John McCain’s Apache Land Grab Is Finally Happening
The fight for a copper deposit beneath sacred lands shows the extent of the government’s extractive greed.
Eric Thayer/Getty Images
In 2014, the late Senator John McCain quietly slid a dagger into the backside of the Arizona tribal nations he was ostensibly elected to represent. Deep in an appropriations package for military funding, McCain tacked on a rider, known as Section 3003. The rider accomplished what the Arizona Republican had been trying to do through standalone legislation since 2005 hand over 2,400 acres of sacred Apache lands to the mining company Rio Tinto, which has long eyed an area known in the English tongue as Oak Flat for the massive deposits of copper that rest miles beneath its surface. Speaking with the
Like Redniss’s three previous books, which focus mainly on science and history,
Oak Flat combines intensive reporting with Redniss’s own illustrations and design touches. Pages filled with historical detail or snippets of interviews are accompanied by hand-drawn portraits and sometimes give way to more surreal illustrations and poetry-like musings. As a nonfiction graphic novel,
Oak Flat makes centuries of history feel immersive and concrete, managing to give proper weight to everything that stands to be lost along with the land,
and showing just how deep injustice runs when Native Americans fight to protect what’s theirs.
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Photo: Courtesy Penguin Random House)