Decolonizing Oak Flat: Apache Stronghold’s Place-based, Temporal, and Mnemonic Dissensus at Public Hearings

ABSTRACT

Adding to work on environmental decision making, decoloniality, and rhetorics of social protest, this paper analyzes a troubling case of resource colonialism at Oak Flat, AZ where mining corporations Rio Tinto and BHP seek to execute decade-old plans to turn land sacred to many Western Apache into one of the largest copper mines in the US (Resolution Mine). This paper studies how members and supporters of the group Apache Stronghold “talk back” in ways that consummate decolonial identities. Taking up the process-oriented nature of this exigency, I study indecorous protest rhetorics at six public hearings about the mine’s Environmental Impact Statement (Draft) in 2019. I argue Apache Stronghold uses place, time, and memory as topoi of decolonial dissensus. While the Resolution Mine may be foregone conclusion, Apache Stronghold shows how (de)coloniality can delink environmental public participation processes from regimes of colonial capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental decision making
• Resolution Mine
• Apache Stronghold
• indecorum
• decoloniality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As Stuckey and Murphy (2001) explain, naming is a tool of rhetorical coloniality that has historically been used to exert control of Native American land and resources. Naming Chi’chil Bildagoteel Oak Flat is one such example. While Oak Flat may be the colonial name of this sacred site, it is also frequently used by Apache Stronghold movement (e.g., “Protect Oak Flat”). This can be read as an example of strategic essentialism. That same critical telos is used when using other essentialistic names throughout this paper such as American Indian, Apache Stronghold, Western Apache (see Ono & Sloop, 1992).

2 The Western Apache cultural tradition includes four tribes: the San Carlos Apache, the Payson Tonto and White Mountain Apache Tribes and Yavapai-Apache Nation. There are also six other non-Apache tribes with cultural ties to Oak Flat (Welch, 2017).

3 Several speakers, when recorded, refer to Oak Flat as Chich’il Bildagoteel. There is evidence that more native language was used throughout the hearings, but as an example of what Ono and Buescher (2001) call rhetorical coloniality, USFS transcribed these moments with “Spoken in native language” (see note 1).