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Oak Flat, on the edge of the Tonto National Forest about an hour outside Phoenix and not far from the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, is used by the Apache for sweats and for coming-of-age ceremonies known as Sunrise Dances, where young girls are ushered into womanhood.

There’s Twila Cassadore, a San Carlos Apache woman who educates her community about Apache diets before people were forced onto reservations.

It’s a huge colony of sea lions, who have decided to occupy a stretch of San Carlos Beach on busy Cannery Row instead of their normal rocky sanctuary a short distance away.

The group of mostly male sea lions travels every year from the Channel Islands to rest and feed and they usually stay along adjacent beaches but this time, they decided to call San Carlos Beach their home, city spokesperson Laurie Huelga said.

The Tohono O’odham Nation — along with the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Center for Biological Diversity and Archeology Southwest — sued in January in hopes of stopping the clearing of roads and pads so more work could be done to identify culturally significant sites within a 50-mile stretch of the valley.