“We are the aboriginal people of North America, no others can compare.” So said Apache Tribal Chairman Ronnie Lupe Wednesday morning to a crowd gathered for the ground-breaking in Canyon Day near Whiteriver. The White Mountain Apache hosted officials from the Forest Service and a group of their tribal members as they started construction of a native plant nursery. The nursery, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, provides $2.4 million to help the tribe replace a greenhouse that burned in McNary.
“The challenges are huge, but the opportunities are there. The seed of life will begin here. Tribal members and resources will build (the greenhouse and nursery).
It requires cold clear clean mountain water and we have abundant water. We can grow anything we want here.
“So it is today that we carry that seed. We look at the doldrums we are in today and we will erase that. Opportunities can come - I see a beautiful light up ahead.
“We will join forces with the Forest Service and the USDA and our hands will get dirty. Let us all begin to go to work and get dirt on our hands!”
USFS Regional Forester Corbin Newman thanked Lupe. “It’s not an easy time to be a leader. I know this White Man’s bureaucracy is not easy to do. But today is just a beginning. This is not the last project we’ll do with the Apache.”
Jonathon Brooks, the project manager for the Apache, mentioned that after the greenhouse blew up in McNary, he and others heard of the stimulus money for “shovel ready projects,” and applied for this project. His assistant Rachel Endfield explained that the project will over time employ around 80 tribe members. The plan is to grow pine and other seedlings, and initially sell those to the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, the two largest landowners in the western United States. Eventually, she said, the hope is to have enough seedlings to market commercially as well.
Daniel Kessay alluded to the fact that there are three projects in the works, which might total around $7.5 million stimulus money.
Endfield talked about the five phases of the project, planning, design, the current construction, and then the operations and evaluations yet to come.
Reach the reporter at droberts@wmicentral.com