Overview: I began this piece in 2024 while prayerfully accompanying Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, known as Oak Flat, in so-called Arizona. This sacred site of the Apache People is now owned by a private mining company after a federal land transfer in 2026. The company plans to mine deep under Oak Flat in a process that would cause the land to collapse and leave a crater nearly two miles wide. Apache Stronghold and others continue to resist these plans in the courts and in prayer. Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., leader of Apache Stronghold, explains that Apache People can still see the chains of colonization, while those of us descended from Europeans were colonized so long ago that we no longer see ours. He invites Euro-settlers to re-member our land-connected ancestors and remember how we became entangled with colonization. He calls on all people to break free from the chains of colonization and capitalism together. This piece is inspired by that invitation.

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Dear relatives, I am sitting under an oak tree. A great, beautiful, gnarly oak tree. My head is tilted back, peering up through her branches, silhouetted against sky and clouds. Many of us who sit with this oak call her “Grandmother.” She is the largest and probably the oldest tree in this sacred grove. A visiting botanist told me once that she may be as old as 600 years, which means she was a sapling long before any of my ancestors arrived on this continent.

I have sat with Grandmother Oak for weeks at this place called Chí’chil Biłdagoteel (in English, Oak Flat) in so-called “Arizona.” Oak Flat is a sacred site to the Apache and other Native peoples, who have tended the land for countless generations. It is a place where Apaches and others collect water and medicinal plants for ceremonies, gather acorns and other foods, and honor their ancestors. Apache Stronghold, a community organization battling continued colonization, has been fighting for decades to protect Oak Flat from a monster of greed and domination.

Dr. Wensler Nosie Sr., a leader of Apache Stronghold, and other Indigenous Elders have asked those of us descended from European settlers to learn the stories of our ancestors, to learn from their cultural and spiritual connections to land and to explore how those connections were disrupted. They ask us this so that we may understand the origins of settler colonization and other systems of dominance within our histories, so that we may see how we are all embroiled in those systems. So that we may begin to untangle ourselves from those systems to walk in solidarity with Indigenous peoples today as good relatives, for the protection and return of sacred lands to the care of those who have tended them for generations.

And so, as I sit under the branches of Grandmother Oak, as a 12th generation Euro-descended settler, I think of the sacred oak trees across the lands of my way-back ancestors in a time before the Roman conquest and the Holy Roman Empire, before imperialism or colonization. I offer the story of one such tree, which grew in a sacred grove near a place called Geismar, not far from the village where my fourth-great Germanic grandfather was born before he left his homeland and settled on Turtle Island.

The tree was known as Donar’s Oak. Donar was a god who walked Earth as a protector, who fought giants to keep people safe. Donar’s Oak connected three realms. Her roots stretched deep into the earth while her branches stretched toward heaven. She anchored these two realms to the plane of Earth’s surface, which radiated out from the trunk in all directions. Some oaks, like the one I sit under now, live so long they become fixtures in the landscape, becoming a living presence linking generations over centuries. For all these reasons, old oak trees were considered a sacred meeting place for people, deities, ancestors and descendants.

Donar’s Oak was already very old in the year 723 AD when this story takes place (perhaps Donar’s Oak sent up its first tender shoots in the year that Christ was born). I imagine the people, my way-back ancestors, would gather around the tree for celebration and ceremony. They would dance, tell stories, feast, and pray around this tree. It was a place of coming together as humans with the more-than-human world. 

Two hundred years before this story takes place, the Franks (a confederation of Germanic tribes) had converted to Christianity under a king who understood the church as a tool for consolidating power and accumulating wealth. At the time of this story, the Franks were entering a long campaign to conquer Saxony, one of the great remaining Germanic pagan nations east of the Rhine River which had held its ground against Roman conquest and Christianization for centuries. The Frankish military had recently built a garrison on Saxon land across the river from the sacred grove of the Donar’s Oak. The Franks were seeking to convert the Saxons to Christianity, not for the purpose of saving souls, but because Christian conversion walked in step with conquest. 

Into Geismar entered a zealous middle-aged missionary from England named Boniface. Under the protection of the Frankish military, Boniface attempted to convert the Saxons. He began with the tribal leaders, assuming that if they converted, others would follow. Many leaders outright refused. As one story goes, a Saxon chief asked Boniface if he would see his ancestors in the Christian God’s heaven. When Boniface replied that his ancestors were in hell because they had not been baptized, the Saxon proclaimed he would rather meet his ancestors there than go to Christian heaven to hang out for eternity with a bunch of priests. Other leaders allowed themselves to be baptized, but apparently weren’t that committed to their new religion, because as soon as Boniface left the region for a visit to the Pope, they mostly carried on as before.

When Boniface returned to Geismar a year later, he was enraged to discover the people continuing their ancestral traditions and, with blessings from the Pope, took a more aggressive approach. Donar’s Oak became the focus of his conversion campaign. What we know of this story was recorded by a disciple of Boniface, written after his death as a proposal to make him a saint. As a piece of sainthood propaganda, it is entirely unreliable, yet this is how the story is told over and over, even today.

As the disciple’s story goes, Boniface announced that he was going to fell the tree. A crowd gathered to watch, cursing and swearing at Boniface. But with the first swing of his axe, a gust of wind blew the tree down and split its trunk into four equal lengths. Boniface used these pieces to build a chapel. When the tree fell and Boniface was not struck down by lightning, according to the disciple, the stunned crowd realized the superiority of the Christian God and immediately acquiesced to Boniface and embraced the new religion.

Undoubtedly, the reality was more complex. The felling of the Donar’s Oak occurred in the midst of military occupation, during which the people had surely lost members of their community, especially warriors and leaders. Survivors had likely been subjected to violence. Many of their weapons, worldly goods, food stores, and livestock were likely taken. It is possible their movements were being regulated, trade restricted, and goods and products taxed. 

Boniface almost certainly did not fell the oak on his own. More probable, it was part of a well-planned and publicized event by the occupying forces. In this light, I imagine that Boniface accompanied the Frankish military to the sacred grove and it was soldiers who chopped down Donar’s Oak. 

We cannot know how the people of Geismar may have resisted the felling of Donar’s Oak. But I imagine they did. The story of their resistance was not told because it did not fit the whitewashing narrative of divine inevitability and acquiescence in the face of a “superior” power that was used to justify violence, conquest and domination (a narrative which echoes through textbooks on American history, in the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny). We do know that the Saxons fiercely resisted Frankish conquest for another fifty years until 782 when they finally surrendered to Charlemagne after a campaign that devastated Saxon communities and their sacred forests. When Saxon leaders finally capitulated, they were required to follow harsh guidelines for Christian practice set down by the church, which outlawed pagan practices under penalty of death. 

In a more honest telling of this story, felling Donar’s Oak was an act of violence against the oak-loving people of Geismar. I believe that Jesus, who defied the Roman Empire through acts of love and personal sacrifice, would have identified with the people, with their resistance and with their desire to protect the tree as a living being of God’s creation, more than with Boniface. Sadly, the Christian church had become so warped by power, it twisted upon its own foundation, to become a weapon of empire.

Donar’s Oak of Geismar may have been one of the most famous oak trees felled by conquerors who claimed to be Christian, but it certainly wasn’t the last. This happened over and over to countless sacred trees and groves across Europe throughout the centuries. The felling of oak trees, to be turned into Christian altars and churches, was a potent symbol of the rupture of people from land. This rupture was a necessary step in their subjugation. It is a rupture which has rippled through time and approximately fifty-two generations.

My ancestors are a complex bunch. In addition to oak-loving people of Geismar,  I am descended from colonizers and enslavers who assimilated into whiteness when they came to this continent and participated in systems of violence. I am the recipient of the benefits and privileges they accumulated through genocide, stolen land, stolen lives and labor.  For folks like myself, the enormous harm done in our names by our more recent ancestors can be a powerful source of denial, guilt, and shame which often prevents us from telling the truth about our family histories, from taking steps to repair past harm, and from stopping ongoing harm. 

Dear relatives, I offer this story of Donar’s Oak, not as a palliative “move to innocence” meant to lull settlers into comfortable inaction, but to give us footing on which to stand in the now with people who continue to fight the monster of colonization.  Remembering that we are also descended from people who resisted systems of dominance offers an alternative to denial, guilt and shame so that we may move in solidarity with Indigenous communities in the fight to protect life. Remembering our way-back ancestors who were spiritually and culturally connected to the more-than-human world allows us to find inspiration in our own ancestral legacies for building relationships rooted in care and reciprocity today. 

In the now, on land colonially known as Arizona, Grandmother Oak and her community are under threat from something much larger than an ax. Below this sacred grove at Oak Flat is a large deposit of copper, so deep that humans can’t reach it. A multinational corporation plans to drill about a mile into Earth and send robots underground to extract the copper ore from the soil. Over time, it would create a hole so large that the ground would not be able to support itself. The entire grove and the land surrounding it would collapse, leaving a giant crater two miles wide. Long before that happens, however, the trees would disappear. The water that feeds them would be extracted from the ground, polluted with toxins to wash the soil, and dumped on the surface of Earth as poison. The copper that would be extracted would be shipped overseas and turned into machines that have the potential to study and monitor us, think and create for us, and replace us. It is the stuff of nightmares.

Envisioning that, a profound sadness takes hold of my chest and squeezes my heart. The sadness comes from a potential future as well as from a distant past. I feel time turning on itself as the monster of domination and greed unleashed against the Donar’s Oak rears its ugly head against Oak Flat and the Apache people who hold it sacred. 

Those of us descended from oak-loving peoples of Europe may be tempted to believe that the monster of greed and domination devoured the land-based wisdom of our way-back ancestors. But it did not fully succeed. Those who have sat in prayer with Grandmother Oak know this tree, this grove, this land are sacred. We know that standing in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples for the return of land to their stewardship is necessary to ensure a brighter future for all our descendants. 

As I sit at the base of Grandmother Oak, I sit at a meeting place in time. Apache Stronghold asks us to pray for Oak Flat. And so I pray that the threat to Oak Flat be stopped now so that life here may continue as the Creator intended. I pray that the land be returned to the care of her original stewards, who have tended Oak Flat for countless generations. I pray for future generations, that they may know this place. I pray with my way-back ancestors who would recognize Grandmother Oak as a cousin to their sacred oaks, who would understand the spiritual relevance of this tree, this grove, this land, and who would stand with Apache Stronghold to resist the evil that threatens it. 

Please follow Apache Stronghold’s facebook page and website to learn more about efforts to protect Oak Flat from Resolution Copper mine.

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