Following a lifelong path to protest
Apache activist says he’s prepared to die to stop copper mine, preserve Oak Flat
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.”
“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 Bildagoteel, 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.
“In the spirit of government-to-government consultation, the Forest Service allows tribal members to remain at Oak Flat for as long as tribal members choose to do so.” Tonto National Forest officials In an emailed statement to The Arizona Republic
‘This is who you are in the community’
Nosie, 60, was born and raised on the San Carlos reservation, the youngest child of Elvera, a homemaker, and Paul Sr., a miner who worked at the Seneca asbestos mine near the head of the Salt River Canyon.
The 1.8 million-acre region of desert, mountains, Ponderosa pine forest and the Gila River isn’t the family’s ancestral land. Nosie’s paternal ancestors, the Bedonkohe band of Chiricahua Apache, were hustled from their homeland in southeastern Arizona, including Mount Graham, onto the San Carlos reservation.
Elvera’s ancestors, the Tonto Apache and Yavapai peoples, hail from a hilly region of Central Arizona that includes Oak Flat, the Pinto Valley and Top of the World. Springs, stands of Emery oak and other plants sustained them for centuries.
Nosie said he realized early on that a higher power had more in store for him than following his father to the mine.
“When I was a lot younger, maybe 3, 4 or 5 years old, I went to holy ground with my grandma April,” said Nosie. On one trip, a medicine man instructed Nosie to dance with the Apache cross, which symbolizes the four directions. “He said when you dance with the cross it meant you were a role model, people would see you and know that this is who you are in the community. I remember my mom being really happy and crying.”
Indeed, Nosie inherited at least part of his drive to protect, preserve and create prosperity for his people from his mother.
Elvera traveled to Washington, D.C., in the early 1960s to advocate for decent homes on the reservation. Congress took note and created a housing program for the San Carlos Apache Tribe. A 1964 Arizona Republic article details how happy the family of nine was to finally have a home with running water, electricity and indoor plumbing.
In 2007, Nosie told the Navajo Times that, before another hearing in Washington to discuss housing shortages on the reservation, he consulted with Elvera about what to tell officials. She continued being a family and cultural touchstone until she died in 2016.
Elvera’s strength of will sustained the family when Nosie’s father died from leukemia in 1966. Nosie was 7. Elvera rose to the challenge, getting a job as a community health representative to support her five youngest kids.
Another ceremony, this one in his early 20s, further marked Nosie’s future path.
Each year, he said, Apache medicine men came together for prayer and blessings for the year. Nosie took his usual place with the cross. But this time, Nosie said, the cross was taken from him, and he was beckoned over to the lineup of medicine men.
“I thought I did something wrong,” Nosie said. Instead, he was directed to line up with the medicine men for the annual blessing. “I came back to my mom, who had a big smile on her face.”
Nosie began to realize he was born with a gift from Usen, or Creator in Apache. He said he’s followed that gift all his life.
Nosie enters politics hoping to bring change
Nosie went to Phoenix, and later California, for college, majoring in banking. But he returned to San Carlos and became director of the tribal work experience program. In 1988, the 29-year-old Nosie was elected to the first of three terms as tribal councilman. He also served one term as tribal chairman.
During his first term on the council, Nosie met Theresa Beard, a Navajo. The couple married in 1992 and have six children and 15 grandchildren.
Nosie hoped to build a strong tribal community during his time in office. He advocated for better housing and law enforcement facilities. Nosie also supported workforce development through a private organization he founded.
Nosie continued his cultural work, supporting tribal efforts to block the use of reclaimed wastewater to create artificial snow on the San Francisco Peaks, a fight that was unsuccessful in the end.
One of Nosie’s most high-profile moments came when he argued against what Apaches describe as the desecration of the one of their most sacred places.
Mount Graham arrest and trial
Mount Graham, known to the Apache people as Dzil Nchaa Sí’an or “Big Seated Mountain,” plays a central role in Apache religion and identity. The 10,700-foot peak has been the site of the Sunrise Dance, a rite of passage for Apache girls, and of burials and prayer for centuries. Apaches still climb its slopes to pray, conduct ceremonies and gather medicinal plants.
Beginning in 1981, the University of Arizona, the Max Planck Institute and the Vatican banded together to construct several telescopes on Mount Graham’s summit, despite tribal objections and the presence of an endangered squirrel.
Environmentalists hotly protested, and some militant groups planned to “monkey-wrench” the project with acts of mayhem.
Through more than a decade of protests, Nosie kept his focus on nonviolent means to drive public opinion against the observatory, which Apache elders said would desecrate areas on the mountain deemed sacred.
On Aug. 30, 1997, Nosie traveled to Mount Graham to pray and prepare for a Sunrise Dance. Fearing injury by an approaching thunderstorm, he took the fastest way downhill, the UA’s construction road.
A Forest Service ranger spotted him and called in university police officers. Nosie was arrested and charged with misdemeanor trespassing.
Nosie felt he shouldn’t have to pay the $100 fine or obtain a permit to pray on his tribe’s sacred mountain, as the Forest Service required at the time, and he chose to fight.
Attorney Jeff Bouma and two other lawyers defended Nosie from the trespassing charge. “I will never forget the night before the hearing,” held in Safford, Bouma said. “I had flown in from out of town and I was beat, but we still had to meet with Wendsler and the witnesses that night.”
Nosie had a different plan. “They said, ‘We’ve got to do a ceremony first; we need to prepare for battle,’” Bouma said. But he was amazed to find that the prayers left him energized and wide awake.
Thus fortified, the attorneys and Nosie prepared for the trial, armed with case law, a brief prepared by former Arizona State University College of Law Dean Paul Bender and accompanied by a videotaped statement by a Yale anthropologist.
Witnesses during the daylong trial included an Apache medicine man as an expert on religion. Bouma believes that Nosie’s older brother, Paul Jr., translated for the medicine man. Defense attorney William Foreman argued Nosie’s case, which Bouma said included a stirring closing argument.
Bouma said the trial was likely the longest and largest trial for misdemeanor trespass ever held in the county. It ultimately moved to the Graham County supervisors’ meeting room due to the large crowd of spectators, including the ACLU, tribal members and media.
The trial was heavily covered by European media, which Bouma said saw the case as an example of the Catholic Church using its power to force Native Americans not to practice their traditional religions.
A week later, Nosie was acquitted.
Nosie abandons politics, turns to spiritual pursuits
On Nov. 30, Nosie and two of his teenage grandchildren completed a two-day run west on U.S. Highway 60 from San Carlos to Oak Flat Campground.
A small crowd gathered to greet the runners on the frosty day. Snow topped Kings Crown Peak and hid in the shade of greasewood bushes and Emery oaks. Nearby, a disabled Greyhound bus perched on the side of the highway, its passengers huddled and attempting without much success to keep warm in the narrow strip between the bus and the high desert shrubbery. They glanced warily at the mix of Natives, environmentalists and residents.
The welcome was briefly interrupted by a white pickup truck bearing the logo of international security firm G4S, Resolution Copper’s private security contractor. A fresh-faced guard peered from his windshield as he cruised by.
Three years earlier, Nosie had ended his 15-plus-year political career to embrace a spiritual path to cultural, social and environmental justice. After his 2016 resignation from tribal council, he entered into what he called “ceremonial mode,” preparing himself spiritually to take on a multinational mining company and their allies with prayer and ceremony.
Nosie strengthened his ties with religious leaders across the nation, including Christian ministers, Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams, who could help him prayerfully advocate for justice for all people.
“We see Wendsler as an elder among us in the movement with very clear eyes and clear head about what’s at stake both for his people and literally for the country,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “I count him as a brother in spirituality and I honor him as a family man.”
In a letter to the Forest Service announcing his intent to remain permanently at Oak Flat, Nosie said he was prepared to die to preserve the region and stop the mine.
Nosie said he “returned home” to Oak Flat to make his stand and embark on his greatest battle: preventing the construction of the mine that would obliterate Oak Flat.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said, sitting around a blazing fire the day after he arrived at the camp. “Oak Flat might reject me, the wind might come up and blow down what we put up here.”
Or, he said, the federal government might finally evict him, other Apaches and their allies who have camped off and on in the campground for five years.
“I thought about Geronimo and how he was told that the only way to protect him was to exile him out of the state,” said Nosie. “They might decide to protect me by exiling me out of here and back to the reservation.”
In an emailed statement to The Arizona Republic, Tonto National Forest officials said: “In the spirit of government-to-government consultation, the Forest Service allows tribal members to remain at Oak Flat for as long as tribal members choose to do so.”
He told The Republic that G4S security vehicles swing by his camp daily. During one visit, Nosie and his supporters pointed to what they said was a Resolution Copper helicopter, which overflew the gathering.
In addition to prayers, Nosie takes more mundane safety precautions. He brought the RV to Oak Flat in addition to a tent and a tipi donated by a friend. He also wears a bulletproof vest when he walks or drives in the area. He said those steps will help reduce the danger of being assaulted.
The quest to preserve Oak Flat and the surrounding region from cultural and environmental devastation is taking a toll on his family.
Daughter Vanessa, who works closely with her father on cultural and environmental issues, said, “We understand if he can’t be there for the birthdays or to have coffee around the house.”
“My kids have really stepped in because I’m doing this for everybody,” Nosie said. “I miss being there all the time.” At that, Vanessa, who had been sitting nearby, teared up.
Nosie’s activism and willingness to put his health, his family life, and even his life on the line to spark nonviolent resistance to the mine and its possible environmental consequences has been noticed and appreciated by many.
“Wendsler is one of the most dedicated and bravest individuals that I have had the privilege to know,” said Robin Silver, co-founder and board member of the Center for Biological Diversity, who’s known Nosie since the Mount Graham telescope fight. “He is completely committed to his people and to his Creator.”
Bouma said he was honored to defend Nosie, especially as he described how San Carlos Apaches and the Chiricahua Apaches have been treated over the past decades. “Wendsler is a very impressive man,” he said.
“The University of Arizona tried to scare him off by arresting him on Mount Graham as he was returning from praying and preparing for his daughter’s Sunrise Dance ceremony,” said Silver. “They failed. Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton will fail at Oak Flat also.”
Barber perceives Nosie in a greater role: “I see him in the same tradition of Gandhi, of King, of Cesar Chavez, whose love was so tremendous and powerful that they could not be silent on issues of injustice.”
Reach the reporter at debra.krol@AZCentral.com or at 602444-8490. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment. azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.