Some of this terrain is now protected as national forest, national monument, or wilderness area.

The Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico — these protect portions of the landscape that the Apache fought to remain in and that were, in the end, taken from them.

The land is now managed by the federal government — the same federal government that drove the Apache from it — as a scenic and ecological resource.

The Apache connection to this land is not merely historical.

Contemporary Apache people maintain cultural and spiritual relationships to specific places in their former homeland, even when those places are now federal land to which they have limited formal access.