Explaining Oak Flat, a Native sacred site at risk from proposed copper mine

EarthBeat Weekly
Your weekly newsletter about faith and climate change

July 7, 2023

Apache religious symbols are posted at Oak Flat Campground, a sacred site for Native Americans located 70
miles east of Phoenix, on June 3, 2023, in Miami, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ty O'Neil)

For nearly a decade, the fate of Chi'chil Bildagoteel, or Oak Flat, has been up in the air.

Native Americans consider Oak Flat — a 6.7-square-mile oasis on the edge of Arizona's Tonto National Forest about 70 miles outside Phoenix — as a sacred place, one used for prayer and healing sweat lodge ceremonies, and where Apache women perform coming-of-age rituals. The land is also the site of a proposed massive copper mine — targeting the world's third-largest deposit of a metal critical for electric vehicles and cell phones — that supporters say will provide the state with thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue, while opponents argue it will drastically damage the desert environment and ultimately destroy Oak Flat into a crater.

The standoff over Oak Flat awaits a new environmental impact statement, and with it, a ruling from the full 9th District Court of Appeals, which is considering a request by the group Apache Stronghold to permanently halt the copper project. This week, reporters with The Associated Press have examined the debate from various perspectives of the people and communities involved: Native tribes, Resolution Copper Mining and the surrounding towns.

In one article, Alejandra Molina spoke with Native communities about Oak Flat's spiritual and cultural significance. Wendsler Nosie Sr., leader of Apache Stronghold told her that the 2014 land swap deal in Congress that put Oak Flat in peril effectively declared that "the water, the air, the environment here in Oak Flat, they are all dead. … What we've done is given life back to it. It's getting CPR right now through the religion."

Their backers, including a coalition of religious liberty advocates, say the law favors the Apache and other Native peoples to determine when land becomes sacred. Destroying Oak Flat, they add, would be akin to obliterating the Vatican or demolishing the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site in Mecca.

Read more about how Native Americans view Oak Flat and their fears for its possible destruction in: Mining plans endanger Arizona's Oak Flat, sacred land to some Native Americans.

Meanwhile, some people in the nearby town of Superior, population 3,000, view the construction of one of the world's largest underground copper mines as their chance for an economic rebound. As Anita Snow reports, the longtime mining town saw the Magma copper mine close twice in the 1980s and 1990s. More than a quarter of residents live below the poverty line, and many of the population are Hispanic descendants from mining families who immigrated from Mexico or lived there when the region was still part of that country.

"It's in our DNA," Rick Cartier, president of the chamber of commerce, told the AP.

Read more on the views of others in the mining town and their hopes for the proposed copper mine to revitalize their community in: Historic Arizona mining town backs copper project on Native American's sacred land.

And for a timeline of events around the Resolution Copper Mine and Oak Flat, read: Oak Flat timeline: Native American vs. pro-mining interests.

Mine shafts nine, right, and 10, left, tower over the Resolution Copper Mining Company facility, Friday, June 9, 2023, in Miami, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

What else is new on EarthBeat:

How my Catholic faith and Mohawk heritage teach me to embrace sustainable living
For Shauna'h Fuegen, the publication of Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home" has been an opportunity to explore the intersection of two important elements of her life: her Catholic faith and her experience as a Mohawk woman. "We cannot stop the climate crisis without confronting change within our hearts and habits," she writes, "which can be challenging and inconvenient. Yet Laudato Si' is both an invitation to revolution as well as to stillness. We are called to quiet reflection and prayer alongside embracing that reformation." This essay is part of a series focused on the goals of the Laudato Si' Action Platform from speakers at the 2023 "Laudato Si' and the U.S. Catholic Church" conference. See the full series here.

Contradiction, infinity, divinity live in 'A Green Crab's Shell'
Poetry helps us to locate ourselves in the world, says Ray Levy Uyeda, and for her, Mark Doty's "A Green Crab's Shell" is a road map to the infinite within us. But more than self-location, poetry can offer a way of identifying the world by shrinking and expanding it, in the case of Doty's 13-tercet poem, through the shell of a dead green crab.

What's happening in other climate news:

Earth hit an unofficial record high temperature this week — and stayed there —Seth Borenstein and Melina Walling for The Associated Press

These climate advocates don't care about your carbon footprint. They care about whether you vote. —Claire Elise Thompson for Grist

We're building things based on a climate we no longer live in —Thomas Frank for E&E News via Scientific American

Spending bill targets Kerry's office, global climate spending —David Jordan for Roll Call

A Climate Laggard in America's Industrial Heartland Has a Plan to Change, Fast —Coral Davenport for The New York Times

Q&A: Kate Beaton Describes the Toll Taken by Alberta's Oil Sands on Wildlife and the Workers Who Mine the Viscous Crude —Jenni Doering for Living on Earth via Inside Climate News

How is extreme weather testing China's climate resilience? —Reuters

Final Beat:

There was a lot to unpack in last week's big survey from Pew Research Center on the views of Americans on climate change and clean energy. From the Catholic perspective, the headline was certainly the larger levels of support among the 2,000 polled Catholics (about one-fifth of the total 10,000 U.S. adults) for expanding offshore oil and gas drilling, coal mining and fracking — perhaps a sign that Pope Francis' ecological messages have not yet taken root in the U.S. church, or are being rejected.

But looking at Americans overall, the survey also revealed a notable dichotomy, of a country open to a future powered by renewables — 82% and 75% supportive of expanded solar and wind power, respectively, and 61% favoring requiring power plants to eliminate all carbon emissions by 2040 — but also somewhat hesitant to adopt them in their own homes just yet. Half of surveyed U.S. adults said they were unlikely to consider an electric vehicle with their next car purchase, 3-in-10 have given serious consideration to installing solar panels and even fewer have contemplated switching to an electric or induction stove (7%), an electric heat hump (11%) or an electric water heater (11%).

That's despite each of those energy upgrades being eligible for tax incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law last summer. Maybe like Laudato Si' and U.S. Catholics, perhaps the poll shows that Americans have yet to fully familiarize with, or embrace, the programs included in the major climate law. How the IRA's energy incentives — a key component for U.S. climate goals — are adopted is a story we'll continue to follow, especially campaigns aiming to bring faith communities on board.

Stephanie Clary will be back at the EarthBeat Weekly helm next week. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Brian Roewe
Environment Correspondent
National Catholic Reporter
broewe@ncronline.org