It should tell America how the United States really is to live, you know ...
First American indigenous person here to face a foreign mining company in our own land.
It just should tell everyone that the United States stands on a false foundation.
I went to DC and left my letters with Congress and the forest service,
cultural department and told all them I'm leaving the reservation to come home.
I came back here to see the negligence that the United States was doing to our holy and sacred places.
My grandfather Wendsler Nosie Senior, he started this movement of trying to protect Oak Flat when
he was a part of the San Carlos tribal council.
This year's run is really critical.
I hate saying it but it could be our last
and when Resolution Copper tries to finesse it, you know, it seems to
blind people, they don't realise the impact that's going to occur from this
and so we're all going to be devastated by, you know, our children within the next 20 years.
'Resolution Copper will utilise a well-established mining technique called caving.'
'The first signs of subsidence will occur after a few years of mining.'
'Subsidence is expected to continue following the cessation of active mining after closure.'
'The vegetation in this area will be significantly affected.'
Our apache war isn't over because no longer are they killing us and, you know, slaughtering
our people and putting us in prison, they're going to take our religion away and that's
another act of genocide because then we're not apache people if we don't have no religion.
It's a total not only desecration but really wiping it off in the face of the
earth and the only thing that you can describe on that is how evil that is.
A year ago in November, I watched my dad say that was it, he was tired of the government
lying to him, to his people ... so he decided to make his journey home.
It took three days ... him and my second youngest daughter,
they walked and ran all the way back from old San Carlos to Oak Flat.
This is like the new San Carlos but we're heading towards old San Carlos where
it was household 40, the concentration camp where all the people were brought in as prisoners of war.
You can imagine, you know, I mean having direct military oversight on them
and the whole thing was to to break us so that they can do as well with everything they wanted
from this country, you know?
Here's a little glimpse of the monument
that I put together so that our people will never forget the tragedy that we went through.
I look at this as the centre piece of our history, the good and bad.
There's revelants and little peaks of the mountains
where the military posted their snipers and so, you know, the Indian people, the people here
were ordered not to go so far and if they did, you know, the snipers would take them out.
This is where the Oak Flat runs from San Carlos where it starts.
It was important for me to come
back here and start off from here when I vacated the reservation to move back to Oak Flat.
It was just the right place for me to live, you know, from the where the suffering started to where ...
Now for me, personally, the healing, you know, then they're now taking this message across the country.
You don't have to smile, you can look stoic.
How do you feel?
Amazing.
That was a long run.
Yes, I just kept asking for my ancestors
to push me, to push me ... that this is my sacred homeland.
Nobody can't take that from me.
There's a reason why you're here
and for me, you know, I live here and it hurts because I don't know what's going
to happen with our land transfer, we have our lawsuits in and everything.
This is a holy place.
There's going to be murder ...
It's not over yet, we're still praying for
those miracles that America would just stand up and do the right thing.
A lot of people have asked me like, when's the first time you've started fighting, you know,
'when did you get in the fight?'
and I said, when I took my first breath because indigenous people were
not meant to be here, the United States and its military were trying to make our people extinct
and they failed at that.
When our people were free this was the place that you could be born
here and you can die here and we believe that this is a direct connection to our creator.
Everything here from the air to the dirt, to the water,
it signifies a spirit that we believe in and that
spirit is Chí’chil Biłdagoteel and that spirit is where we have our sunrise ceremonies
and this is that place.
When these girls have these sunrise ceremonies here because there's been a lot of girls
who've had it here at Oak Flat.
They're reborn and your ... lifeline, that connection isn't fine with
the place you have that ceremony.
I feel that as the oldest daughter that I have to fight for
my sister's life because knowing the fact that if, you know, when the land subsides
from the mine, my sister directly is impacted because she's harmed, because that lifeline is
connected to here so if you kill that then you're killing all those girls a part of their life.
As a woman we talk about how we're able to give life.
That's here at Oak Flat.
I've taught my girls that was passed down from my grandmother to me,
how to pick the Chí’chil, the acorn and how it gives life.
Those stories, those teachings are in there, the waters, the medicine, the food,
our berries, our ... that we make that we drink, the berry juice that's all here.
As a mother that's my job to pass on to my children and my grandchildren.
How am I going to do that?
Without the Oak trees, without her shelter, without her water, without her teachings
through the petroglyphs and through the burial sites, it's like we're empty.
It's been white color when they throw paint and mess it up.
It wasn't like this until.
This whole issue with Resolution Copper and when they talked about prehistoric and when they
talk about the picture glyphs then this was all destroyed.
It was a storytelling of the life here.
From all the medicine plants, the acorn trees, you know, all the picture glyphs, all the holy sites,
the homes of the deities ... it's all going to subside.
In the very beginning, when everything was created and everything came to be,
the deities, the angels around the world, were put in places like this to reside.
You have to kind of break away from what capitalism does to you,
you know, and give yourself back to where these things don't classify you,
where they don't look at you as you're different but take you in as family,
there's a whole different mentality that comes in,
a whole different feeling and then you're able to touch life.
I think the way the systemness is that it suppressed so many people that we're
all looking for healing and it's right here, you know, it's right in America's backyard but,
you know, that's why we can't destroy it, that's why the people got to stand for what is left.
The email I got says breaking news urgent notification withdrawal Resolution Copper
mine and then it states that 'good morning tribal leaders, I'm writing this morning to make you aware
of the decision made by the USDA to direct the forest service to resend the final environmental
impact statement and draft record of decision for the Resolution Copper mine and the related land exchange.'
... she's crying, she's at work, but she's ...
It does protect it completely but it gives us time and all this said, let's go start lobbying.
Yeah, all right, OK.
I'm just gonna enjoy myself, going down slow.
All right, thanks. – OK, dad.
Love you. – I love you too.
You've seen the birds just fly over me, flying in circles and ...
I mean, for here yes, you know, it gets to breathe, it gets ...
March 11 is not a deadline now, I mean, we haven't totally got it yet but it gives us a leverage now.
Big one but we can't stop, you know, got to make sure that this place is protected.