Apache activist Wendsler Nosie followed a lifelong path to Resolution copper mine protest

Wendsler Nosie Sr., broke his arm when he was 9, the sort of thing that happens to 9-year-old boys. He didn’t know it then, but the accident would help shape his life as a Native cultural rights activist.

“My mom took me to the hospital and they couldn’t fix it,” said Nosie, pointing to a spot high up near his shoulder. “They would have to send me to Phoenix for surgery.”

But before they made the 110-mile drive from their home in Peridot on the San Carlos Apache Reservation to Phoenix, Nosie’s mother, Elvera, wanted a second opinion.

“As soon as we came out of the hospital, we drove on a bumpy road through the river to a medicine man,” he said.

Nosie was taken to a holy ground, where the medicine man prayed. “He talked to my mother for a long time.” Elvera later sat the young boy down and explained what would happen, a scene Nosie still remembers.

“He said that the ga’an (an Apache mountain spirit) was going to hit you, and then you’d be ok,” Elvera told her son. “He told me you carry a light with you.”

Chief Nosey of the Chiricahua and his wife in 1881. Nosey is the great-grandfather of Apache environmental activist Wendsler Nosie, Sr.
Chief Nosey of the Chiricahua and his wife in 1881. Nosey is the great-grandfather of Apache environmental activist Wendsler Nosie, Sr.
(Photo: Wendsler Nosie, Sr.)

“The day after that, somebody came and slapped me on my back,” Nosie said. “I screamed, I turned around and thought that my sister’s little daughter had hit me. But there was nobody there.”

A few days later, the Nosies drove to Phoenix for the surgery. “The doctors took X-rays and said, ‘Who fixed his arm? It’s all in place. We don’t have to do surgery,’” Nosie said.

More than 50 years later, Nosie’s experiences both secular and spiritual have led him to his current residence: an RV at Oak Flat Campground in the Tonto National Forest.

Known to the Apache people as Chich’il Biłdagoteel, Oak Flat, about 65 miles due east of Phoenix, and its surrounding lands sit atop one of the planet’s largest remaining copper deposits.

Resolution Copper, a mining company owned by British-Australian firms Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, wants to extract that copper using a technique known as block cave mining. Tunneling underneath the vein causes the ore to collapse into pre-excavated funnels and access tunnels, which miners use to extract the ore. The mine information site Geo Engineer says that block cave mining costs can be much as 90% less than conventional methods.

But the process would obliterate Oak Flat, and opponents fear the mine could also collapse nearby U.S. Highway 60 and Apache Leap. The mine would also require a tailings facility to store the toxic leftovers, most likely in a wash that’s part of the Gila River watershed. That particular facility would require a dam nearly 600 feet, or 60 stories, high.

Opponents say if the dam enclosing the tailings bursts, the heavy metals and other toxic substances could reach the Gila. They also fear that the mine’s water use could impact water supplies, not only for Apache and other tribal peoples, but for hundreds of thousands of people in the San Tan Valley, the Globe-Miami area and other parts of Central Arizona.

Nosie, the former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, along with his family, fellow tribal members and allies, now offer prayers to stop what they say would be the desecration of Oak Flat, a sacred place to many Apache people as well as an important food and medicinal plant gathering area.