<
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/04/copper-oak-flat-apache-stronghold-sacred-run-electric-car-batteries-green-energy/>
"For centuries, Western Apaches have considered Oak Flat a portal to their
creator, its springs holy and the acorns from its old-growth Emory oak trees a
source of sustenance. They collect medicinal plants there and use the mesa’s
meadows and overlooks for their most important rituals, including the sunrise
ceremony that marks a girl’s maturation into adulthood. During Nizhoni’s
ceremony, when she was 13, her godfather painted her with white clay taken from
Oak Flat so that she represented the “white painted woman who emerged from the
Earth in our creation stories,” she explains. “You’re covered in paint and
dancing, your eyes are closed, you’re trying to breathe through your nose, but
for me, it’s like I just gave all my trust into the ceremony,” she remembers.
Then her godmother wiped the clay off her eyes. “From that moment, you no
longer see the world as a girl—you see it as a woman.”
The San Carlos Apaches aren’t the only ones to revere Oak Flat; many other
tribes consider it hallowed ground. A sanctuary in a sea of punishing desert,
this rare riparian terrain is also home to several threatened and endangered
species, including southwestern willow flycatchers, hedgehog cacti, and
ocelots. Rock climbers and trail runners seek out its steep canyons and granite
boulders. In 1955, President Eisenhower designated 760 acres of Oak Flat as
public land to shield it from mining; during Nixon’s presidency, it landed on
the National Register of Historic Places.
But these protections were no match for prospectors, who, in 1995, discovered a
trove of copper. Rio Tinto, the British Australian mining conglomerate that is
Resolution Copper’s majority owner, began a decade-long lobbying campaign to
access the ore. In 2014, minutes ahead of a must-pass defense bill deadline,
John McCain and Jeff Flake, then Arizona’s Republican senators, inserted a
rider allowing Resolution Copper to trade acreage elsewhere in the state for
Oak Flat. (Rio Tinto affiliates had donated to McCain’s campaigns, and Flake
had once worked as a lobbyist for the company, the
New York Times reported.)
In January 2021, just as the Trump administration left office, the Forest
Service published a draft environmental impact statement making way for the
project."
Via Muse, who wrote "Rio Tinto has never genuinely changed policy since 2020
after blowing up a sacred Aboriginal site in Western Australia. Australians
need to help with this fight to stop Rio Tinto from destroying an Apache sacred
site in Oak Flat. It represents Rio Tinto’s insincerity and a willingness to
destroy more of Australia if it suits them."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
