There were nearly a dozen of them, members of the group Apache Stronghold, and by the end of the day, they’d covered 40 miles on foot. They slept, arose and then headed off again, running another 25 miles toward the heart of the Valley. By Tuesday evening, they’d trekked another 12 miles to reach the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in downtown Phoenix.
They ran all this way to raise awareness, and by the time of a Tuesday night vigil at the courthouse, they looked gassed. But at the same time, they beamed with purpose and solemn pride. The next morning, the fate of Oak Flat — a holy land to Apaches now threatened by mining interests — would hang in the balance.
Also known as Chi'chil Biłdagoteel to the Apache people who revere it as their holiest place of worship, Oak Flat has been the site of a decade-long battle waged between the people who have lived on its land for centuries and a foreign mining megacorporation that wants to chew it up and spit it out for hundreds of billions of dollars.
Oak Flat is the subject of an ongoing court case, though the Trump administration recently tried to speed its demise and transfer the land to Resolution Copper. The morning after the vigil, a federal judge would hear arguments about whether to bar the government from doing so, at least on a temporary basis.
The night before the hearing, Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. spoke to a crowd of roughly 200 outside the courthouse. “This is not an Apache fight,” said the Apache Stronghold leader and former chairman of the San Carlos Apache tribe. “This is not a Native American fight.” Among those who ran from Oak Flat to Phoenix, that was certainly true.
One of the runners was Cooper Davis, a teacher at Brophy College Preparatory and self-described “random white guy” who moderates the school’s Native American Club. He’s been running with Apache Stronghold for five years and helped organize the run from Oak Flat. Six of his Brophy students joined.
“We’re coming from Oak Flat to bring with us its healing, its goodness, the spirits that live there,” Davis said.
Jose Leyba, who teaches Spanish at Brophy and is of Yaqui descent, said, “Oak Flat is a sacred and special place, and not just for the Apache. It is calling to all of us, to connect back to the land, to connect back to each other, to take care of each other, and to take care of and protect Mother Earth.”
But Oak Flat is on “death row,” Davis said, echoing the Nosie and other speakers at the vigil. It’s been sentenced to die by corporate America. Apache Stronghold is pushing for a stay of execution.
“We can change the rest of this country if we want to do it, because we understand what corporate greed is all about,” Nosie passionately cried. “We understand the magnitude of what it does to Mother Earth.”
Attorney Luke Goodrich speaks to a crowd after a court hearing concerning the planned transfer of Oak Flat to a mining company.
TJ L'Heureux
The hearing
The next day, hundreds of people filed out of two federal courtrooms, one of them an overflow chamber. Others waited on the streets of downtown Phoenix to see if Judge Steven P. Logan would allow the federal government to move forward with the sale before the Supreme Court can rule on the question of whether doing so violates the Apaches’ freedom of religion.Resolution Copper, the Arizona subsidiary of British-Australian multinational mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP, had decidedly less public support. A handful of lawyers and the company’s president, Victoria Peacey, attended the hearing.
Through a decade of public backlash and legal challenges, the company has held a tight grip on Oak Flat. For Apaches of the American Southwest, it's the ultimate place of communion with Mother Earth — a natural Notre Dame Cathedral or Sistine Chapel where wildlife, large rocks and trees dot the land. It also sits above a jackpot of copper — the third-largest known deposit in the world.
The Apaches don’t own it; Oak Flat is the property of the U.S. government, which promised to protect it in perpetuity for the Apache people. That promise was broken in 2014 when Congress approved a backroom land swap — brokered by Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake — that transferred about 2,400 acres of Oak Flat land to Rio Tinto in exchange for 5,400 acres in the state owned by the company.
In 2021, opponents of the land swap sued to block it. The lawsuit reached a three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of the government. A larger panel of the court reheard the case in March 2024, narrowly deciding in a 6-5 vote that religious freedom protections did not apply to the land transfer. Five judges dissented, saying that the court “tragically” erred by refusing to protect Oak Flat.
Apache Stronghold petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case, which the high court is now considering. But on April 17, the U.S. Forest Service announced that in as little as two months, it will issue an environmental impact statement on the sale, a major step toward transferring the land to the mining corporations. In response, Apache Stronghold filed an emergency motion for an injunction to keep the swap from happening before the Supreme Court can weigh in.
Wednesday’s court hearing revealed just how much Resolution Copper would gain for the $11 million worth of land it is set to give up in the swap. Luke Goodrich of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who is representing Apache Stronghold, noted in court that a Resolution Copper report asserted that 40 billion pounds of copper can be mined from Oak Flat.
When pressed for a valuation of that bonanza by Goodrich, Peacey noted that copper was going for $4.68 a pound as of Tuesday. In 2024, its average price was greater than $4.20. That means the copper the company will mine is worth a conservative estimate of $160 billion in today’s money.
Peacey told the court that Resolution Copper is currently spending $11 million every month to maintain the site in preparation for mining it. She said that after the land transfer, it will likely take 10 years to prepare the site for mining and 50 years to mine it. After six years of mining, the ground will start to sink, eventually leaving a crater deep enough to hold the Eiffel Tower.
In court, Goodrich and other lawyers argued that the minute the land is transferred to Resolution Copper, the toothpaste will have escaped the tube. If the sale moves forward, damage will be done to the site even if the Supreme Court ultimately rules in Apache Stronghold’s favor.
They also argued that should the sale progress, Resolution Copper will have no duty to allow the Apache people to worship there. “Right now, there is an obligation — executive orders, Forest Service management plans — guaranteeing access to all those areas (of Oak Flat),” Goodrich said. “The moment that transfer takes place, all those guarantees evaporate and it’s solely the whim of Resolution Copper.”
Logan will decide by May 14 whether to prevent the federal government from moving forward on the land transfer before the Supreme Court can weigh in.
Following the hearing, Nosie called the legal wrangling over Oak Flat “the battle of America.” Goodrich cast it in terms of light and dark, with extractive corporate greed on one side and a spiritual duty to protect nature on the other.
“Your government, the United States, admitted in court today it knows that Oak Flat is sacred,” he told a crowd outside the courthouse. “It knows that it took it from the Apache people by force. It knows that the Apache people are still today engaging in sacred practices there that they can’t engage with anywhere else. Yet, it told the court today it wants to rush ahead with a mine that will completely swallow Oak Flat in a crater and end centuries of Apache religious practice forever.
“That is profoundly unjust,” he added. “That is deeply evil.”
