Citing Religious Freedom, Native Americans Fight To Take Back Sacred Land From Mining Companies

[cbayer]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/24/3683935/citing-religious-freedom-native-americans-fight-take-back-sacred-land-mining-companies/


by Jack Jenkins Jul 24, 2015 8:00am


Advocates for the protection of Oak Flat protest outside the U.S. Capitol on July 22, 2015.

For generations, members of the Apache Native American tribe have viewed Oak Flat as a holy, sacred place. Located about an hour due east of Phoenix, Arizona, the land has long served as a site for traditional acorn gatherings, burial services, and rite of passage ceremonies for young women. The flat is tucked inside Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, and has historically been protected by the federal government.

“It’s our sacred land — it’s where we come to pray,” Carrie Sage Curley, an Apache woman, told ThinkProgress.

But last year, the land quietly became something else: A proposed site for a massive copper mining project spearheaded by Resolution Copper, an organization run by two multinational corporations based in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The aggressive mining operation resulted from a last-minute addition to the National Defense Authorization Act, a “must-pass” military spending bill pushed through in December 2014. The language, which was inserted at the 11th hour by Arizona Senators John McCain (R) and Jeff Flake (R), essentially traded Resolution 2,400 acres of Arizona (including Oak Flat) in exchange for 5,300 acres of private land they already own. The swap is believed to be one of the first instances of federal land being given to a foreign corporation.

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[freshwest]

1. Bush the Elder gave federal park land to a Canadian mining company as he was leaving office.

The demands of these ecocider corporations has grown more extreme, with biospheres in the Pacific and South America being destroyed. Like Appalachia. There has always been mining, but not the way these guys are doing it. The method is the same. Loot and scoot. Leave poverty and pollution to be borne by future generations, and in some cases, some outright murder is okay by them, too. Environmental activists frequently wind up dead.