When the Bulldozers Move Before Tribal Consent

Opinion

Imagine living with your family on land that has been yours for generations — only to have the government draw a line through it and divide your property.

Then, to make matters worse, the government decides it wants to build a wall across your lot – without asking your permission. 

This is the dilemma facing the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona. The Nation took its fight to federal court in June. 

Leading the fight against the wall is Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon Jose, whom I met at a National Congress of American Indians convention several years ago. When I asked him to tell me about his Nation, he immediately included a large swath of land extending beyond the southern border of the United States into Mexico. He told me the reservation stretches 62 miles along U.S.-Mexico border and the Nation’s ancestral homeland extends about 75 miles into Mexico. He told me that some 2,000 Tohono O’odham citizens still live in Mexico.

As he told me about the geography of his tribal nation, I was reminded of something Native Americans often say: “Their borders are not necessarily ours.”

Since then, I have seen him at other national Native American conventions and I ran into him at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago two years ago. He told me that if Donald Trump got elected for a second term, the Nation would still oppose the construction of a border wall on the Tohono O’odham reservation.

That conversation has stayed with me.

The Tohono O’odham homeland predates the U.S.-Mexico border. Today, the Nation’s federally recognized reservation encompasses approximately 2.8 million acres and shares 62 miles of international border with Mexico. But O’odham people have lived across what is now southern Arizona and northern Sonora for thousands of years. The international boundary divided their people, communities, families and sacred places.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington denied the Nation’s request to stop construction while its lawsuit proceeds. Leon ruled that the Tohono O’odham Nation had not demonstrated that construction would unlawfully alter its reservation boundaries or constitute an illegal trespass. He also found that the federal government’s interests in border security and public safety outweighed the potential harm to the Nation for purposes of the preliminary injunction.

But this case should be about more than whether a line on a government map technically moves. It is about whether the United States can enter Indian Country, begin construction on tribal lands and damage sacred cultural resources without the consent of the tribal nation that has governed those lands for centuries prior to the existence of the United States.

The Tohono O’odham Nation says it was not asked for consent before the federal government moved forward with the project. The Nation also argues that construction threatens sacred places, religious practices, wildlife and the cultural connections that have survived despite an international border being imposed across its homeland.

And there is already evidence of why the Nation’s concerns should not be dismissed as hypothetical.

In April, construction connected to the border wall damaged the Las Playas Intaglio, a sacred archaeological site featuring an ancient image carved into the desert floor. The Nation has warned that other sacred places also face potential harm.

Judge Leon acknowledged that the international border is an area of great significance to both the United States and the Nation. He also said he expects the government to honor its promises of consultation and cooperation with the Nation.

But consultation after construction begins is not how sovereign nations should operate. A federal promise of consultation should not substitute for the legal rights of a tribal nation.

For generations, Native nations have heard the federal government say that treaties, laws and executive orders protect their sovereignty—only to see those protections narrowed when they conflict with federal priorities.

Border security is a legitimate federal responsibility. But protecting the border does not give the federal government a blank check to disregard tribal sovereignty.

The Tohono O’odham Nation has worked with federal authorities on border security for decades. The Nation has supported technology and other measures when it believed they could protect its people while respecting its lands and culture. IIn 2019, for example, the Nation approved rights-of-way across its lands for a Customs and Border Protection Integrated Fixed Tower system used for electronic surveillance.

That cooperation should mean something.

The federal government should not be allowed to say, in effect, “trust us,” while bulldozers are already moving.

The Tohono O’odham Nation is not asking the United States to abandon border security. It is asking the federal government to respect Tribal sovereignty and protect a homeland that existed long before an international boundary divided it.

The judge’s decision may be a setback, but it should not be the final word.

This is about more than a wall. It is about whether the United States will honor its relationship with Tribal Nations when doing so becomes inconvenient.

Native people have heard those promises before. It is time for the United States to keep them.

Thayék gde nwéndëmen – We are all related.