Contributor: Sr. Susan Leslie, OP

A natural cathedral of canyons in Arizona's Tonto National Forest, Oak Flat (Chi'chil Bildagoteel) is the birthplace of the Apache people and religion. This is the place where they commune with their creator; a place of sacred ceremonies that have taken place since time immemorial and cannot be held anywhere else on Earth. On August 19, this holy site is slated to become a copper mine through a government-backed land swap with multinational mining corporation Resolution Copper. As Catholic sisters and women of faith, we stand with the Apache people and recognize that Oak Flat is sacred and must not be destroyed.

Though federally safeguarded for decades, Oak Flat’s protections were quietly revoked through a last-minute provision on a congressional defense bill in 2014. The fight to save Oak Flat is culminating in Apache Stronghold v. United States, a religious freedom case that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. For the Apache, religion is inextricably tied to this place; a land swap would destroy their ability to practice their religion at all. This May, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. 

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented from the Supreme Court’s refusal, calling the decision a “grievous mistake” and a threat to religious freedom everywhere. “Imagine if the government sought to demolish a historic cathedral on so questionable a claim of legal reasoning,” Gorsuch wrote. ”I have no doubt we would find the case worth our time.” 

Unfortunately, a double-standard for religious protections is par for the course. Indigenous ceremonies were outlawed by the federal government until 1978, even as Supreme Court rulings—most recently in 2005— still cite 15th-century papal decrees granting Christian dominion over the Americas through "discovery." Religious freedom may be foundational to our country, but for this land’s first peoples, it remains out of reach.

It is not just the Apache who will suffer from the swap; the USDA Forest Service’s Environmental Impact Statement predicts unfathomable ecological destruction. In exchange for 40 years of a working mine, the region will suffer water depletion and contamination, shoulder over a billion tons of toxic waste, and create a crater 1.8 miles wide and over 800 feet deep. Rio Tinto, the parent company of Resolution Copper, has a global track record of ecological damage and mishandling important cultural sites. As women of faith, we recognize the land itself as our shared and most precious site of worship. It is a grave violation to destroy a sacred site—let alone to endanger the health of the water, soil, air, and all beings who depend on them. 

But this doesn’t have to be the end. Just one month after refusing to take on Apache Stronghold, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of religious freedom in Mahmoud v. Taylor, where parents requested the freedom to opt their children out of school reading material that they found objectionable. The court determined that making the books required reading puts an “unconstitutional burden” on parents’ free exercise of religion. If elementary storybooks are worth the court’s attention to matters of faith, then surely the birthplace of Apache religion is, too. The Court must revisit its decision—or direct the lower courts to do so, with Mahmoud as the new standard. We pray for a miracle at Oak Flat—but all we may need is some plain common sense. 

In late July, our delegation of nuns from seven Catholic orders joined Apache Stronghold at Oak Flat in solidarity and prayer. As members of the Catholic Church, we stood with our Apache relatives in prayer and in humble acknowledgment of the harm done by the Church to Indigenous people through the violent suppression of their religion, language, and culture and the theft of their land. 

As elders sat under the Emory Oaks and children ran and played in the rocks, we joined the Apache as “one drum, one circle, one prayer”—all for Mother Earth, for humanity’s soul, future generations, and the sacred site of Oak Flat.

Welcomed by the Apache into dance, song, and prayer, people of faith—Apache, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim—were awakened with a glimpse of what the future could be: People coming together from across lineages, with gratitude and respect for all of creation, and in solidarity with the rights and lifeways of all peoples. 

We urge the courts to see and protect this future.