SPQ Artist
Erin Turner and Floor Grootenhuis
Partners
Artists of the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, the Gila River Indian Community, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Prescott Indian Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Tonto Apache Tribe, and the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Queens Museum.
Protecting Our Nature & Our Sacred Land
SPQ students and the Apache Stronghold are working together to document Oak Flat, Arizona, a landscape sacred to the San Carlos Apache, a site protected since 1955, sitting in the Tonto National Forest. A controversial land-swap presented in an unrelated 2015 National Defense Bill by John McCain, allows Resolution Copper (a joint venture by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton) to develop a block-cave mine which is estimated to create a 2-mile wide crater. As The Apache Stronghold is fighting to save their sacred ground, this project document aspects of the landscape at-risk of being destroyed in order to generate a broad movement to protect it.
