Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West | 
picki live in arizona making this book even more special. so well done. the mix of art/illustrations and text is beautiful. if you don‘t know much about the challenges faced by native americans and the tension created between poor rural communities and the mining industry. this is a great primer. as a country our lack of respect for native ways, culture and religion is heart breaking.
#12Booksof2021 My pick from October is this work of visual nonfiction. Beautiful color drawings enhance reportage and oral history of the threatened sacred Apache site, Oak Flat.
pickFirst Book Read for November! This was an engaging, interesting and thought provoking book about the Apache and their fight for their scared land: Oak Flat. It was insightful about the role.that Oak Flat plays in various ceremonies including the ceremony of a young girl.who becomes a woman. 4.0 stars I didn't like the layout of the audiobook
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pickLauren Redniss has a distinctive style in her works of visual nonfiction: line drawings with saturated colour. Here, she takes a nuanced approach to the issues underlying a controversial copper mine by interviewing three generations in a white settler family & three generations in an Apache family in Arizona. People‘s lives take centre stage in this story of historic injustice plus spiritual, environmental & economic concerns.
Lauren Redniss‘ delicate, colourful line drawings add visual impact to this work of nonfiction.
Mike McKee has advice for opponents of the Resolution mine [a lot of whom are former miners]. “I tell them, “Hey, it‘s gonna be 20 years before it opens up. You‘ll be dead, so you don‘t have to worry about it.”
Apache were forced onto a reservation in the Arizona desert, where temperatures can reach 120F. “Conditions in San Carlos were so merciless that the army strictly limited periods of deployment. But Natives were prohibited from leaving. Congress‘s 1876 appropriations act stipulated that ‘Indians shall not be allowed to leave their proper reservations.‘ In San Carlos, enforcement was rigorous. Apache who left were routinely hunted down & killed.”
By the summer of 1886, the United States had mobilized approximately one quarter of the army‘s soldiers, some 5,000 troops, as well as Mexican fighters and Apache scouts fighting on the government‘s side, to pursue the remaining Apache fighters: 17 men.
Wendsler Nosie attended high school in Globe, Arizona, the town closest to the San Carlos Reservation. Globe was once inside reservation boundaries, but the US seized the area by executive order in 1876 after silver was discovered.
Wendsler Nosie: “In 1974 in the town of Globe, they still had signs, ‘Dogs & Indians Keep Out.‘ We still had to order outside of restaurants.”
pickOak Flat is a mesa in the Southwestern desert of Arizona and a holy place for the San Carlos Apache Tribe, a burial ground and religious site. It is also one of the world's largest untapped resources for copper. And in 2014, a law was passed to transfer this holy land to a private company who will mine Oak Flat until it is depleted and collapses. Eye-opening, this graphic nonfiction is a must-read for all.
Full review on my IG & Goodreads!
pickI understand the print version of this to have stunning visuals; I enjoyed the audio with multiple narrators. I appreciated that the issues raised are more broadly shared with various indigenous groups but I also enjoyed learning more about Apache ceremony and this one family's experiences with it.
