Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

For the Indigenous peoples, whose homelands span the 1848 border between México and the United States, the border itself is static invasion. The barriers and walls that have been constructed, and the ones being planned, cut through their living rooms and fields. The territories of thirty-six US federally recognized tribes, including the Kumeyaay, Cocopah, Quechan, Tohono O’odham, Yaqui, Tigua, and Kickapoo, straddle the two-thousand-mile border. Tens of thousands of Native people live near the border in the Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, and Chihuahua and are not recognized as Indigenous by US authorities. They cross the border into the US for their kin’s cultural events and sacred sites, to attend burials and visit family. Like other “nonresident aliens,” they are required to pass through the rigid security checkpoints where they are subject to interrogation and delay, often rejection. The kind of border wall being planned by the US government would make their visitations much more difficult, if not impossible.