Oak Flat — also known as Chi'chil Biłdagoteel — is the Apaches’ Notre Dame Cathedral, or Mecca, or Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
In the mountains 70 miles east of Phoenix, the wildlife and tree-covered jewel covers some 2,400 acres, or roughly two-thirds the size of Sky Harbor Airport. The federally protected site also sits atop a bonanza of copper. On Thursday the federal government announced it will soon take a major step that could result in mining corporations using explosives to turn it into a gaping crater.
Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., the leader of Apache Stronghold and a former tribal chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, issued a warning that the U.S. government looks poised to move quickly.
“The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it’s rushed to erase Native people for generations,” Nosie said in a news release. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries. We urge the Supreme Court to protect our spiritual lifeblood and give our sacred site the same protection given to the holiest churches, mosques, and synagogues throughout this country.”
Long considered a holy site to commune with God, the land covers the world’s third-largest known copper deposit. Mining companies have long coveted the trove of mineral wealth, which the U.S. government in 1852 promised to protect for the Apaches. Despite that, in 2014, then-Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake snuck into a thousand-page bill a provision to sell the land to foreign mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP.
Bureaucratic approval processes and court battles have slogged on ever since. They’re about to heat up again.
The U.S. Forest Service said it plans to issue the final environmental impact statement needed to move a sale of the land forward in as little as two months. When that statement is published, the government can transfer the land rights over to the mining companies. They intend to blow the land to bits with a massive explosion that will make a crater the height of the Eiffel Tower.
There is one hitch — maybe. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to hear a challenge from Apache Stronghold, the organization leading the charge against the mining corporations and the government’s sale of the land.
Apache Stronghold contends that a sale would violate their Constitutional right to religious freedom. The group is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm that aims to protect religious freedom in the United States.
“The government has announced it will now forge ahead with the transfer even though the case is currently under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court,” the organization wrote in a press release.
“The feds are barreling ahead to give Oak Flat to Resolution Copper, even as the Supreme Court considers whether to hear the case,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, in the news release. “This makes the stakes crystal clear: if the Court doesn’t act now, Oak Flat could be transferred and destroyed before justice can be served.”
So what happens now?
Ryan Colby, the organization’s spokesperson, told Phoenix New Times the Supreme Court had a discussion on Thursday about what to do about the case, and it could make an announcement as soon as Monday.
A 'tragic' error not to protect Oak Flat
New Times catalogued the saga of Oak Flat in November 2023, after religious leaders from around the country traveled to Oak Flat to join Apache Stronghold in a day-long prayer session for the land.
Opponents of the land swap sued in 2021 to block it.
The lawsuit reached a three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled in favor of the government before a larger panel of the court reheard the case in March 2024 and narrowly decided the same thing in a 6-5 vote, finding that religious freedom laws and protections did not apply to the land transfer.
Five judges dissented, saying that the court “tragically” erred by refusing to protect Oak Flat.
In November 2023, the faith leaders from different backgrounds seemed to agree on a critical idea: While religions emerged from a spiritual connection to the Earth, industrial capitalism has severed that bond.
Rio Tinto, one of the two companies that owns Resolution Copper, is an Australian multinational conglomerate with a history of damaging Indigenous land. In 2020, the company destroyed two rock shelters in Western Australia that Indigenous people had inhabited for 46,000 years. Following public backlash, the company’s CEO resigned later that year.
Nosie sees the struggle over Oak Flat — right in Phoenix’s backyard — as the centerpiece of a larger existential question: Can corporations that irrevocably pillage the earth be stopped?
“What we’re trying to do is wake up the American people,” Nosie told New Times. “We’re at that turning point right now, this very moment. If we don’t do the right thing beginning now, there’s no turning back from the damages of the decisions we’ve made and the capitalist way of thinking. We’re talking about the spirit of the Earth and its survival. We know as Native people we’re at that point in time of no return if we don’t wake up.”
Nosie and others noted that industrial mining and other profit-seeking ventures have done great damage to the environment, contaminated water, desecrated ecosystems and spread plastics even to remote parts of the world.
Now, all eyes are on the U.S. Supreme Court to see what’s next in the battle for Oak Flat.
