Decolonizing Oak Flat: Apache Stronghold’s Place-based, Temporal, and Mnemonic Dissensus at Public Hearings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Adding to work on environmental decision making, decoloniality, and rhetorics of social protest, this paper analyzes a troubling case of resource colonialism at Oak Flat, AZ where mining corporations Rio Tinto and BHP seek to execute decade-old plans to turn land sacred to many Western Apache into one of the largest copper mines in the US (Resolution Mine). This paper studies how members and supporters of the group Apache Stronghold “talk back” in ways that consummate decolonial identities. Taking up the process-oriented nature of this exigency, I study indecorous protest rhetorics at six public hearings about the mine’s Environmental Impact Statement (Draft) in 2019. I argue Apache Stronghold uses place, time, and memory as topoi of decolonial dissensus. While the Resolution Mine may be foregone conclusion, Apache Stronghold shows how (de)coloniality can delink environmental public participation processes from regimes of colonial capitalism.