Figure 1. Oak Flat, Source: Elias Butler, Wikimedia Commons
Oak Flat (Figure 1) in Arizona is a significant sacred place. Known as Chi'chi Bildagoteel, it is sacred to the San Carlos Apache and to other Indigenous peoples. It is honored and cared for by the tribes who have lived close to it for millennia and whose relatives are buried there: "Since time immemorial, Native Peoples have traveled to Oak Flat to participate in ceremonies, to pray, to gather medicines and ceremonial items, to honor those buried within its boundaries, and to seek and obtain personal cleansing and healing" (https://www.indian-affairs.org/protectoakflat.html).
Indigenous peoples there want to continue to preserve it, undamaged by mining.
The site is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But that listing won't prevent it from being damaged. It is now slated to become an active copper mine in the near future, due to large amounts of copper, money, influence, power, corruption, and disastrous U.S. court decisions. Its copper deposit is considered "high grade," so mining it would be lucrative. The Land there will be completely destroyed, no matter how mining is done.
Copper amplifies communication for both the living, as it does in phone wires, and the dead, as when it is present as a mineral deposit in a landscape like this.
Copper is both medicine and poison, depending on the dose. Copper as medicine can be an antimicrobial agent, stopping many pathogens.
But the residue from copper mining is also deadly:
In November of 1995, a large flock of migrating snow geese, heading south for the winter, took refuge from a snowstorm and landed on the unfrozen surface of an open pit copper mine on the outskirts of Butte, Montana. The old mine, called the Berkeley Pit, had been inactive for decades, but it was full of dissolved heavy metals and highly acidic water. 342 of the geese died during that event, autopsies showing perforated esophageal ulcerations from drinking the water. (https://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/12/14/107612-lessons-from-the-most-toxic-open-pit-copper-mine)
The Apache will not be able to return safely to Oak Flat. Mining copper there will make it too toxic, too dangerous for the living.
Oak Flat is referred to by Apache as their "corridor to the next world," "direct corridor to the Creator," and "cornerstone of our religion." As a corridor to the next world, it is a doorway for spirits to move between this world and the next. But if the Land there is excavated and destroyed by mining, it could also become haunted by increasing numbers of migrating spirits of the dead who have lost their way in a now unfamiliar landscape that is not tended by the living.
Spirits of Indigenous peoples in Polynesia and the Americas are known to return at death to ancestral lands in the West, a reverse retracing of the route their ancestors first took when historically migrating East. In Polynesia and on the California coast, portals and corridors like this can be referred to as "jumping-off places" and "leaping-off places" for the spirits of the dead. So as a corridor to the next world, locations at Oak Flat are known portals, doorways into the afterlife.
This return migration of the dead is found in many other traditions in and beyond Polynesia and the Americas. It is widespread around the World, including in Europe.
Spirits of the dead find their way in the next world by migrating back to their ancestral homes, very often to places in the West. West, as a direction to the Land of the dead, can encompass the full range of sunsets on the western horizon on and between the solstices.
The association of the West with the dead must be an ancient concept because it is so widespread. It is archetypal in its prevalence; this has been acknowledged in psychology. Karl Jung stated, “The west is the land of the dead, the sun sinks in the west, it is there that the day, and life itself, sink, so to speak, into eternity” (1941).
Pomare and Cowan commented, “Beautifully these Maori-Polynesian folk-beliefs link up with those of Gaelic Lands—of Brittany, in France, of the Scottish Highlands, and of the West of Ireland, with its poetical tradition of Hy-Brasil, far in the west . . . A phrase meaning ‘Gone West’ is a very ancient Gaelic saying for death” (1987, 48-9).
The map below shows only a few of the possible sea routes between North America and Polynesia.
Figure 2. Possible Polynesian navigation routes to North America (Source: Lou-Anne F. Makes-Marks, Google Earth Pro™).
What appears on this map in Figure 2 as a star diagram resembling the constellation of Cassiopeia is exactly that. The Polynesians deliberately settled islands in the shape of star formations as navigation aids. This constellation is in the shape of the frigate bird, who guides Polynesian navigators like the constellation of Cassiopeia does in Western traditions.
The uppermost route shown goes to Haida Gwaii, in North America. The center route aims at the Farallon Islands, off the coast of San Francisco. The bottom route to the south goes through Oak Flat on its way to Chaco Canyon.
Oak Flat and Chaco Canyon are archaeological evidence of early Polynesian settlements in North America, along with Haida Gwaii and the Farallon Islands, off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as other places in the Americas.
When reversed, the routes in Figure 2 linking (1) Haida Gwaii and Cape Reinga in Aotearoa, (2) Farallon Islands and the Chatham Islands, and (3) Chaco Canyon through Oak Flat and the Chatham Islands may also represent paths of spirits of the dead back to their ancient homelands.
The Apache's Oak Flat sits precisely on the route from the Chatham Islands through Tahiti to Chaco Canyon. So it must also be on the route of the dead from Chaco Canyon back to the Chatham Islands. Return routes of the dead don't go through the settlements of the living; their routes can be diverted, into the air off mountains and cliffs, or over water.
Cape Reinga, Chatham Islands, all the islands mapped as Cassiopeia, the islands of Hawai'i, Rapa Nui, and many other locations in the Pacific and the Americas have jumping-off places for the dead.
Part of ancient Indigenous spiritual Traditions, these jumping-off places and paths of spirits of the dead are to ensure that the dead return to their ancestral homelands and that they don't stay to haunt the living. A disruption in the path could ensure that they would stay.
These routes are not the only ones. There are many other ancient paths across the ocean, the Americas, and the world that can be for the return of the dead as well.
References:
Jung, Karl. 1941. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/ETHZ, Lecture, 27 June, Vol. VI, Zurich, 210.
Molina, Alejandra, and Emily McFarlan Miller. 2021. "Why Oak Flat in Arizona is a Sacred Space for the Apache and Other Native Americans." Religious News Service. https://religionnews.com/2021/03/05/why-oak-flat-in-arizona-is-a-sacred-space-for-the-apache-and-other-native-americans/
Pomare, Sir Maui, and James Cowan. (1930) 1987. Legends of the Maori. Vol. 1. Auckland, NZ: Southern Reprints.
