Posted Nov 18, 2020, 6:55 am
On Sept. 11, the CEO and two other top executives at the international mining giant Rio Tinto announced they would step down
following public outrage at the company’s destruction of a
46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site in Australia known as Juukan
Gorge.
Back in May, the company had blown up
the rock shelters – they housed Aboriginal artifacts dating back 28,000
years – to gain access to millions of dollars’ worth of iron ore.
Although
the departure of the company’s leading figures and its issuance of
a public apology may look like accountability to some observers, the
destruction of Juukan Gorge was no unforeseen accident. It is part of
Rio Tinto’s business model and demonstrates exactly what we should
expect at the other sites that Rio Tinto owns in our country – including
Arizona.
Tribes spoke up. Rio Tinto still got the OK
For
seven years, opposition to the Juukan Gorge project had been strong
among the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples, who were vocal
about the deep, ongoing cultural and historical connections they
maintained with the site.
Nevertheless, the
Australian government approved the project in 2013 by accepting Rio
Tinto’s Section 18 application under that country’s Aboriginal Heritage
Act, which granted Rio Tinto the authority to damage, disturb or destroy
any Aboriginal sites near the project.
Using the government’s support as cover, Rio
Tinto claimed that the destruction of Juukan Gorge had been
unintentional and that the incident merely “fell short of the Standards
and internal guidance that Rio Tinto sets for itself.”
The
public outcry was swift, but the company didn’t immediately do more
than promise to try harder next time. The company’s responsible figures
only stepped aside after months of mounting public criticism and
shareholder objections.
Arizona tribes experienced the same
For members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in
central Arizona, this entire chain of events is too familiar. In 2014,
Congress passed the Southeastern Arizona Land Exchange, an
industry-friendly sweetheart deal that authorized the transfer of 2,422
acres of land in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest to Rio Tinto’s
Resolution Copper Mining to allow the company to start mining copper
there.
The parcel in question is among the worst possible places to establish a copper mine.
The area includes the Chí’chil Biłdagoteel Historic District, known
also as Oak Flat, which has served as a culturally significant and
sacred site to many tribal nations in the region for the past 1,500
years.
The San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Tonto Apache
Tribe, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the
Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe, the Gila River Indian Community, the Salt
River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the Hopi Tribe, and the Pueblo of
Zuni have visited its Emory oak groves to conduct ceremonies and gather
traditional medicines for millennia.
Despite
being fully aware of Oak Flat’s status as a sacred site, Rio Tinto
lobbied for and successfully acquired the land exchange with the sole
purpose of extracting minerals from the site, which sits upon what is
estimated to be one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the
world.
Mine will irreparably harm Oak Flat
Although the agreement requires the U.S Forest
Service to assess the impacts of the proposed activities by preparing an
environmental impact statement (EIS) under the National Environmental
Policy Act, the land is to be placed into the hands of the mining
company regardless of the findings.
The draft EIS that
the U.S. Department of Agriculture published notes that the Chí’chil
Biłdagoteel Historic District will be irreparably damaged by Rio Tinto’s
destructive panel-caving techniques, which will produce a crater
roughly 1.8 miles wide. Again, under the terms of the land transfer,
this finding will do nothing to prevent the project from going forward.
Members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe have been
fighting Rio Tinto’s advances on their ancestral homelands for more than
a decade, knowing well the history of the U.S. government’s history of
broken treaty promises.
Wendsler Nosie, Sr.,
the founder of the nonprofit Apache Stronghold, testified before the
House Committee on Natural Resources’ Subcommittee for Indigenous
Peoples of the United States in March, stating that “the destruction to
our lands and our sacred sites has occurred consistently over the past
century in direct violation of treaty promises and the trust obligation
owed to Indian tribes.”
“The U.S. government
has consistently failed to uphold these promises or too often fails to
act to protect our rights associated with such places like Chi’Chil
Bildagoteel,” Nosie said.
Don’t trust Rio Tinto. Protect the land
Beyond the treaty itself, there are generational and spiritual consequences to the damage likely to occur at Oak Flat.
As
Naelyn Pike, youth organizer for Apache Stronghold, testified before
the Natural Resources Committee in March, “Our [Apache] people lived,
prayed, and died in the Oak Flat and Tonto National Forest area for
centuries. Apache Leap was given its name after Apache warriors leaped
to their death rather than be killed by the United States Cavalry. These
areas make us who we are today.”
As we recently witnessed in Australia, Rio Tinto’s promises to protect sacred sites are meaningless. Congress must pass the Save Oak Flat Act to
protect the site in perpetuity. The alternative is to cross our fingers
and hope we don’t see a repeat of Juukan Gorge by destroying a
similarly historic and spiritually significant site in our own country.
U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva represents Arizona’s 7th Congressional District.
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