“PRESIDENT TRUMP SAID he wants to destroy our holy ground of Oak Flat so a foreign-owned corporation can send copper to China,” Wendsler Nosie Sr., representing the grassroots group Apache Stronghold, told the Arizona Republic this summer. “Whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or neither, that is a terrible deal for the American people,” he said.
Trump called Nosie, and others who want to save Oak Flat, “anti-American” for defending the holy ground where San Carlos Apaches and Indigenous people worshiped long before there was a United States of America. Trump posted his comments on social media one day after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the Trump administration from its plan to transfer the public lands of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of multinational mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP, and following a meeting between Trump and the CEOs of the parent companies.
Because Nosie’s people have worshiped the Creator for thousands of years while drawing water at Oak Flat, it is holy ground—a place for prayer and sacred ceremony, not unlike the Temple Mount for Muslims, Christians, and Jews. For Nosie, an elder in the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the wisdom of his people and their relationship with the Creator are inextricably tied to Oak Flat.
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