Students have also attended sunrise ceremonies and participated in sweat rituals.Ī religiously diverse coalition - Christian, Muslim, Sikh and other Native American groups - has backed the Apache Stronghold by filing amicus briefs. For the past three years, the students have participated in an annual prayer run that culminates in Oak Flat. The movement to save Oak Flat has allowed students in Brophy’s Native American Club to engage “more deeply in the work of understanding their own identity,” said Drew Rau, director of Brophy’s Office of Faith and Justice. That includes Native American students from Brophy College Preparatory, the only Jesuit Catholic high school in Arizona. _įor many, Oak Flat has been a place to reconnect with prayer and ceremonial traditions that can often get lost in urban areas. Some things will have religious significance to some and not to others,” said Barclay, who learned about Oak Flat when she worked with Becket, the public-interest law firm that represents the Apache Stronghold. “We would never tell a Christian that a church is just a place with bricks and mortar that you can get anywhere. Stephanie Barclay, professor of law and director of the Religious Liberty Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, depicted the attitude of government officials toward Native sacred sites as shockingly callous. “They are recognized as being so important that no one should own them or restrict access to them.” “These places of transcendent holiness are not specifically attached to any one culture or territory,” he said. Evidence of its sacredness can be found in petroglyphs or rock paintings and Apache burial grounds. Welch, professor of archeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who has worked extensively with Apache tribes. Oak Flat has spiritual significance to many Native people and there are spots “where even a casual observer can experience a sense of the divine,” said John R. In the Oak Flat case, he said the law appears to favor the Native American community since “courts have deferred to the local religious entity to determine when land becomes sacred.” The only exception, he said, would be fraud, when someone is attempting to use religion to serve an ulterior motive. Brenda Astor, Resolution’s Native affairs adviser, said Oak Flat is where her family gathered acorns for traditional Apache dishes.įaith traditions differ on how they define sacredness, said Dan Dalton, a Detroit-based attorney who represents religious institutions in land use and zoning cases. She had her coming-of-age celebration on the San Carlos Apache reservation - about 67 miles east of Oak Flat - where she still lives. They include Karen Kitcheyan-Jones, 64, the widow of a miner who never knew Oak Flat as a religious place. His tribe’s current top leadership supports Nosie’s efforts, but some members would rather have the mine and the possible job opportunities that could come with it given the area’s widespread unemployment. Morgun Frejo checks on rocks being heated in a fire for a sweat lodge on Oak Flat Campground, a sacred site for Native Americans located 70 miles east of Phoenix, on June 3, 2023, in Miami, Ariz. The town and the tribe need jobs,” Nansel said. The company continues to “seek dialogue, to come to a collaboration and partnership,” said Tyson Nansel, a company spokesperson. Resolution Copper President Vicky Peacey said the mine will be a “massive investment in rural Arizona” - creating 3,700 jobs over the course of the project and boosting state and local tax revenues by $88 million to $113 million a year. agencies and those trying to protect Oak Flat on religious grounds. In the works for nearly a decade, the project has stalled amid a legal fight between U.S. The in-demand metal is used for electric vehicle and cell phone manufacturing. It is also here that Resolution Copper Mining, a joint subsidiary of British and Australian mining giants, Rio Tinto and BHP, wants to remove layers of rock to extract copper from deep underground. It’s where Native people gather acorns that drop from the oak trees before crushing them into an edible powder, and pick red sumac berries for a refreshing, scarlet drink that Bighorse described as “Native Kool-Aid.” Here, sage and other plants used for medicinal and ritual purposes sprout along streams and wetlands that provide sanctuary for birds and other animals. A sign marks the entrance to Oak Flat Campground, a sacred site for Native Americans located 70 miles east of Phoenix, on June 3, 2023, in Miami, Ariz.
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