Cross-country prayer journey to save sacred land garners Presbyterian support
Apache Stronghold wants to prevent Oak Flat from being destroyed by mining operation
LOUISVILLE – Apache Stronghold is making a cross-country trek to preserve sacred land in Arizona and is garnering continued support from Presbyterians and other allies along the way to the nation’s capital.
The Native American-led community organization, based in San Carlos, Arizona, is making a prayer journey to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C., in an attempt to preserve Oak Flat, a site in Tonto National Forest known to the Apache as Chi'chil Bildagoteel, from corporate destruction.
“We have the United States working to destroy our connection from Mother Earth to the Creator,” Apache Stronghold’s founder and leader, Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., said during a recent ">United Church of Christ webinar that highlighted their case and journey.
The coalition, which connects Apaches and both Native and non-Native allies, began its prayer journey in July and made its way to Lexington, Kentucky, on Aug. 29, where supporters in a crowd of 100–150 people included some members of Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Hunger Program.
“The Apache Stronghold’s campaign for protection of their sacred land and waters is the fight for the present and futures of all of God’s people and Creation,” said Helen Richardson, a ruling elder at Maxwell Street who was instrumental in the writing of the church's Land Acknowledgement/Indigenous People’s Month Statement and took part in the Lexington gathering. “The struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and justice must become our struggle, too, if we are committed to environmental justice and repairing for the violence against Indigenous peoples at the hands of the church.”
Oak Flat has long been a sacred place of worship, prayer and religious ceremony for Native Americans, but in 2014, a last-minute rider was attached to a defense bill to clear the way for the government to transfer the land to Resolution Copper, a foreign-owned mining company, according to Becket, a nonprofit, public-interest legal and educational institute that strives to protect the free expression of all faiths.
“If the transfer is allowed to happen, the underground mining plans for the site will swallow Oak Flat in a nearly 2-mile-wide, 1,100-foot-deep crater — the depth of two Washington Monuments stacked on top of each other and the length of the National Mall,” Becket states online. “Ancient Apache religious practices would be destroyed forever.”
In March, a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals narrowly decided that the federal government could transfer the site to the mining company, but Apache Stronghold is hoping to prevail on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their current prayer journey will conclude Sept. 11, when Apache Stronghold files their appeal against Resolution Copper at the U.S. Supreme Court (the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness is scheduled to host them and noted that Apache Stronghold has a vigil planned).
“Right now, we don't have a case in the Supreme Court like this, and so I'm just reaching out the best way I can to everybody because I don't think people realize the impact” of the U.S. being given the freedom to “destroy and destroy and destroy,” said Nosie, former tribal chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe on the San Carlos Apache Reservation.
The Oak Flat controversy is highlighted in a book, “The Land Is Not Empty” by Sarah Augustine, that PHP helped to lead a study of last year. Following that book study, Eileen Schuhmann of PHP went to Oak Flat to pray with other supporters as a delegate of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.
“There was a ceremony that they held where they offered my friend, Rev. Carol Rose, a basket of tobacco,” said Schuhmann, associate for Global Engagement and Resources for the Hunger Program. “They told her that in taking up that basket that she was committing on behalf of the white settlers gathered there to go out of our comfort zone and to take responsibility and to take on this mandate as white settlers to do the hard work that was coming to dismantle the systems of oppression that we, as white settlers, have long perpetrated upon Indigenous people, peoples of color, all over the earth, including here in the United States.”
Schuhmann continued, “So each of us took a turn to place a small little handful of that tobacco into the fire as a symbol of our taking up that gift of commitment and that was entrusted to us by Dr. Nosie. I think for the people who were present there that day, that’s a serious commitment, and so we’re very committed to do whatever we can,” including helping to support the Apache Stronghold’s effort to save Oak Flat.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted in 2016 to offer an apology to Native Americans, Alaska natives and native Hawaiians, Schuhmann noted, but “prayers and asking forgiveness isn’t enough. We actually need to do things to work towards improved policies” and to create improved relations with Indigenous peoples.
During a recent Solidarity Hour discussion, hosted by the Global Solidarity Collective, Richardson provided examples of some actions that could be taken. Following Apache Stronghold’s Lexington stop, she commented to the Presbyterian News Service.
“In Kentucky, we know too well the violence of resource extraction, which poisons water, air, the workers and our communities,” she said via email. “We are blessed to enjoy public lands around Lexington, and the fight for the protection of Oak Flats determines if/what type of extraction is legal on so-called ‘protected’ lands.”
Later in that email, she noted, “By welcoming settlers and church people to their cause and journey, the Apache Stronghold show abundant generosity toward peoples who have harmed their communities. May this abundance and generosity be multiplied and reciprocated on their journey to and in D.C.”
Schuhmann, who took part in the Lexington prayer stop, encourages other Presbyterians to join as the journey continues.
“As people of faith, if we really say that we care about Creation, we need to come and walk alongside these groups like Apache Stronghold,” she said. “They’re actually putting their bodies and their everything on the line to defend Creation.”
The Presbyterian Hunger Program and the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness are part of the Compassion, Peace & Justice ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
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