Monday, October 4, 2010

EcoJustice: Scars Upon Sacred Land II: Apache Leap and BHP Billiton/Rio Tinto

by Aji

Apache Leap Welcome to Apache Leap.  The elders tell of a time when invading U.S. soldiers sought to abduct the Apache people, herd them onto reservations, and steal their land.  The people fought valiantly, but were woefully outnumbered.  When the end came, the Apache warriors chose to retain their honor rather than surrender to thieves and thugs:  They leapt off the peak to their deaths below, joining the spirits of their ancestors and depriving the Army of prize captives.  

At the base of the formation, a nearly-translucent brown-black obsidian is found.  The stones are called Apache tears, and as the story goes, when the surviving women found the bodies of their men at the base of the leap, they mourned so deeply and bitterly that Spirit turned their tears to beautifully, lethally sharp stone, so that no one would forget the crime against the people that had happened in that place.

Now, John McCain, Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, and other greedy pols want to turn this sacred space over to an even greedier consortium of foreign corporations - to desecrate it further and dishonor the memories of those warriors and their survivors.



continued at Daily Kos....