US choose is not going to cease land switch for mine in Arizona | Indigenous Rights Information

The ruling says the land transfer can now take place until mid-March on a schedule approved by Congress and then-President Barack Obama in 2014.

A federal judge said Friday it will not prevent the U.S. Forest Service from transferring state-owned land in Arizona to Rio Tinto for its Resolution Copper project, and turned down a request from Indians who said the land has religious and cultural significance .

The judge’s decision will likely ease the conflict between members of the San Carlos Apache tribe in Arizona, who consider the land the home of deities, and Rio and minority partner BHP Group Plc, who have spent more than $ 1 billion on the project without producing copper, escalate. the red metal that electric vehicles and other electronic devices are made of.

The ruling says the land transfer can now take place until mid-March on a schedule approved by Congress and then-President Barack Obama in 2014.

U.S. District Judge Steven Logan, an Obama-appointed judge, said the Native American group that filed the lawsuit was in disrepute and the government had the right to give the land to anyone it elects.

A view of the future log cave mine planned by the Rio Tinto mining company in the Tonto National Forest near Superior, Arizona [File: Deanna Dent/Reuters]Tribesmen claimed the U.S. government had illegally occupied the land for more than 160 years, but Logan sided with government attorneys, stating that Washington got the land in an 1848 treaty with Mexico.

Representatives of the Rio Tinto tribe and the US Forest Service were not immediately available to comment. BHP declined to comment.

“We remain intrepid,” said Michael Nixon, attorney for Apache Stronghold, the Native American nonprofit group that spoke out against the mine.

Logan’s decision related to an injunction. Apache Stronghold had also asked for a lawsuit to determine, in part, whether the US government can give the land away. It was not immediately clear when this trial could take place as U.S. courts gave priority to criminal cases during the coronavirus pandemic.

Some Native Americans work for and support the Resolution Project, although many others have pledged to emphatically oppose it.

Logan declined last month to block the publication of an environmental study that started the 60-day countdown to the land swap.