If Resolution Copper gets its way Oak Flat—a holy site known as  Chich’il Biłdagoteel to the Western Apache—will drop several hundred feet into a crater; mine waste equal to at 16 story building with same area as the island of Manhattan will fill an adjacent valley, and waste water will flood into water table that feeds much of nearby Phoenix, Arizona. “It’s just like Mount Sinai,”says Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr.—a place of divine revelation, where deities live. “It’s part of our identity as a people.” Nosie and his family have been opposed to the mine since it was announced in 2004.

This ongoing project has been supported by publication in National Geographic, High Country News, The Guardian, and Mother Jones among others.

Sacred Native American land to be traded to a foreign mining giant by Douglas Main, In Arizona, fighting a copper mine planned on sacred land by Maya L. Kapoor, Can the US Go Green Without Destroying Sacred Native Lands? by Maddie Oatman, and Trump officials rush to mine desert haven native tribes consider holy by Annette McGivney.