Contamination of heavy metals from mill tailings is a global problem. China's Jinchuan Group Limited has stored approximately one billion tons of mill tailings which contain toxic levels of copper, nickel, and other metal compounds. To solve the problem, this work extended the principle of hydrometallurgical extraction to the recovery of copper/nickel from Jinchuan tailings and designed an environmental-friendly recovering process. Synergetic leaching by sulfuric acid and ferric ion was proposed to achieve the efficient leach of copper, nickel, and other metals in Jinchuan tailings. Novel silica-based 2-aminomethylpyridine and iminodiacetic acid functionalized adsorbent were used to selectively recover copper and nickel from the leachate of Jinchuan tailings, respectively. The stable adsorption capacity on semi-industrial scale operation after 700 continuous adsorption-regeneration runs promises the achievement of copper and nickel recovery from Jinchuan tailings.