Opinion: Why the birthplace of the Western #Apache religion shouldn’t be destroyed by a #CopperMine
by Luke Goodrich
February 6, 2024·
"A federal court is poised to decide whether a #NativeAmerican#sacred site will be destroyed by a massive #copper#mine. Mining proponents claim that destroying the #SacredSite is necessary for the development of #GreenEnergy. That claim is both factually wrong and morally repugnant. And recent polling shows that the vast majority of Americans agree with what the constitution requires: #Native sacred sites deserve the same protection as all other houses of worship.
"Since before European contact, #WesternApache and other Native tribes have lived and honored their #Creator at #OakFlat, or 'Chi’chil Bildagoteel.' The site is the birthplace of Western Apache religion and the site of ancient religious ceremonies that cannot take place anywhere else. Because of its religious and cultural significance, Oak Flat is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been protected from mining and other destructive practices for decades.
"That changed in 2014, when several members of Congress, supported by #corporate#mining#lobbyists, slipped an amendment into a must-pass defense bill authorizing the transfer of Oak Flat to a foreign-owned mining giant. That company, #ResolutionCopper, announced plans to obliterate the sacred ground by swallowing it in a mining crater nearly two miles wide and 1,100-feet deep, ending Apache religious practices forever. That was no surprise given the company’s sordid history dealing with #IndigenousPeoples. The majority owner of Resolution Copper is #RioTinto (the world’s second largest mining company), which sparked international outrage in 2020 when it destroyed a 46,000-year-old rock shelter with some of the most significant #Aboriginal artifacts in all of #Australia.
"The Apache and their allies, represented by my firm, the #BecketFundForReligiousLiberty, have been fighting in court to ensure that such an atrocity won’t repeat itself at Oak Flat. After initial court rulings against the Apache, a full panel of 11 judges at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reheard their appeal last spring. A decision on whether the government can execute the land transfer is expected any day.
"Resolution Copper and its backers want the public to believe that building the mine is essential for developing #renewable energy. Extracting the copper beneath Oak Flat, they say, will help to build batteries necessary for powering #ElectricVehicles and thus fight #ClimateChange. In other words, we have to destroy Oak Flat in order to save the planet.
"These claims, however, are false — and they are specifically designed to obscure the physical and cultural destruction the project would wreak on the land.
"The mine will destroy the #environment, not save it. It is undisputed that the mine will swallow the ecologically diverse landscape of Oak Flat in a massive crater, decimating the local #ecosystem. It will also leave behind approximately 1.37 billion tons of '#tailings,' or #MiningWaste, which, according to the government’s own environmental assessment, will pollute the #groundwater and scar the landscape permanently. And the mine will consume vast quantities of water at the time it is most needed by drought-stricken towns and #farmers.
"Supporters of the mine are also at odds with the majority of Americans. According to this year’s Religious Freedom Index, an annual survey conducted by Becket, 74% of Americans believe that Native sacred sites on federal land should be protected from mining projects, even when the projects are purportedly pro-jobs and pro-environment.
"That conclusion is both sensible and humane. America can transition to renewable energy without blasting the cradle of Western Apache religion into oblivion. And it should. For too long, our nation has made excuses for taking advantage of #IndigenousPeople and their land. Indeed, our nation drove the Western Apache off Oak Flat and surrounding lands in the 1800s precisely to make way for #MiningInterests. It shouldn’t repeat that #injustice again.
"It is past time to protect Indigenous sacred sites from further destruction. Basic fairness and our constitutional commitment to religious freedom require no less. And, happily, most Americans agree."
@DoomsdaysCW
>The majority owner of Resolution Copper is #RioTinto (the world’s second largest mining company), which sparked international outrage in 2020 when it destroyed a 46,000-year-old rock shelter with some of the most significant #Aboriginal artifacts in all of #Australia.
Just as a update here, a whole buch of new legislation was implemented when this happened ..and then the legislation was mostly shit canned becase the exploitation must continue.
>But the state government scrapped the new legislation just five weeks after it was implemented amid widespread backlash about the complexity and effectiveness of the laws
Here's everything you need to know about the WA government's backdown on its #Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws
By Jake Sturmer
Posted Tue 8 Aug 2023
"The WA government's 2021 changes were supposed to prevent what it described as a 'global embarrassment' from ever happening again.
"Instead, the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act has left many farmers confused and traditional owners frustrated.
"After just five weeks in operation, the government has backflipped — trying to stem the political bleeding that is tainting WA's new premier and now muddying the waters of the Voice referendum debate.
So what's changing?
"It's important to remember that any activities that could damage Aboriginal cultural heritage still need approval.
"The old-but-soon-to-be-new 1972 act meant the minister had to tick off on every action no matter how minor — known as a Section 18 approval.
WA premier announces repeal of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws
"Just five weeks after being legislated, Roger Cook announces the WA government will be scrapping its #AboriginalCulturalHeritageLaws.
"The 2021 act created a system of tiers and approvals.
"Want to build a fence with no clearing? No approval required.
"New #mine site with deep excavation? You'll need a management plan that has to be ticked off by a local Aboriginal organisation at your expense.
"But the government acknowledged these tiers have caused massive confusion and will therefore be scrapped.
"There were reports the rules would have prevented everything from gardening to installing a swimming pool, building a garage or burying a pet in the backyard.
"In fact, such activities were exempt, as were all properties smaller than 1,100 square metres.
"So it's no surprise the biggest outcry came from farmers.
How will another Juukan Gorge be prevented?
"When landowners requested to damage or destroy heritage sites, they needed one of those #Section18 approvals from the minister.
"If the minister rejected that, developers had a right to appeal but traditional owners did not.
"As part of the government's backflip, it will amend the laws to give a right of appeal to the native title party whose cultural heritage is impacted.
"Developers will also have to bring any new heritage information to the government's attention."
It’s all part of a global playbook from the U.S.-based #AtlasNetwork to protect the profits of #FossilFuel and #mining companies, argues a Sydney researcher.
By Geoff Dembicki
Oct 10, 2023
"A campaign to deny #IndigenousPeoples a voice in Australia’s national Parliament is using tactics similar to an earlier conservative legal battle against #FirstNations communities in Canada, a new research paper argues.
"That’s no coincidence, according to the paper’s author Jeremy Walker, because think tanks linked to these efforts in Canada and Australia belong to a secretive U.S. organization called the Atlas Network that’s received support from #oil, #gas and #coal companies and operates in nearly 100 countries.
"'The coordinated opposition to Indigenous constitutional recognition by the Australian arm of the Atlas Network we can assume is motivated by the same intentions underlying the permanent Atlas campaign against climate policy [globally],' writes Walker, a senior lecturer in social and political sciences at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.
'That is, to minimise the possibility of democratic government challenging the ever-expanding frontier of fossil fuel extraction,' he argues, a charge one conservative Australian advocacy group strongly denies.
"On #October14, Australians will vote 'yes' or 'no' in a referendum that would amend the country’s constitution to create a permanent First Nations advisory body in the country’s Parliament.
"'Most Australians understand that generations of Australian government policy have failed First Nations peoples,' UNSW Sydney professor Megan Davis, who is a Cobble Cobble woman of the Barunggam Nation, told the Guardian earlier this year. 'The voice referendum is an opportunity for all of us Australians to make the difference.'
"Earlier this spring national support for the 'yes' position was over 60 percent but by September it had collapsed to 40 percent or less, polling cited by Walker suggests.
Walker attributes that largely to the efforts of a #conservative advocacy group called #Advance, which has led an extensive media campaign urging people to vote 'No' in the referendum. 'The ‘Indigenous Voice to Parliament’ will wreck our Constitution, rewire our democracy, and divide Australians by race. It’s divisive, it’s dangerous, it’s expensive and it’s not fair,' reads a website created by Advance.
The campaign’s main spokespeople are Indigenous – Warren Mundine and Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – and they have been interviewed frequently in the country’s mainstream media. Yet few Australians are aware of Mundine and Price’s connections to the wider Atlas Network, Walker argues.
"Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is another ‘No’ campaigner with Atlas ties.
Both 'No' campaigners are long-time contributors to the Centre for Independent Studies, Walker’s paper explains, a conservative think tank founded in 1976 with grants from resource extraction companies such as #Shell, #RioTinto and #WesternMiningCorporation.
The Center for Independent Studies is in turn a member of the Atlas Network, a Virginia-based organization whose members include hundreds of conservative think tanks and organizations across the world, many of whom are active spreaders of doubt about the severity of climate change.
One of the Center for Independent Studies’ first board members, Maurice Newman, was revealed as an early backer of the organization Advance in 2018, which is now leading efforts against the Indigenous referendum. And Advance’s lead 'No' campaigner Mundine is chairman of LibertyWorks, a conservative group also associated with the Atlas Network.
"Despite these connections, Advance strongly disputes any association with Atlas.
'We have never heard of the Atlas Network and absolutely reject the incorrect assertion we have any connection to them at all,' a spokesperson for Advance wrote in an email to DeSmog. 'The idea that our referendum campaign is being conducted or coordinated by ‘fossil-fuel corporations and their allies’ or the Atlas Network is wrong and frankly bizarre.'
"In addition to Australia and dozens of other countries, several Atlas Network members are based in Canada. And they too have led efforts attempting to undermine greater recognition of Indigenous legal rights. An Ottawa-based think tank and Atlas member called the MacDonald Laurier Institute spent years advocating against Canada’s federal government adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, otherwise known as #UNDRIP.
"That’s because UNDRIP contained clauses that could potentially give Canada’s Indigenous peoples greater say over fossil fuel and natural resource projects on their territories. 'It is difficult to overstate the legal and economic disruptions that may have followed from such a step,' read documents produced by the Atlas Network and the Macdonald Laurier Institute that were obtained by DeSmog.
"The think tank has actively cultivated #ProIndustry Indigenous representatives as the face of its advocacy efforts on this and other natural resources issues in order to provide 'a shield against opponents that is hard to undermine,' according to the documents. First Nations critics refer to such strategies as '#redwashing.'
"'It’s a way of [industry] making their claims about their relationship with Indigenous peoples sound better than they actually are in reality,' Kris Statnyk, a #Gwichin First Nation lawyer based in British Columbia, told Drilled this summer.
"Walker sees a parallel between those tactics, and the current effort in Australia to prevent First Nations from having greater representation in that country’s Parliament. The 'No' campaign led by the group Advance prominently features Indigenous Australians arguing against the referendum, despite polling commissioned by advocates suggesting that 80 percent or more of First Nations people in the country support the initiative.
Like in Canada, some Australian fossil fuel and mining projects are located in or adjacent to the traditional territories of First Nations.
"Several Indigenous communities have led legal challenges against gas and coal expansion. 'Should an Indigenous Voice be constitutionalised in Parliament, First Nations representatives might raise objections to such fossil and mining projects,' Walker writes.
He argues that this is what’s at stake in the upcoming referendum vote.
"'The effort to deny Aboriginal Australians a voice is part of a global playbook from Atlas and its allies,' Walker told DeSmog. 'They’ve also used it in Canada and likely anywhere else that greater Indigenous rights could impact fossil fuel and mining profits.'"
Just got the bus home. The guy in front of me got his laptop out. Odd for this route. Long story short, he's an Accenture contractor working in Rio Tinto and really didn't seem to mind me seeing spreadsheets with details of much of their networking equipment, PuTTY sessions, usernames, emails, project names etc. Might dob him in #InfoSec#Accenture#RioTinto