop the U.S. Forest Service from transferring sacred tribal land at
Chich il Bildagoteel, or Oak Flat, to two foreign multi-national mining companies planning to construct the Resolution Copper Mine.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court of Arizona one day before the Forest Service released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) earlier today. The publication of the FEIS triggers a 60-day window where 2,422 acres of Tonto National Forest, including 760 acres at Oak Flat, must be exchanged with land owned by Rio Tinto PLC and BHP Copper Inc. Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property.