Arizona Teabaggers are mad because President Obama foiled their attempts to buy sacred Native American land. Rep. Paul Gosar, along with his accomplices Ann Kirkpatrick, John McCain, and Jeff Flake, tried to sneak an amendment into a military spending bill that turns over Native American land at Oak Flats to an Australian mining company.
Over 300 members of the Apache tribe have been staying on that land in protest since early 2015. Apache spokesman Wendsler Nosie said that the land:
“…has always been our connection to our Mother, our right to exist, a central part of our prayers, songs, stories and spiritual practices. It is from here that we emerged. It is who we are. We have lost so much.”
The Representatives were unmoved. They tried to fight against its status as a sacred piece of land. Obama declared it a historical district, so that killed the chances of it going to any mining company.
This is not the first time the United States has tried to take sacred land from Native Americans. It all started with Columbus. We still teach in schools that Christopher Columbus “discovered America.” Ask any Native American person and they will tell you that it is a lie.
It’s a lie because their ancestors were already here. You can’t discover a land that already has people inhabiting it.
More recently we had Ammon Bundy trying to take Native American land in Oregon. Those protestors took over land on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The Paiute people consider the refuge to be sacred. Bundy and his followers were trying to overthrow the government with their takeover of the land.
When they finally left, Bundy and his crew left behind explosives and a large trench filled with human feces.
We still have plenty of Native American reservations in the country and a website that will show you which tribes lived in your state. It also gives the addresses of current Indian reservations. This is the map for Arizona.
Why do the Republicans want to take Native American lands? Well, conservatives have another conspiracy theory about President Obama.
Featured image by Chris Parfitt via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
