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Located in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, Oak Flat—or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel—is an area where members of Western Apache and Yavapai tribes collect acorns and members of the San Carlos Apache hold their coming-of-age ceremonies. It's also the site of a proposed copper mine that could cause a 1,000-foot-deep, two-mile-wide depression in the ground, permanently altering this sacred site.
A grassroots group of Apache tribal members called Apache Stronghold went to court earlier this year to try to stop the mine. The lawsuit argued the mine would violate tribal members' rights, since they would lose access to physical and cultural landscapes central to practicing their religion. In June, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Apache Stronghold, stating that Indigenous religious practices and cultures are not fully protected under current U.S. federal law.
Apache Stronghold will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, but the 9th Circuit decision is a bad sign for Indigenous people and their allies hoping to protect sacred sites.
“If this decision holds up, then the law offers virtually no protection to Native American place-based religious exercise,” Luke Goodrich, an attorney representing Apache Stronghold, told High Country News. “As a practical matter, this sounds the death knell for all Native American religious practices that are tied to federal lands.”
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The Forest Service has been continually drained of funding and especially in their recreation programs. And so to me, this wave of visitation in the last couple of years… it has the entire system on its heels.”
