What counts as sacred land?
A 2020 study by the GAO reported there were over 500,000 abandoned mines in the United States. There are a number of agencies involved in counting and reporting these, including the EPA (see a limited list). Some abandoned mines are superfund sites and we generally like to think of those as the bad ones, mis-managed perhaps, but rare. But the mass reality of mine failure is more alarming. As is the report to congress citing an investigation of US copper mines, which concluded that “14 out of 15 (93%) failed to capture and control wastewater, resulting in significant water quality impacts.”
Is it surprising, then, the desperate effort of the San Carlos Apache to stop the mining conglomerate Rio Tinto from mining copper at Oak Flat? Indeed, the question is, why is it permitted anywhere? The realities go well beyond simple risks of digging things up. Hazards and damages include toxic lakes, contaminated groundwater, and complete collapse of living land into deep-rimmed mined-out craters with harm to humans, plants, soils and species for generations. All this with a lack of oversight, according to a 2012 report, for either the quantities extracted or profit margins gained.
With the case of Oak Flat now awaiting a decision from the 9th Court of Appeals, Sarah Augustine, a long-time advocate and Indigenous educator, and author of the book The Land is Not Empty (Herald Press, 2021), joined us at the Climate Cafe Multifaith. We talked about sacred land, and the effort of the San Carlos Apache to preserve their freedom of religion in a place they call Chi'chil Biłdagoteel, where generations have lived, gathered, and worshipped on holy ground.
Oak Flat is treaty land, and now part of the Tonto National Forest which overlaps ten Indigenous areas. In 2014, an Oak Flat parcel was part of a defense-bill land exchange, and swapped to Resolution Copper which planned to build a mine and extract copper. This, then, sparked the ongoing outcry to protect land, culture, religion, species, biodiversity and people. A long list of co-signers accompany this letter sent to President Joe Biden, asking for preservation of Oak Flat, including faith organizations.
As the case works through the courts and impacts are assessed, the usual procedures are further complicated by the compounding effects of climate change.
Drought is now megadrought in the West. The flow of the Colorado River has diminished 20% just in the last two decades, bringing legal and agricultural challenges. Then came the 2021 study of water use for the proposed mine. The study found that the mine would use 250 billion gallons of water, water extracted from East Salt River Valley groundwater wells by carbon-emitting pumps, then transported over 15 miles to the mine. Water use alone, the report states, is equivalent to the needs of a city of 140,000 for over 40 years.
“They only talk about the cost of their business and the net profit that they gain for that industry. There is no discussion of the actual environmental impact because … all of those costs are externalized to society. The community that is housing that mine has to deal with the costs—the medical costs, the costs of loss of the water. …The mining company is not required to bear that cost, not in any way demonstrated in the balance sheet of that industry itself. And that's something that I find to be really puzzling.”
—Sarah Augustine
Rio Tinto
This youtube video from the Center for Biological Diversity is a one-minute look at the destruction globally left by Rio Tinto, the parent corporation seeking to mine Oak Flat.
Sarah Augustine lives near Yakima, Washington, where she raises beef with her family. As a Tewa woman, she pays attention to the relationship of land in farming, people, livestock and the earth. Her experiences on the land deepen her perspective that what we do as humans has real impact for all life and the creation. She notices that in her daily life, “what I do impacts everyone else, not just among human people. But among all people.”
She explains, "My family raises natural beef here, and we depend on the health of the land where we live. ….I lived here for 18 years and in this place, every year I get to acknowledge the faithfulness of the Creator as Life returns to the soil and as we get to see our grass come up. …that grass that is able to feed and nourish our cattle and livestock, and that livestock is able to nourish us and people in this region.”
Augustine explains the teaching she has learned from “elders who have the patience and willingness to teach me” that “we live in a closed system of mutual dependence.” Living on earth as part of the creation means everything created already exists within the global life system of air, water, and soils. What we do in that system stays with us. “No new things” come in, “and we can't put anything out.” If, for example, we “create nuclear waste, that stays with us. There's nowhere else to put it and there is no new water or soil or air. All that we have is what we have. And we're mutually dependent in that space.”
“Mining does not endanger indigenous people alone. Often indigenous people are on the forefront of fighting mining, but they're not doing it for themselves alone. …when they stand up and speak about Oak Flat they say, we don’t go to Oak Flat to pray for ourselves, we pray for all of humanity, for all of the earth.”
—Sarah Augustine
Fight for Oak Flat
This is one of a few videos produced by the Sierra Club to help people better understand what is happening at Oak Flat. Find other videos at apache-stronghold.com
When Augustine isn’t on her home ranch, she travels widely. She is the Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She brings together her Mennonite faith and Indigenous life knowledge to walk with others who seek to safeguard the creation and communities from copper mines, climate change, and the violence that destroyed Indigenous communities and forcibly took and destroyed Indigenous land.
She works to build shared understanding alongside global institutions such as the World Council of Churches, and she engages in practices of ceremony in sacred places such as Oak Flat. She shared a little of when she has spoken with Nosie Wendler Sr., former chairman of the San Carlos Apache, and others of the tribes leaders and members.
“Oak Flat is an amazing place. It is a spiritual place,” she says. “There is a canyon there that is called the Canyon of Angels. It is a place it is believed the holy ones dwell inside, and the Apache people go there to perform ceremony.” Further, she says, “it's also the place where the people have gone to pray for all of humanity and for the world for generations and generations of time. It's a deeply holy place. And it's a desecration of that place to bring forward that mine.”
“We have somehow been hypnotized into believing that if we have a big enough retirement account, or if we save enough money, that somehow will be saved. …I think not only is it wrong, but it's misguided and I would say, buying into that runs counter to the ministry and the message of Jesus, directly.”
—Sarah Augustine
The effects of displacement of Indigenous people and the destruction of lands in pursuit of wealth has laid a swath of suffering across the globe. The harm of environmental destruction hurts the vulnerable first, but ultimately it crosses every border and impacts every living thing. Whether it is the smoke from climate-enraged forest fires, or sea levels rising, or a change in the earth’s rotation as the groundwater is used up. All of us—we are all part of Creation— are part of this complete and closed system. We all are harmed by the impacts.
In places such as Butte, Montana, and Eunice, West Virginia, the fight for environmental protections for air and lakes and rivers is well documented. Mining is often so destructive there is no way to restore the damage to human health and ecosystems. Healing must be done in geologic time, as the creation itself must heal its aquifers, and await the breakdown of toxic chemicals laid in the sediment of soils and streams. But meanwhile, the impacts last for generation after generation as disruptions and poisons are taken up in the bodies of earth’s living things.
Augustine speaks to the reality of what that could potentially mean for Oak Flat, “that destruction year by year and the impact at the community level … with heavy metals that are [part of] the very toxic extractive process. The impact to the aquifer is centuries long. It's not sort of a quick thing that just resolves itself. It goes on and on for centuries. They talk about mine waste remediation, but there really is no remediation for soil and for water that's contaminated. There is only the geological time.”
“The forces of life will prevail, and the systems of death will not, and that's all there is.”
—Sarah Augustine

Apache Protest
The danger to Oak Flat may be ongoing for generations. The copper deposit found there is ‘one of the biggest’ and the mining companies look to bring copper up and out of the ground to sell and make profit. There are people living near the mine, also, who want the promised jobs and hope those jobs might keep things going for a while. The deeper moral trouble comes with just how much copper mining actually costs. And, if the copper wiring at the hardware store was attached to that, would we really buy it at that price.
To mine or not to mine is usually set forward a as question of either economy or national security. After all, the land swap came in a must-pass defense bill. Copper is ‘good business’ and with the clean energy revolution the price per ounce just went up. And to that I wonder, what about the justice, though. What about the ‘externalized costs’ such as cancer, asthma, and loss of ecosystems and habitat. What about the poisoned water and the drought? Where is a justice that weighs the scales and asks if we have prioritized life, or are choosing instead to continue with a way of economics based in extraction and exploitation.
What if there is another way.
Sarah Augustine has her eyes set on another way. “We are working now on a long term vision.” That vision involves “asking Indigenous elders to share their cosmology,” to get their insight. Says Augustine, “we're trying to learn through that and build those systems. —That is using Indigenous cosmology to effect alternate systems, to build alternate systems.” Together we are asking, “what would a healthy system look like?”
This is generational, collective work. To bring necessary change, we have to work together and across generations. We need each other if we are going to have the impact necessary to change the systems that dig and then abandon mine after mine after mine. Says Augustine, “We have to work collectively. Those people who are engaged in the churches, that's a good way to do it …mobilizing your Christian institutions to act collectively.”
The overall message from Indigenous leaders working to save Oak Flat is one Augustine herself brings, that, “We're all in it together. …we are in a closed system of mutual dependence.” And, “we have the same things to lose.” Recognizing this brings solidarity and coalition with Indigenous siblings as siblings. This is a “fight for survival… because we're all going to be impacted by the loss of the aquifer, all impacted by environmental destruction, whether we're talking about deforestation, or open mining.”Taking action can take different forms, including reaching out to offer help with phone banking and fund-raising, as well as talking to members of congress. “We have a legislative working group that's working on national legislation for Oak Flat,” says Augustine. Currently this “legislation is in committee, so they're mobilizing folks, including Christians across the country to send delegations to the Senate and breathe life into the legislation.”
And above all else, action is in prayer. The ultimate focus of the Apache leaders is deep, necessary change. Apache leaders recognize that “this is a spiritual battle.” She explains, “we are not just trying to win a court case. In fact, that's not our aim at all. Our aim is transformation, transformation of ourselves and our society, transformation of oppressive laws and policies, transformation of our world.”
Necessary reading From AZ Mirror New study: Resolution Copper mine will use 250 billion gallons of water as drought ravages Arizona and HCN The dizzying scope of abandoned mine hazards on public lands tell more of the story of Oak Flat and mining in the American West. Also from the AZ Mirror by San Carlos Apache Chairman, Terry Rambler Oak Flat is ‘irreplaceable.’ Congress must act now to save it.
Learn more from Apache Stronghold.

Sarah Augustine is the Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, a national coalition with global reach. From 2007-2022 she directed a Dispute Resolution Center in Central Washington. She has represented the interests of Indigenous community partners to their own governments, the Inter-American development bank, the United Nations, the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, The World Council of Churches, the World Health Organization, and a host of other international actors including corporate interests. In 2012 she co-drafted the World Council of Churches (WCC) Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery and its Enduring Impact on Indigenous Peoples. She co-wrote the WCC 2013 Assembly Minute on Indigenous Peoples, and worked with an international coalition of Indigenous faith leaders to create the WCC’s Indigenous Peoples Program.
She has served on the faculty at Heritage University, Central Washington University and Yakima Valley College, and has served as Adjunct faculty at Goshen College. With coalition co-founder Sheri Hostettler, she co-hosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Podcast. Sarah is the Author of The Land is Not Empty (Herald Press, 2021).
Find more articles and video at the intersection of faith, climate change and climate justice on the Faiths4Future blog. As well as JustCreation.org
The Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is here for the friendship and conversations about climate, community, and connection. She organizes the Climate Cafe Multifaith as a co-leader of Faiths4Future. Find her in real life in Southern Oregon, working as Steward of Climate with the nonprofit Circle Faith Future. This article is republished with permission from her blog, JustCreation.org. To reproduce this content elsewhere, please contact the author.