Unless emails from the White House go to your spam filter, which in this case is quite fitting, those of us who signed the petition to stop the Apache land grab received the following email written by Jodi Gillette, Special Assistant to the President for Native American Affairs:
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (NDAA) became law on December 19. Section 3003 of the NDAA -- which the Administration opposed -- provides for the exchange of thousands of acres of public land to a private company called Resolution Copper Mining.
which is owned by Rio Tinto, a British-Australian multinational metals and mining corporation with headquarters in London, UK, and a management office in Melbourne, Australia.
The public lands to be transferred have significant religious, cultural, historical, and archeological value to the San Carlos Apache Tribe and other tribes in the region. For these tribes, the area is sacred.
and for Rio Tinto and Resolution Copper, and apparently for Congress, those private holdings I mean public lands have significant dollar signs from copper sales to China, which is crucial to the profit margins I mean to the economy, oh wait, this is a defense bill -- I mean crucial to our national defense.
As Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in her statement on the passage of the NDAA, which you can read here, "I am profoundly disappointed with the Resolution Copper provision, which has no regard for lands considered sacred by nearby Indian tribes."
Ms Jewell; Disappointment is for sissies. Where is your outrage?
In legislatively providing for the exchange of these lands, section 3003 "short circuits the long-standing and fundamental practice of pursuing meaningful government-to-government consultation with the 566 federally recognized tribes with whom we have a unique legal and trust responsibility. Although there are consultation requirements in the legislation, the appropriate time for honoring our relationship with tribes is before legislating issues of this magnitude."
Is this a joke? No, really, is this actually supposed to make us all ROFLOL in some sick Congressional joke?
The provision also significantly weakens the environmental assessment generally required by the National Environmental Protection Act -- an assessment that similarly should have been conducted before providing for the transfer of these lands.
Gererally required? Is it law, or is this meant to be more like volunary guidelines, matey? Argh!
Moving forward, the Administration will work with Rio Tinto (Resolution Copper's parent company) to determine what can be done to work with the tribes to preserve these sacred areas.
Yes, I think we should consult British and Australian corporations instead of Native Americans or any American citizens for that matter, as to what can be done to enforce our laws I mean our voluntary guidelines.
Tell us what you think about this response.
I'm sorry, but I don't have the money multinational mining moguls have to buy Congress with my free $peech. And anyway I'm a little too angry right about now to keep it polite...
Oh, and by the way, this says nothing about 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest in Alaska and another provision that would give 1,600 acres from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State also transferred to private corporations for extractive industries by the NDAA.
Any ideas from the DK commuity? What's next?
(FYI here's a link to a previous diary I wrote on this, with links to more information, for what it's worth.)