Critical Relationalities: Centering Native Activism and Reframing Im/migration Struggles
Border fence, photograph from Tohono O'odham Nation. (Evan616 / Wikipedia Commons)
Editor’s Note: The following essay is part of a politics dossier featuring presenters from The Latinx Project’s recent conference, “Latinx Politics — Resistance, Disruption & Power.” To download the PDF, click here.
While sanctuary resists the U.S. racist police state by protecting im/migrants from deportation, it ultimately is sanctioned by and happens in settler cities. Unless sanctuary and im/migrant rights discourses address this dilemma, they will continue to participate in the collective and ongoing colonial violence of Indigenous dispossession and settler occupation. What does it then mean for im/migrant rights and the politics of sanctuary to engage in Indigenous struggles for sovereignty? I delve into this complexity by first examining Tohono O’odham activism against the border and Border Patrol in Tucson, Arizona, then by analyzing a public forum held on March 9, 2018 in Albuquerque, New Mexico called: “Sovereignty and Sanctuary.”
Necessary Alliances
The Tohono O’odham are an Indigenous, First Nations peoples whose ancestral homelands span the Sonoran Desert. In southern and central Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico, unceded O’odham territory and communities are dissected and bisected by the U.S.-Mexico border. Traditionally, the Tohono O’odham are itinerant peoples living in kinship systems, migrating throughout their land according to the seasons and shifts in growth of vegetation. This kind of Indigenous migration, both particular and essential to Tohono O’odham sovereignty and way of life, differs from other migrations forged out of colonial and imperial routes.
Separated from their relatives in Mexico and deemed as “illegal aliens,” the O’odham continue to face an ongoing quagmire of racial-gendered violence that follows centuries of colonial and imperial practices of dispossession, invasion, removals and attempted exterminations by Spain, Mexico and the United States. With undocumented border crossings funneled onto their lands, the O’odham are caught up in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance matrix. O’odham in Arizona have their homes raided by border crossers and are harassed not only by Border Patrol but by cartel members as well. Against this colonial and militarized border violence, Alex Soto, a Tohono O’odham activist, hip-hop artist, and volunteer with the group O’odham Solidarity Across Borders, asserts that “the immigration struggle is also an Indigenous struggle.” Soto’s statement focuses our attention on the impact of border militarization in Indigenous communities on or near the colonial and imperial U.S.-Mexico border, and critically highlights Indigenous voices in relation to im/migrant rights discourses and frameworks.
Tohono O’odham and Diné activists protesting at the US Border Patrol Headquarters in Tucson.
On Friday, May 21, 2010 six Tohono O’odham and Diné activists including Soto locked themselves together for almost 4 hours in the lobby of the United States Border Patrol Headquarters in Tucson. These headquarters lay adjacent to the Tohono O’odham reservation, 67 miles north of the border. This self-imposed lock down was a protest to end border militarization on Indigenous land, against Indigenous peoples, and to end the criminalization and deportation of im/migrants. While Soto and 5 others were locked together inside, community members, including members of the Pasqual Yaqui, Tohono O’odham, and Diné Nations gathered in prayer and rallied in support.
The immediate withdraw of National Guard Troops from the U.S./Mexico border,
The immediate halt of the development of the border wall,
The immediate removal of drones and checkpoints, the decommission of all detention camps and the release of all presently held undocumented migrants,
The immediate honor of Indigenous peoples rights to self-determination,
Full settler state compliance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
The respect of Indigenous people’s inherent right of migration
The end of racial profiling, Border Patrol encroachment/sweeps on sovereign Native land, and an end to all raids and deportations.
Ultimately, these demands call for the undoing of compounded settler structures crystalized over time and space so that Indigenous lifeways such as the immediate and unconditional freedom of movement for all people can be materialized. From this perspective, the criminalization and deportation of im/migrants stands in direct opposition to Indigenous presence, lifeways, and sovereignty. Centering Indigenous politics delegitimizes the United States as a sovereign nation and invalidates its efforts to restrict the freedom of movement. Soto affirms: “Elders inform us that we have always honored freedom of movement…We need to…remember this action was a prayer, and the dismissal of trespassing reaffirms that the Border Patrol troops are the real trespassers, not us.”
Moreover, this Indigenous action reveals that Indigenous peoples existed prior to the border and its militarization. They existed before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848 which ended the U.S./Mexican war; before the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 which demarcated the boundary lines between the United States and Mexico, causing separation among Indigenous relatives. Indigenous peoples existed before the mounted watchmen of the U.S. Immigration Service who patrolled the border as early as 1904 and who would later become the Border Patrol. In this, the border and border militarization are colonial and imperial operations weaponized to continue Indigenous genocide and land dispossession.
Sovereignty “and” Sanctuary
From 2017-2018, faculty and students at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, mobilized to establish a sanctuary campus. This was when the Trump administration withdrew DACA protections for undocumented youth, enacted immigration bans, and carried out massive deportations. Creating sanctuary was part of a nationwide resurgence informed by the sanctuary movements of the 1980’s, which began as a political and religious effort to protect Central American refugees escaping civil wars in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador from being deported. During this time, the United States refused asylum to Central Americans. In response, over 500 member congregations declared themselves official sanctuaries committed to providing shelter, protection, material goods and legal advice. In this context, the “Sovereignty & Sanctuary” forum brought together a timely panel of activists, organizers and scholars to discuss the intersections and the meaning of Indigenous sovereignty and sanctuary. This forum was necessary because while Albuquerque has a large im/migrant community, it is a settler city built upon the stolen, occupied, and unceded lands of Sandia-Isleta Pueblo, Tiwa/Tewa peoples.
Discussants were Jennifer Marley (San Idefonso Pueblo), member of the Red Nation; Eduardo Esquivel, member of the New Mexico Dream Team; Jennifer Denetdale (Diné), Professor in American Studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM); Irene Vasquez, Chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Professor in American Studies also at UNM; Nellie Jo David, Tohono O’odham environmental justice activist and member of Tohono O’odham Hemajkam Rights Network (TOHRN); and Daniel Vega, member of the New Mexico Faith Coalition for Immigrant Justice (NMFCIJ).
The forum’s goal was to “decenter the U.S. nation-state’s assertion of sovereignty” and “emphasize Indigenous perspectives.” Questions asked were: (1) How do you define sovereignty and sanctuary? (2) How do these two terms and ideas intersect? (3) What impact does the linking of the concepts of sanctuary and sovereignty have for academic research as well as social movement organizing?” Marley stated that Indigenous sovereignty means “the self-determination of Indigenous peoples and calling into question the legitimacy of the U.S. settler-state.” Juxtaposed with U.S. sovereignty, it asserts Indigenous presence and traditional life ways relative to an ancestral land base. Marley’s statement is informed by the Red Nation. In Albuquerque, the Red Nation is an urban and diverse Native movement informed by traditions of activism, with strong connections to ancestral homelands. The convening of Marley, Denetdale, and David at this forum demonstrates that urban Native connections happen off the reservation, beyond the U.S.-Mexico border, and beyond the borders of the reservation. This affirms what Renya K. Ramirez calls “Native hubs,” where for particular reasons, different Native Nations gather together in solidarity in an urban setting, cohering the meaning of Indigeneity into an off-the-reservation formulation as well as an on-the-reservation composite.
Vega explained that sanctuary has a faith-based history and describes a safe shelter from deportation. Esquivel similarly conveyed that sanctuary means to be known in U.S. society as undocumented and not threatened by deportation. Speaking of the O’odham in relation to border crossers, David shared:
“People coming through are seeking just that—sanctuary and we don’t have the sovereignty to give it to them! We can’t even give them food or water without being criminalized by Border Patrol.”
While David articulated the impossibility of Indigenous sovereignty and sanctuary at the border, Denetdale addressed the conceptual implications for linking them together:
“The treatment of Indigenous people is at the forefront of how the U.S. transits empire. Its treatment of Indigenous people shapes and influences the way it also treats other people of color…we are marked differently for death…we need to recognize the commonality of settler violence.”
Speaking on the impact on social movement organizing, Vasquez shared that Indigenous sovereignty and sanctuary are about alliance building; and teaching about colonialism in the classroom is where she is able to “move towards understanding sanctuary and sovereignty as our ability to maintain relationships that nurture life.”
As an audience member, I was curious about how the forum would interrogate “sanctuary” in relation to Indigenous sovereignty since these concepts do not have a natural affinity. I observed that the forum overlooked the challenges evoked by placing Indigenous sovereignty “and” sanctuary in dialogue with one another. There was no discussion on how sanctuary happens on Native land, in settler cities, and upon a foundation of colonialism and imperialism. Sanctuary legitimizes im/migrant presence through settler structures that emerge out of conditions requiring Indigenous land dispossession and genocide. So while Tohono O’odham activists have a decolonial organizing practice that delegitimizes the settler state, im/migrant organizing practices, in contrast, look to the settler state for legitimacy. Another source of tension is the presumption that Indigenous Nations generally do not see im/migration issues relevant to their struggles, except if they live along the border. As David noted: “I don’t want to name tribes, but people up north…don’t know that there are Indigenous people across the border.”
Perhaps the lack in addressing these kinds of challenges was due to the forum being part of an art exhibit about the border, which, at the time, was hosted by an art gallery and museum in downtown Albuquerque. Curiously, the audience was predominantly white, and it was held in a context outside of both communities, thus highlighting another complication around the challenges of alliance-building and solidarity. Nonetheless, the forum is significant because it highlights the need for im/migrants politics to understand the ways in which Indigenous sovereignty is foundational to their struggle, and vice versa.
Conclusion
In one way, the protest and forum spotlight the critical relationalities that already exist between Indigenous and im/migrant struggles, and in another way, reveal the complications inherent between them. On their own terms, Indigenous sovereignty is incommensurate with sanctuary and im/migrant struggles. These divergences present challenges for building alliances and solidarity but only because they have not been fully theorized or imagined. The underlying problem is how Indigenous presence and struggles continue to be erased.
In early August, Immigration Nation, a documentary film series that narrates the scope of immigration enforcement under Trump, was released. Though the series ends in the Sonoran Desert, it does not mention the Tohono O’odham or how im/migrant deaths happen on their land. This invisibility is symptomatic of Indigenous erasure writ large within immigration discourses. Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang assert that “justice” is a colonial temporality, that it has “limited actions within a colonial moment against colonial structures.” This means that if our attempts to attain justice happen within settler forms – liberal ideologies, legal spheres, and judicial courts, and so on, they will be predicated upon Indigenous erasure. Yellowknives Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard critiques how recognition for Indigenous peoples historically has meant recognition by the U.S. settler state. O’odham activists resist this kind of recognition. Their organizing has reframed the potential for im/migration politics by tackling the settler structure that inflicts violence on both groups.
The Trump administration has wrought upon us an unprecedented catastrophe through the separation of detained im/migrant families, and the stonewalling of asylum seekers camped on Mexico’s side of the border. Added to this is the trauma of the election year, the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter uprisings against the state-sanctioned killings of George Floyd, Jacob Blake and countless others like Breonna Taylor, and in particular, Black Trans individuals like Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Dominique Fells and Riah Milton. Holding the weight of all of this relational violence, it is necessary to address the overlooked relationalities between Indigenous and im/migration struggles so that life for both groups can be simultaneously valued and accounted for.
Raquel Andrea González Madrigal, Ph.D., completed her Doctoral (2019) and Master’s (2012) degrees in American Studies at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (UNM). In 2009, she received two Bachelor of Arts degrees in Ethnic Studies and Political Science-Public Service at the University of California, Riverside. She was awarded and accepted the Consortium for Faculty Diversity (CFD) Postdoctoral Fellowship at Mount Holyoke College (MHC) for the 2019-2021 academic year, teaching in the Department of Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies as a visiting lecturer.