SUPERIOR, Ariz. (AP) — Oak Flat, a piece of national forest land in central Arizona, is at the heart of a years long struggle between Native American groups and mining interests that both consider it important for their future.

On a recent morning about an hour outside Phoenix, the pounding of tribal drums reverberated across the desert from a stand of oaks in the Tonto National Forest, where nearly 20 men had packed into a squat green sweat lodge to pray.

The U.S. District Court in Arizona granted mining giant Resolution Copper permission on Monday to join the U.S. government as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by grassroots group Apache Stronghold.

Apache Stronghold v. United States was one of the first cases that the University of Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic supported when the clinic was newly established in the 2020-21 academic year. For the past two years, faculty and students from the clinic have stood with members of the Apache tribe to protect Oak Flat, a sacred site in Arizona that is threatened by a massive copper mining operation.

Wendsler Nosie, an environmental activist and former tribal chairman for the San Carlos Apache Tribe, is in Rochester this week to discuss the fight to prevent the federal government from selling a chunk of sacred land to copper mining company Resolution Copper.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman appeared before the United Nations on Tuesday, urging the United States to protect sacred Indigenous sites, including Oak Flat, from impending destruction.

The fate of a proposed copper mine that Native people say would obliterate a sacred site near Superior and violate their religious rights will be determined before a federal appeals court Tuesday in an unusual rehearing of what could be a groundbreaking First Amendment case.

A coalition of religious and Native American organizations is uniting to support the nonprofit group Apache Stronghold in its fight to save the sacred site of Oak Flat, a 7-square-mile stretch of land east of Phoenix that a multinational corporation is seeking to turn into an underground copper mine.