Apache tribe brings battle for Oak Flat to New York’s Times Square

The Guardian – by Ellen Brait

Members of the Apache tribe stood chanting in a circle with drums and posters in the center of New York’s Times Square on Friday, to protest against a bill that will hand over land they hold sacred to a foreign mining corporation.

Times Square was the latest stop for activists from the Apache tribe who are travelling across the United States to battle for Oak Flat and to draw attention to a bill introduced by Arizona representative Raúl M Grijalva to repeal the decision to hand the land over to Resolution Copper.  

A fine-print rider was added to December’s National Defense Authorization Act that gave the title of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper Mining, co-owned by multinational mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

The company claims they will create 3,700 jobs over the next few decades and while some dispute that number, the Apache tribe has other concerns.

Wendsler Nosie, the councilman leading Apache Stronghold, said Oak Flat is “a central part of our religion, our ceremonies, our upbringing for our children”. To those who observe the Bible, it is the equivalent, he said, of Mount Sinai, the mountain where God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.

“It’s like Mount Sinai. Tell the people who believe the Bible that,” Nosie said. “What would they say? It’s no different. Why do we treat it different?”

Oak Flat is possibly the first sacred Native American land to be given to a foreign corporation in US history, said Aften Meltzer, media consultant for Avaaz, an online democracy network.

The Apache Stronghold is trying to garner as much public support as possible during their travels. Their petition on Avaaz.org made out to members of the US Congress and the interior secretary, Sally Jewell, already has about 78,000 signatures.

“If you educate the people and tell them what happened here in Washington and every American takes part and notifies their congressional leader that this was wrong and they ask the congressional leader to support a repeal then there is a chance that this can be repealed,” Nosie said. “I know it’s a long shot but this is wrong.”

He has become increasingly optimistic that the Save Oak Flat Act will pass as their group has travelled since 5 July from Sacred Mt Graham, Arizona, to Washington DC. Their stops include meetings with indigenous advocates across the midwest, a Baptist church in North Carolina and a Neil Young concert in Denver. They will arrive in Washington on Tuesday and “talk to congressional leaders and agencies that are there”, said Nosie.

But despite the success, he says he has found the trip to be very emotional thus far.

“Just seeing all these kids and mothers that are pregnant that came up to the ceremonies to meet us and knowing that their children are going to be born and they will have no rights and religious rights on their reservation … to see that was really detrimental to me,” he said. “All I could do was cry when listening to my relatives, my native people.”

He added: “But the other side of the token was there are so many Americans, non-native people, who have come out and asked many questions. The numbers we’ve been meeting since travelling has just grown and grown and grown.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/17/apache-tribe-oak-flat-new-york-times-square

 

12 thoughts on “Apache tribe brings battle for Oak Flat to New York’s Times Square”

      2. Well now, that is a very interesting op-ed. Being an intensely private human being, I can’t say that I’ve met face-to-face more than a handful of Christians dedicated to living the tenets of their religion, but that’s not to say those who have been misled would not live their lives in the accepting way of the golden rule had they only the opportunities for deep conversations with mentors to enlighten them.

        History is replete with crimes against humanity of so called Christianity, but rather than pointing the stick at Christianity, I would say the problem is a cultural mass overwhelming programing for greed, accumulation of things, and worship of debauchery, and it is this we must reject with our core being and all our energy.

        “…it is my hope that white Christians might also be inspired to begin a journey of our own as well; a journey deep into our own history and religious traditions; a journey of courage as we seek to be painstakingly honest with ourselves about the way in which our faith and our holy texts have been manipulated and used as a deadly weapon against this earth and against native people. We need to be really honest with ourselves about our own complicity in the mentality that sees no problem treating sacred land like a commodity and the religious practices of native people as something less than our own practices.”

        Here is the truth for us to accept: we are all native people, all to be recognized in our own respectful cultural practices and spirituality.

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  3. Petitions, protests, and more crying.

    These Apaches better figure out soon that their land is gone if they don’t fight for it, and Americans in general need to learn the same thing.

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  5. “Meanwhile across Indian country, deception, fraud and plagiarism dominate national online Indian country news. When the casino industry took control of online national Native media, reporters were replaced with stay-at-home plagiarizers. Currently, there are no watchdog media actually present in DC.
    The lack of authentic reporters who are present in Indian country also means that there are no Indian country reporters on the Tohono O’odham Nation to expose how the Israeli Apartheid defense contractor Elbit Systems is building spy towers and pointing those at traditional O’odham homes. Homeland Security gave the border contract for surveillance towers to Israel’s Elbit Systems, responsible for Apartheid security surrounding Palestine.
    The lack of authentic reporters on the Arizona border means no one is covering the fact that US Border Patrol agents kill with impunity and run drugs, while the agents abuse Indigenous Peoples, including Tohono O’odham, in their homeland. There is no one to expose the real role of the US in the so-called drug war, including the fact that the US ATF armed cartels with assault weapons.”
    http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2015/07/apache-stronghold-convoy-visits-graves-children-who-never-came-home

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  6. protest will only get you a night in the tank or a 40 to the back of your head.
    The indigenous were genocided as with the buffalo. We did not learn about this in schrool.

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