Oak Flat hosts a coming-of-age ceremony that cannot be relocated without changing what it is, which is the crux of the objection to mining underneath it.
A ceremony tied to this ground
Western Apache communities hold the Sunrise Ceremony, a multi-day coming-of-age rite for young women, at Oak Flat among other locations, along with gathering of acorns from the site's Emory oak groves and collection of medicinal plants used in ceremonial and everyday practice. Apache Stronghold, the group leading legal opposition to mining at the site, describes the ceremony's connection to this specific ground as central to its meaning, not incidental to it, a claim the dispute has turned on directly rather than being a detail to instruct outsiders in here.
What block caving would do
Resolution Copper, a joint venture involving Rio Tinto, plans to extract ore using block caving, a method that undermines rock at depth and lets the ground above collapse into the void created, which independent assessments project would eventually produce a crater roughly two miles across and hundreds of feet deep directly over the site.
Still in court
Apache Stronghold's challenge, arguing the mine violates religious freedom protections, has moved through federal appeals courts with mixed rulings, and the land exchange enabling the mine remains contested rather than fully resolved, meaning the ceremony's future at this specific location is an open legal question rather than a settled one.