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“For years, Standing Fox and a dedicated core group of Apache activists have joined with a coalition of national tribes, environmentalists and concerned retired miners to oppose the land exchange transfer of the Oak Flat region to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, a mining company headquartered in London. Over the past decade, Arizona Republicans have attempted unsuccessfully to pass the land exchange legislation – twice in 2013 failing to get enough votes to bring it to the floor of the House of Representatives. The land exchange also violates a 1955 executive order by President Eisenhower that explicitly puts the Oak Flat Campground land off limits to future mining activity.
Standing Fox joins us in the car to give us a quick tour of San Carlos. We don’t make it far, as just beyond the parking lot is a water tower with a mural of an Apache woman and the tribe’s sacred four crosses. Standing Fox informs us he was one of three artists that created the mural. We take a quick detour to have a look. Painted on the mural are the words “Water is Life” written in the Apache language.
Standing Fox walks towards the water tower and says, “We’re not too far from Oak Flat, from the rez line where we have our water aquifer.” The prospect of the mining contaminating the reservation’s aquifer is a major concern among the Apache. Resolution Copper’s proposal plans for a form of mining called block cave mining. This process involves a series of deep underground detonations, essentially collapsing the mountainous terrain in on itself and extracting the ore and materials from a series of tunnels dug in the earth. This process creates more toxic material than traditional surface mining and produces greater contaminants affecting the groundwater with acid runoff.”
– Truthout.org, The Apache Way: The March to Oak Flat.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #28 – Save Oak Flat.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
