The Oak Flat campground outside of Globe, Arizona. “The Forest Service is just changing the execution date.” “Oak Flat is still on death row,” said Michael Nixon, an attorney for the indigenous activist group Apache Stronghold.
While tribes and environmental groups celebrated the Forest Service announcement, they noted the threat of losing Oak Flat remains. The San Carlos Apache Tribe currently has a lawsuit pending in US district court in Phoenix that seeks to stop the land transfer, which would have given the 2,422-acre Oak Flat parcel to Resolution Copper in exchange for land elsewhere in the state. The government “failed to follow the law in the preparation of a sham environmental impact statement that was used to justify trading away our sacred land to wealthy foreign mining companies”. “This is the right move,” said Terry Rambler, chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. It contains hundreds of indigenous archaeological sites dating back 1,500 years. The Forest Service estimated it would take “several months” to complete the consultations before the land transfer could possibly move forward.Ĭalled Chi’chil Bildagoteel in Apache, Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its spiritual and cultural significance to at least a dozen south-west Native American tribes. The agency also noted it was following a recent memorandum from Joe Biden encouraging tribal consultation on federal decisions and “strengthening nation to nation relationships”. Now the government “has concluded that additional time is necessary to understand concerns raised by the Tribes and the public and the project’s impacts to these important resources”, according to a statement by the US Forest Service, which is currently in charge of Oak Flat.
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