Book Talk: ASU hosts Ophelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, to Discuss Spy Towers on Homeland

Book Talk with Ophelia Rivas: Significant Impact 

In-person

Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

Registration required: 8 seats left on Wednesday afternoon

https://asu.libcal.com/event/17604879

Come listen and learn from the three authors of Significant Impact, Ophelia Rivas from Tohono O'odham Nation of Ali Jeg'k village, Caitlin Blanchfield from Cornell University, New York and Nina Kolowratnik from Ghent University, Belgium about their newly released book!

Book Synopsis:

A collaboration between O'odham Elder Ophelia Rivas, human rights scholar Nina Valerie Kolowratnik, and architectural historian Caitlin Blanchfield, the book advocates against militarized infrastructures on Indigenous lands and challenges common protocols of environmental review, along with the Western frameworks of scientific classification and property embedded in them. The project makes visible the impact of surveillance when considered through Indigenous sovereignty and an O'odham epistemology of land. It offers a visual language that is sensitive to secrecy protocols within Traditional Knowledge and that challenges the colonial biases of Western cartography.

The book situates current surveillance infrastructure projects on the Tohono O'odham Nation within a longer history of settler colonialism and border militarization, and reflects on the role of environmental review within the politics of protection in Indigenous lands.

Learn more about the book here: https://urbannext.net/significant-impact-contesting-surveillance/

Date:

Thursday, October 1, 2026

Time:

11:00 am - 01:00 pm

Time Zone:

Arizona Time (change)

Location:

Hayden Library - Labriola Center 2nd Floor

Audience:

Freshman   Graduate   Transfer   Undergraduate  

Apache Stronghold: Eleven Judges Call for Supreme Court to Protect Oak Flat

Oak Flat Litigation: Eleven Judges call for Supreme Court to Protect Oak Flat

By Wendsler Nosie, Sr., Apache Stronghold, Censored News, September 29, 2026

The Ninth Circuit today declined to rehear three lawsuits seeking to protect Oak Flat. While this is disappointing news, we are heartened that eleven judges joined opinions criticizing the court’s decision as a “tragic error” and calling for the Supreme Court to step in. Thus, the fight to protect Oak Flat is far from over. It is coming again to the Supreme Court.

Judge Graber, writing on behalf of ten judges, put it simply: “We were wrong.” She said “everyone knew that this second round of litigation was inevitable,” and the courts should act now: “This is our last chance to prevent the irreversible desecration of a place, of a religion, and of a people.”

Judge Bumatay criticized the Court’s “badly fractured decision” and emphasized that “[t]he importance of Oak Flat to the Western Apache cannot be overstated.”

Chief Judge Murguia called the Court’s decision a “tragic error” and warned that Oak Flat would be destroyed “[u]nless the Supreme Court steps in.”

The plaintiffs in these cases—including the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition, and seven courageous Apache girls and women—now have the opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court. Our prayers will be with them as they do.

Apache Stronghold’s own case remains in federal district court in Phoenix. The government and Resolution Copper have asked the court to dismiss our case, but we have asked the court to let the case continue so we can prove that the destruction of Oak Flat is illegal. We are still waiting for the district court to rule. Whatever the outcome, we will continue using every legal avenue available to protect Oak Flat.

Censored News 2026

Bizarre Flights Above Tohono O'odham Nation: US Military Claims it is Eliminating Enemy Drones

The MQ-9 drone parked on a tarmac in Arizona. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

Bizarre Flights Above Tohono O'odham Nation: US Military Claims it is Eliminating Enemy Drones using Direct Energy Lasers.

The U.S. military now claims it took out three enemy drones overnight that were targeting the US Border Patrol.

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, September 25, 2026 Updated

TUCSON -- Those Bizarre Border Flights. The unidentified flights above the Tohono O'odham Nation border have now been identified as military drones, the kind used in war zones. After being spotlighted for weeks in our news reports, the U.S. military now says it took out three enemy drones using direct energy lasers, saying that the drones posed a threat to the U.S. Border Patrol.