Frances Stephens, a member of the Tohono O'ohdam Legislative Council, said in Ours is the Land: "Our ancestors back then never thought that somebody would be out there digging up their remains and the artifacts that they've left behind. We feel the sickness that will come out of that but somebody who isn't in our shoes would never understand that."
"Our people traveled all over the place. They settled all over the place -- where there were plants, where there was water," Stephens said.
"It's the same situation as the Arlington National Cemetery, the National Cathedral, if someone simply bulldozed through those buildings, it would be the same desecration, the same loss," Ned Norris, Tohono O'ohdam Chairman, said in the documentary video.
"It's important to continue to have places for people to go to to be rejuvenated, to pray, or to have medicines available for their livelihood," said Austin Nunez, Tohono O'ohdham Nation Chairman of the San Xavier District.
Also in this short documentary video, Rhonda Wilson, a Tohono O'ohdam basketweaver, said that if the mine goes into operation she would never harvest plants needed for basketweaving from the mining area. No chemicals or dyes are used in the basketweaving process -- only water is used -- and to have plants growing in a heavily polluted area would ruin this age-old Tohono O'ohdam tradition.
When getting materials necessary for basketweaving, the plants are not destroyed, only pruned. "We only get what we need," Wilson said as she prunes some long, sharp palms with serrated edges off a plant growing in the wilds of the mountain area
"My great-grandmother told me that it's important to take care of the plants because if we don't take care of them, they won't take care of us. Part of taking care of them is just using what we need," Wilson said in Ours is the Land.
Arizona groundwater laws would allow Hudbay to pump unlimited amounts of water. Models predict a water table drawdown of ten feet on Tohono O'ohdam lands. Two open-pit mines now exist on Tohono O'ohdam tribal lands, the Asarco Mission Mine and the Cyprus Tohono Mine, according to the video.
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