Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill to Protect Native American Place of Worship

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/11/08/bernie-sanders-introduces-bill-to-protect-native-american-place-of-worship/

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Tammy Baldwin introduced legislation this week to stop the transfer of federal land to a foreign-owned corporation, which plans to develop the largest copper mine in North America. The land, known as Oak Flat, is located in the Tonto National Forest and has significant religious and cultural value to Apaches, Yavapais, and other Native Americans in the region.

The night before voting to approve the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Sen. John McCain slipped in a provision referred to as Section 3003 that approved the transfer of public lands, Oak Flat and nearby Tonto National Forest lands, to private corporations Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the corporations, intends to use the land to construct a block cave mine, which would destroy the sacred Oak Flat area and create a crater up to two miles long.

“Too many times our Native American brothers and sisters have seen the profits of huge corporations put ahead of their sovereign rights,” Sanders said. “It is wrong that a backroom deal in Washington could lead to the destruction of a sacred area that is so important to so many. We must defend the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are standing in opposition to this giveaway of our natural resources to foreign corporations.”

The Tonto National Forest in southeastern Arizona was established in 1905 from the ancestral homelands of the Tonto Apache and other Native Americans who were forcibly removed at gunpoint from the Oak Flat area by the U.S. Army in the 1880s. The Apaches were held as prisoners of war until the early 1900s.

Because of their religious and cultural value, Oak Flat and the Tonto National Forest are supposed to be protected under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The Save Oak Flat Act would repeal Section 3003 and prevent the transfer of approximately 2422 acres of Forest Service land to Resolution Copper, which plans to remove at least one cubic mile of ore that sits 7,000ft beneath the Earth’s surface.

[Art_from_Ark]

1. Just one more thing to like Bernie for

I strongly support Bernie's actions on this.

And I am speaking as one who attended a joint Hopi-Navaho conference on Black Mesa that was held in Osaka, Japan, of all places. I grew to really, really hate how Native Americans' cultures and religions can be bulldozed over by multinational corporations that do not care one whit about the destruction they cause both to the land and to the cultures of the people who revere that land.

[Enthusiast]

2. Yay, Bernie!