Page 322 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

296 S. Semken and E. Brandt

operations consolidated into the Magma Mine, an important underground copper
mine that operated profitably most years through booms and busts. The Magma
Mine was the economic mainstay of Superior until it closed in the early 1990s,
causing major economic losses and the departure of about half of the town’s
population.
However, an even richer copper deposit was discovered about 2,135 m (7,000 ft)
beneath the surface east of Superior, a depth inaccessible to mining technologies
until only recently. The global mining firms Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton formed a
new company, Resolution Copper Mining (RCM), to explore the feasibility of
extracting this deposit, which appears to be the richest undeveloped copper resource
in North America. The proposed mine would have a life span of about 66 years, and
its total economic impact on the state has been estimated to exceed US$46 billion
(Pollack and Company 2008). RCM reports that since 2001, it has invested about
US$290 million in exploration, feasibility studies, remediation of the former
Magma Mine site, construction, and community education and outreach projects
(Matthews 2009). Another US$4 billion may be needed to complete the mine
(Sullivan 2009).
For many Superior residents, the proposed Resolution mine is the best hope of
saving the town, but Apache and Yavapai people, still strongly attached to places
throughout the area, have contested the proposal. Each tribe has former lands in
the area, sacred sites, sites for resource collection, and environmental concerns.
One of the significant places potentially impacted by the proposed new mine is a
popular campground in Oak Flat, the headwaters basin of Queen Creek east of
Superior. This place, currently under jurisdiction of the US Forest Service, would
almost certainly be physically impacted by mining, and is part of a Federal-owned
parcel RCM seeks to obtain by exchange for other environmentally sensitive lands
that the firm has purchased. Such an exchange must be approved by the US
Congress. Land exchange bills have been introduced several times without passage,
and at the time of this writing, a new one (Senate Bill 409 or S. 409) is in
committee.
Oak Flat has been an important camping and gathering area for Apache people
for centuries, and has some significance for the origins of certain Apache clans. The
area is rich with Emory’s oak trees, a source of acorns that constituted an important
food source for the Apache and Yavapai, and remain important for cultural pur-
poses today. Acorn stew, always served at ceremonies, is emblematic of Apache
identity. Basso (1996) has noted that Apaches use place names as icons of human
events that happened in these places. They use the stories of these localized events
to teach moral lessons, thus anchoring their moral system in the landscape. For
these reasons, Apache people view Oak Flat as sacred and as critical for the
maintenance of their traditions and culture. Apache spiritual and political leaders
oppose the proposed mining project:
Apache spiritual beings, our Gaan, exist within the three sacred sites of Oak Flat, Gaan
Canyon and Apache Leap affected by S. 409. These sites become RCM property and
subject to its proposed mine. Yet, to Apache, the Gaan live and breathe in those sites.