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