Page 16 - The NOISE November 2015

is oAK FlAt “sACred?”
Amidst the desert canyons one hour east of Phoenix, a collection of tents, canopies and RVs rest in the day’s fading light. Sandra Rambler, who has a relative buried close to where she is standing, is speaking to two visitors of the San Carlos Apache camp, her voice quavering, tears welling in her eyes as she describes a recent ceremony.
“Drums were beating. It was a message to all the spirits right here. They all came here and they danced. There were so many people. They were dancing everywhere. You could hear their bells, you could hear the connection. The message from Mother Earth to our Creator. And that’s why we’re here. That’s who we are. That’s our identity. We are Apache.”
Ms. Rambler is one of many San Carlos Apache who are participating in this occupation of Oak Flat, an area not only popular for camping and recreation, but also purportedly sacred to the tribe. The land was traded away to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of a foreign mining giant, in a provision slipped into 2015’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by Arizona senators John McCain and Jeff Flake. The tribal members and supporters have vowed to remain at the site in defiance of the deal.
Deep underneath the rocky landscape lies the heart of this conflict: the largest copper reserve in the nation, potentially worth more than 10 billion dollars. Mr. McCain argues Oak Flat has not been federally designated as a sacred site. There isn’t even total agreement between tribal members as to whether the land can technically be considered “sacred.”
Ms. Rambler’s mother, Audrey Johnson, recalls picking acorns and medicinal herbs at the site with her family. She claims her mother and grandfather had always referred to the site as sacred. “I’m79yearsoldnow,goingon80,”Ms.Johnsonsaid.“Icamefromagoodfamily,medicinepeople.
These newcomers in the Apache tribe saying this is not sacred, they don’t know.”
Former tribal Chairwoman Kathy Kitcheyan currently claims the site does not deserve the designation. “Growing up I never heard it was sacred, not from my parents, grandparents,
aunts, uncles, nor the spiritual leaders,” Ms. Kitcheyan recently wrote in a public statement. But tribal members occupying Oak Flat note this is completely contradictory to her previous stance, which changed soon after her daughter, Tara Kitcheyan, was hired as a senior advisor for Resolution Copper.
Ms. Kitcheyan had previously gone so far as to appear at a 2006 public hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. to deliver a tribal resolution opposing the mining, releasing a public statement soon afterward reading: “Our position is simple and straightforward. For the Apaches, this area, which includes Oak Flat campground and Apache Leap, belongs to the Gaan, who are our sacred Crown dancers. Since time immemorial, we have found refuge there and gathered precious medicinal herbs and traditional food there. Our goal is to protect those sites from potential ruin. Once they are lost, they can never be regained. Our people will not sacrifice our ancestors’ legacy and our children’s future for political expediency of moving legislation forward that does not protect these sites.”
The legislation Ms. Kitcheyan referred to in her testimony was one of a dozen previous attempts by various Arizona legislators over the course of a decade to trade the land away to mining companies. The efforts often brought together unlikely forces, such as Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick and Tea Party favorite Paul Gosar. Each time the attempts failed. This was largely due to a coalition of organizations committed to fighting the deals, including Earth Works, Arizona Mining Reform, Sierra Club and others.
With the town of Superior less than three miles away, Resolution initially offered what it claimed was a mutually beneficial legal agreement for zoning, property and decision-making. By 2013, Superior had officially refused the offer. In a letter to Resolution Copper, they claimed certain articles of the agreement “may constitute an unlawful delegation of our legislative authority,” “may constitute illegal contract zoning under Arizona law,” and Resolution’s legal loophole to opt out of the agreement at any time “renders the entire agreement illusory and unfair to the Town of Superior.”
In the same year, the Deputy Director of the Bureau of Land Management refused to support legislation trading Oak Flat to Resolution because it “requires the Forest Service to prepare an environmental review document under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) after the land exchange is completed rather than in advance of the exchange,” and over concerns Resolution may have failed to “engage in meaningful government-to-government consultation with interested Indian tribes, and to protect and preserve sites sacred to Native Americans.”
Roy Chavez, who previously served as mayor of Superior and is currently Chairperson of Concerned Citizens & Retired Miners Coalition, has actually worked in the mine now owned by Resolution. While he is not opposed to mining in general, he is strongly opposed to “block cave mining,” the particular method that is planned for use in the Oak Flat area.
story And photo by j. KendAll perKinson
Rather than filling in excavated tunnels with waste material (formerly standard practice), block cave mining brings all material to the surface, where approximately one percent is expected to be comprised of copper. These empty tunnels sink and collapse, depressing the ground, a process called “subsidence” in the mining industry. He says the sheer volume of earth moved by this process will ecologically devastate the area, comparing the expected subsidence to the meteor crater 30 miles east of Flagstaff.
“When we worked there, we were pulling about 5,000 tons a day,” Mr. Chavez said. “They’re projected to do 160,000 plus tons a day. By their numbers, we’re sitting on the edge of a two and a half mile, 1,000-foot deep crater. You could literally place two or three meteor craters inside of it.”
To counter these claims, proponents of the land swap — which include the nearby city of Globe, Pinal County and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce — claim economic incentives outweigh any such costs to the land itself. Mr. McCain points out the area in question is one of the most impoverished in Arizona, and says the project “has the potential to utterly transform these communities.”
Mr. Chavez indicates economics are definitely important to consider, but doing so shouldn’t convince anyone the land swap is a good idea. He says mining has been a part of this region of Arizona for many years, and it has never improved financial fortunes for nearby residents.
“Grupo Mexico operates the smelter in Hayden and the pit in Kearney,” Mr. Chavez said. “A couple of years ago they claimed over 9 billion dollars in profit, but these communities are dying on the vine. We’re only graduating twenty-something kids from [Superior] high school. Hayden is lucky if they stay in the teens for graduation. They’re contemplating closing their high school. If the industry had its way, they would love for the entire communities to pick up camp and leave. ”
Mr. Chavez also points to the increasingly optimistic claims made by Resolution and Mr. McCain, suggesting the public can’t even keep track of them, much less whether they are accurate. “We never know what numbers are going to come out on any given day. When they initially came and talked to me, they said there would be 400 jobs. Then it went to 800. Then a year later it was 1,200. Then it went up to 2,400. Now Paul Gosar and Mr. McCain are talking about 4,000 jobs,” Mr. Chavez said.
Mining taxes paid by companies to the state are distributed to Arizona cities by population, leaving small towns where mines are located without much compensation. Additionally, there are concerns about the future of copper markets, which peaked in 2011 and have plummeted by about 50% since. Assuming copper extracted from Oak Flat is marketable, it will likely be sold directly to China before being resold in the US.
When President Eisenhower first granted Oak Flat protection from mining operations in 1955, it was to ensure an act of Congress would be required to disturb the site. After failing to secure the support of Congress to overturn protected status for a decade, Arizona’s elected officials finally figured out a virtually assured way to do so without public debate. Even if members of congress actually read all riders tacked on to NDAA (there is good reason to believe they do not), no elected official would hold up a military budget for a few miles of
desert they’d never heard of.
Arizona’s legislators were paid handsomely for their efforts. Rio Tinto, foreign parent company
of Resolution Copper, has spent $800,000 annually to lobby for the previously failed legislation. Both representatives Ann Kirkpatrick and John McCain were top recipients of the company’s campaign contributions. Jeff Flake worked directly as a lobbyist for the company.
State Congressman Raul Grijalva has introduced legislation, the Save Oak Flat Act, to nullify the land swap, and with the national attention the story is receiving, it just might be successful. He cites the deal as just another mile marker along a historical path of the seizure of Native holy land:
“What our elders always tell us is our lands have been reduced six times. We used to be the prime agriculture producer over here and they cut off that part of our land so that the white people could learn to be farmers. They took our water as well and now they put mines all around us. They gave our land to private companies and so we lost economic activities and the water too, so they isolated us here. But in their rush to put us on the barren land they put us on the mother lode and now they’re after that.”
Ann Kirkpatrick did not return multiple interview requests to her Flagstaff and D.C. offices.
| J. Kendall Perkinson is following the occupation of Oak Flat. news@thenoise.us newsfeature
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