Fighting for Oak Flat: Western Apaches and American Religious Freedom

Abstract

Abstract This article foregrounds the Western Apache fight to save the sacred site of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, or Oak Flat, which at this writing is threatened by a proposed copper mine. Like many other Native peoples, Western Apaches have historically resisted colonial suppression by reconfiguring ancestral traditions to make them legible to authorities as religion. In their current struggle, Western Apaches are restoring and repairing their relationships with the sacred landscapes of their ancestral homelands. The controversy over Oak Flat also demonstrates how US religious freedom law continues to impose an implicitly Christian model for religion and how Western Apaches today are pushing back against that model even as they necessarily use it to claim the protected status that religion enjoys in the United States. Chi’chil Biłdagoteel thus illuminates the ongoing paradoxes of US religious freedom law, the privileges that Christianity still holds within this legal regime, and the ongoing vibrancy of living Apache religion.