As I explored the campground where some members of the Apache Nation maintain a presence protesting the use of that land for copper mining, I was blown away by a modern-day Apache warrior I met there. A worn out red sign reading “Donate to Apache Stronghold” leaned against a stone fire pit near half a dozen tents and an enormous, metal trailer surrounded by buckets, coolers, and propane tanks. I walked around the tall shrubs and saw a young girl standing on a skateboard. She gently moved right and left on the board on a dirt ground. In that moment I saw Naelyn Pike as a 16-year-old. Not an activist.
Her mom, Vanessa Nosie, got her situated with an after-school snack on the stone picnic table before taking off. A fellow Apache Stronghold member, Jake Toledo, stood next to her encouraging her to get pumped up for the interview. Her exhaustion showed. “I had a rough night last night,” said the athletic high school junior. “I only think I got like 2.5 hours to sleep.” She explained that she wakes up at 4:00 a.m. so she can be on time for the bus at 5:45 a.m. It takes about 45 minutes on the bus to get from her home, on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, to Globe High School. Globe is approximately 30 minutes east of Oak Flat.
Pike said the Oak Flat campground has been part of her great-grandmother’s side of the family since she was born. “This is the place where we come from, our people, before we were forced on the reservation, imprisoned by the government,” said Pike. She grew up in Mesa, Arizona which is 19 miles west of Phoenix. She lived there for most of her life but would stop at Oak Flat when passing through to pray with her family. “We, as indigenous people, come to these places to know who we are,” said Pike. “We have that direct connection to Mother Earth. And if that is gone, who are we as indigenous people? We no longer have our roots.”
The granddaughter of Wendsler Nosie, leader of the Apache Stronghold, took her activism to local and national audiences. At her high school, she enlisted her friends’ support by hanging up posters and passing out pins together. Last July, she went even further, joining the Apache Stronghold in a drive across the country to Washington, D.C. The group camped in different cities along the way, including New York City, where her photo holding a bow-and-arrow went viral. In Washington, D.C., Pike testified before the House Natural Resources subcommittee, arguing the federal government should repeal a bill authorizing a land exchange with Resolution Copper.
Resolution Copper, a private mining company, aims to dig 7,000 feet under the Oak Flat grounds to extract copper ore. As part of the land exchange, authorized as a rider to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, Resolution Copper has offered other parcels of its land scattered throughout Southeast Arizona to the U.S. National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Bills to repeal the effort have been introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate. The company declined my interview request and directed me to its online materials about the mining project.
Later in my interview with Naelyn Pike, she no longer showed exhaustion. She sat at the edge of the lawn chair. She hadn’t touched her snacks but spoke with fiery passion and impressive eloquence. The Apache say the site has a direct connection to the Creator. The people go there for blessings and to pray, Pike said. She plans to take her future children to the site, just as her parents took her there.
Pike says the Apache Stronghold group has received death threats. She said when that happened, she realized she is willing to sacrifice her life for this fight, “So that people will understand and finally open their eyes to what corporations are doing in this world. ” In that moment, hearing how dedicated she was, I couldn’t believe I was talking with the 16-year-old I had just seen riding a skateboard. Indigenous peoples always think about future generations when making decisions, so it didn’t surprise me when Pike said, “I’m just one life for a whole generation to be saved.”
Although, she’s at the forefront of what she frames as a global fight, that doesn’t mean she has an excuse to get out of school. “Ok, so, because I’m a junior, next year I’ll be a senior, so I have to think about ACTs, SATs, scholarships, all these things,” said the basketball player. Her experience with Oak Flat pushes her through the pain, the flak, and exhaustion of life. “Because if I didn’t have that, I don’t know what the heck I would be doing. I wouldn’t be Naelyn.”
