Congress Raids Ancestral Native American Lands With Defense Bill [Resolution Copper] – by Michael McAuliff (Huffington Post – December 3, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/politics/

WASHINGTON — When Terry Rambler, the chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, woke up Wednesday in Washington, D.C., it was to learn that Congress was deciding to give away a large part of his ancestral homeland to a foreign mining company.

Rambler came to the nation’s capital for the White House Tribal Nations Conference, an event described in a press announcement as an opportunity to engage the president, cabinet officials and the White House Council on Native American Affairs “on key issues facing tribes including respecting tribal sovereignty and upholding treaty and trust responsibilities,” among other things.

Rambler felt things got off to an unfortunate, if familiar, start when he learned that the House and Senate Armed Services Committee had decided to use the lame-duck session of Congress and the National Defense Authorization Act to give 2,400 acres of the Tonto National Forest in Arizona to a subsidiary of the Australian-English mining giant Rio Tinto.

“Of all people, Apaches and Indians should understand, because we’ve gone though this so many times in our history,” Rambler said.

Rambler knew there was a possibility that supporters of the move — which failed twice on the House floor last year — would slip the deal into the must-pass legislation, but aides and officials involved had declined to reveal it. Even Tuesday evening, when Republicans and Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee released summaries of the bill, the land deal was left out.

Rambler and other opponents couldn’t find out until late Tuesday night when the bill, named the “Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015” (after the retiring Senate and House committee chairmen), was finally posted online. The news that Apache burial, medicinal and ceremonial grounds would be given to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, was on page 1,105.

“The first thing I thought about was not really today, but 50 years from now, probably after my time, if this land exchange bill goes through, the effects that my children and children’s children will be dealing with,” Rambler said in an interview.

The land includes territory where Apaches gather medicinal plants and acorns — a food source that Rambler said has sustained his people for as long as they know. It also surrounds the Apache Leap, a summit from which trapped Apaches once jumped to their deaths rather than be killed by settlers in the late 1800s.

“Since time immemorial people have gone there. That’s part of our ancestral homeland,” Rambler said, referring to the overall area in question. “We’ve had dancers in that area forever — sunrise dancers — and coming-of-age ceremonies for our young girls that become women. They’ll seal that off. They’ll seal us off from the acorn grounds, and the medicinal plants in the area, and our prayer areas.”

For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/ndaa-land-deals_n_6264362.html