![]() 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. The 6.7-square-mile Oak Flat is a verdant oasis in an arid landscape dotted with towering saguaro cacti, majestic rock spires and sweeping canyons. Elders say the land was blessed by Usen, their Creator, and inhabited by Ga’an, the mountain spirits or angels who provide spiritual succor and guidance to seekers.īut they fear for its future, seeing plans to carve a huge copper mine into the heart of Oak Flat as if it were a threat to their own flesh and blood - an obliteration of a piece of their spiritual heritage. The family is Chiricahua Apache and Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Bildagoteel, is a consecrated place used for prayer and ritual by them and many other Native Americans in the region. She said the connection to Oak Flat is physical as well as spiritual. “My little guy, his umbilical cord is buried here,” said Azee’s mother, Lian Bighorse. In fact, that centuries-old oak tree and the ground below it – the sacred, ancestral flats that stretch for miles east of Phoenix - are like kin to Azee’s family. There, cradled by the sturdy trunk, the boy flashed a gap-toothed smile and rested comfortably as if he’d just climbed onto the lap of a grandparent. The 5-year-old in his black dinosaur t-shirt with hair tied under a backwards baseball cap scaled higher and higher until he found the perfect seat. Azee Romero climbed barefoot on the wrinkled trunk of the massive Emory oak tree at the center of the Oak Flat Campground.
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