Mining camps ‘like a frat house’: The silencing of Native women in mining boomtowns – Ricochet Media
June 6 2025
In Arizona, where the Apache Stronghold is fighting to save Oak Flat, ‘green’ mining supporters don’t want to hear about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
As Lian BigHorse helps her daughter prepare for her coming of age ceremony, she quietly tells the tragic story of Emily Pike, a teenage girl from her community who went missing, and was later found murdered, earlier this year.
“We’re talking about how to start educating our community locally on what’s happening, and the impacts of losing even one person,” said BigHorse, the daughter of Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., an Elder who has been working for decades to protect Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, a sacred site in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest.
BigHorse explains how extractive resources correlate directly with increased sexual violence, exacerbating the crisis of MMIWG+. “People don’t know – because it’s so under-reported, and rarely are perpetrators brought to justice,” she said.
