Editorial: Respect tribe's concerns about mine near sacred site

Lately, we find it hard to argue against the San Carlos Apache Tribe when it comes to land.

We don’t have the historical knowledge of the area to know for certain that Oak Flat is or is not a sacred place of religious significance for the tribe, which is the crux of the tribe’s argument against a proposed land swap between the federal government and Resolution Copper for development of a new mine.

We also can’t say that the tribe is right or wrong in its continued opposition of telescopes at the top of Mount Graham.

But we can say that the treatment of Native Americans throughout the history of the United States has been deplorable. We’ve removed hundreds of thousands of people from their homelands, placed them on reservations, taken away those reservations (because of oil and other minerals) and moved them to even worse places, all in the name of “progress.”