Ouch...but the legacy continued with the 501st.
Posted on 12/13/2014 5:43:39 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A site on Apache Mountain, where Apache warriors plunged to their deaths to avoid the U.S. cavalry, may soon overlook a copper mine.
Archaeologists and Native American tribes are protesting language in a Senate bill that would approve a controversial land exchange between the federal government and a copper mining company -- a swap that may put Native American archaeological sites at risk. The bill is needed to fund the U.S. military and is considered likely to pass the Senate as early as today.
The company Resolution Copper Mining hopes to exploit rich copper deposits beneath 980 hectares of Arizona's Tonto National Forest. The land, however, also contains important archaeological sites and places sacred to local Native American tribes, especially the Apache...
Archaeologists fear that the standard process for approval of a land exchange is being sidestepped. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) lays out a process to determine a land transferal's potential impact on the environment, archaeological and historic sites, and places sacred to Native Americans. The language inserted into the defense spending bill states that the land will be transferred to Resolution Copper 60 days after an environmental impact statement, part of the NEPA process, has been completed. That prejudges the outcome of the evaluation, says Jeffrey Altschul, president of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Washington, D.C...
Attaching the land exchange rider to the defense spending bill is a way to circumvent that opposition, says Michael Nixon, an environmental lawyer who works with the Maricopa Audubon Society and has fought the land exchange since the beginning...
What is at stake is a landscape that has remained essentially unchanged, except for a few modern roads, since the Hohokam people lived there more than 500 years ago, says J. Scott Wood, an archaeologist for the Tonto National Forest.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
The history of those who came before us is fascinating. I hope an equitable deal can be worked out to preserve the heritage of the living apaches affected in the area. There should be a way to harvest the ore while preserving the site.
The actual historical location is thought to be near Superior, AZ, and is a cliff called Apache Leap.
We can’t have a high tech future without these metals and other resources. The money it generates can’t hurt either.
Ouch...but the legacy continued with the 501st.
Most experts think the Apache and the white man arrived in Arizona at about the same time.
First time I’ve paid attention to the new flashing graphic and at first glance I read lines 1-2 as God’s Gravy.
Having worked around a lot of copper mining, I have heard more than once the “stories” about the Michigan copper deposit that is near pure copper “allegedly” the result of a huge copper asteroid that impacted similar to the nickel deposit at Sudbury, Ontario.
The first ten years of Arizona license plates for cars were made of copper.
I once lived in Miami AZ with lots of mines.
I worked on the White River Apache Reservation for Head Start.
The town is now a ghost town ...people moving away. That whole area in Gila County is wasting away.
I would have guessed the indians were the mogollon rather than hohokem seeing as how the apache peak is at the mogollon rim
You note that the mine isn’t at the supposed historical site but is “overlooked” by the historic site. So we are talking about view shed to a mountain where there is no viewing because it is desert mountain area.
The is no cultivation of crops, so why not use the minerals and enrich the tribe and the miners? Good control of impact is all that is needed.
Let the archaeologists do their rescue work and then the project can proceed. That’s how it’s done on every road, pipeline or housing subdivision. Environmental extremists and anti capitalists are out to stop this project and, in the process, bankrupt the evil mining company.
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Exactly!
I agree.
That would have to be some pretty good gravy. ;’)
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