The Copper Rush

already dipped behind southeast Arizona’s dusty blue Mescal Mountains, but for sisters Naelyn and Nizhoni Pike, huddled by a fire shooting sparks into the darkening desert, excitement lies ahead. In a few minutes, they will join a dozen runners on the first leg of a brisk 55-mile relay. Over the course of three days, they’ll traverse this arid valley where their ancestors were once imprisoned, and climb through the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, which they call home, and into the Tonto National Forest, to a site they consider their most sacred, where Naelyn has said she feels “free to be Apache”: Chi’chil Bildagoteel, an Apache name describing a place where acorns grow. The run is not a race, but rather a moving protest in support of this rugged and exquisite patch of high desert mesa commonly referred to as Oak Flat. The sisters are running because they hope