Elias Butler

The U.S. government just handed sacred Apache land to a copper mine. When they're done, the ancient oaks where generations have prayed and come of age will be gone - replaced by a crater two miles wide. Chi'chil Biłdagoteel, known as Oak Flat, sits in Arizona's Tonto National Forest outside Superior. Its 2,422 acres of old-growth oaks, springs, and sacred sites have held San Carlos Apache prayers and coming-of-age ceremonies since time immemorial. The endangered Arizona hedgehog cactus grows here. An endangered ocelot was struck and killed on a nearby highway - a reminder of what else calls this place home. President Eisenhower protected this land from mining in 1955. That lasted 60 years, until the late Sen. John McCain slipped a last-minute provision into a must-pass defense bill in 2014, authorizing the transfer of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper. Below Oak Flat, the Sonoran Desert rises to meet you in thousands of saguaro cacti lining the drive up from Phoenix. Environmentalists warn that block-cave mining at this scale threatens the fragile water systems that sustain this entire ecosystem. Apache Stronghold fought it in court for over a decade. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court declined to hear it - no explanation, no ruling on the merits, just a closed door. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the Court's most conservative voices, wrote a dissent calling it a grievous mistake. This past March, the transfer was finalized anyway. The crater the mine leaves behind will be two miles wide and 1,100 feet deep. Permanent. The American people will receive zero in royalties. That's not an oversight - it's the 1872 Mining Law, a statute signed by Ulysses S. Grant that lets mining companies extract minerals from public land and pay nothing. It hasn't been updated in over 150 years. 150 years — can you believe it? Twenty-one of Arizona's 22 federally recognized tribes oppose this. Seventy-one percent of Americans support protecting Oak Flat. "We will never stop fighting," said Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold. "This is a struggle for the soul of our people." What kind of country lets a 150-year-old law give away sacred land and call it legal? #DemsUnited