Resolution Copper plans to build a crater nearly two miles wide and over 1,100 feet deep, swallowing this hallowed land, placed under federal protection by President Dwight D. In a matter of months, the Forest Service could transfer control over this sacred site, allowing the mining project to move forward. Today, Oak Flat is truly on the brink of destruction. My first trip to Oak Flat to learn about the plight of the Apache people was in 2015, shortly after the federal government decided it would give this place to Resolution Copper, a foreign-owned mining company. “If the government allows the copper mine project to move forward,” she explains, “all of this will be destroyed, and lost to my people forever.” As she opens her palm, I watch the dust disappear in the wind, just like the Apache fear this place will vanish. The woman accompanying us stoops to the ground and scoops the Arizona earth in her hand. When her eyes are wiped clean, she is a new woman, forever imprinted with the spirit of Oak Flat. Part of the ceremony involves painting the girl with white clay taken from the earth, symbolic of molding her into the woman she will become. She explains that for generations spanning 1,500 years, Apache women have come here to perform the sunrise ceremony - a coming of age ritual that marks a girl’s transition to womanhood. The woman gestures to the meadow in front of us in a place the Apache call Chi’chil Bildagoteel, or Oak Flat.
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