It was spiritual.

The Apache understood their homeland in religious terms — specific mountains had specific spiritual significance, specific springs were sacred, specific locations were associated with the ceremonies that maintained the relationship between the people and the powers that governed the world.

When Lozen fought for her people’s ability to remain in their homeland, she was fighting for all of this — for the specific plants and animals and springs and mountains that made Apache life possible, for the ceremonies that could only be performed in the places where they belonged, for the spiritual geography that gave the world its meaning.

The United States’ removal of the Apache from their homeland was not merely a political and economic act.