Are We Not Foreigners Here?: Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

by Jeffrey M. Schulze

Since its inception, the U.S.-Mexico border has invited the creation of cultural, economic, and political networks that often function in defiance of surrounding nation-states. It has also produced individual and group identities that are as subversive as they are dynamic. In Are We Not Foreigners Here?, Jeffrey M. Schulze explores how the U.S.-Mexico border shaped the concepts of nationhood and survival strategies of three Indigenous tribes who live in this the Yaqui, Kickapoo, and Tohono O'odham. These tribes have historically fought against nation-state interference, employing strategies that draw on their transnational orientation to survive and thrive.Schulze details the complexities of the tribes' claims to nationhood in the context of the border from the nineteenth century to the present. He shows that in spreading themselves across two powerful, omnipresent nation-states, these tribes managed to maintain separation from currents of federal Indian policy in both countries; at the same time, it could also leave them culturally and politically vulnerable, especially as surrounding powers stepped up their efforts to control transborder traffic. Schulze underlines these tribes' efforts to reconcile their commitment to preserving their identities, asserting their nationhood, and creating transnational links of resistance with an increasingly formidable international boundary.

Genres: History, Indigenous, Nonfiction

264 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2018

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

This informative study of three southwestern Native American nations focuses on the subjects’ use of an international boundary, in this case the U.S. - Mexico border, to enact “creative defiance” (6) of national policies and retain their nationhood. Indigenous nations, as the author defines them (per Jeffrey Shepherd), have borders of some kind, distinct languages, “common origin stories,” rituals and ceremonies that define them as a coherent people, and some sense of distinctiveness or even superiority (13). The Kickapoos, Yaquis, and Tohono O’odham shared a “sense of themselves as part of something larger than a single nation could contain” (78), and they all believed (with some justification) that they could and should compel national governments to accommodate their anomalous status.

The Yaquis of northwestern Mexico assume perhaps the largest role in Schulze’s study. They were Jesuit clients until 1767, then autonomous Indians under the Mexican Republic until Dias’s army crushed them in 1886 and 1900. Some were executed after these risings, some found themselves deported to plantations in Yucatan, some fled to Arizona to pick cotton and remit money to their kinsmen in the south. Many did return home after the Revolution, but were suppressed again (1927) following skirmishes with white miners. Later Mexican governments offered schooling, in an effort to assimilate “rural” Indians into post-Revolutionary society, and (under Cardenas) provided money and land to promote economic integration. Mexico did not, however, return all of the nation’s lands and it diverted much of their water through a 1950s dam project. US immigration officials harassed Yaquis north of the border (1930s - 50s) and threatened deportation, causing some American Yaquis to return to Mexico, either permanently or just to attend baptisms, dances, and weddings. By 1970s Yaquis began seeking recognition from the US government, and they became an “adult Indian community” in 1978.

Kickapoos, Schulze’s second cross-border nation, came to Texas in the 1820s at Mexico’s invitation. Some moved to a Coahuila military colony in 1860 and became cross-border cattle raiders. Many later returned to Oklahoma, but then lost their land to allotment or sold allotments to finance their return to Mexico. The Mexican Kickapoos continued as migrant farm workers until the 1980s, spending rest of year in their “colony.” The borderland homeland remained important to them because only there could they perform the rituals necessary to protect the world from calamity. They stayed aloof from the American Kickapoos until 1981, when their need for health services caused them to seek joint recognition from the United States and Mexico.

Perhaps most famously, the Tohono O’odham lived on both sides of the 1853 U.S. - Mexico border. They frequently crossed the boundary to work or to rustle cattle in Mexico. In 1916 the U.S. granted them a large reservation (unheard of in that era) to contain the Papagos (the O'odhams' exonym) north of line. The IRA in the 1930s created a split between two Papago political factions, just as Mexico was placing restrictions on border crossings that might have alleviated factional tensions. The Mexican O’odham continued to come north as farm workers, spending most of year back in Mexico attending baptisms and religious festivals - such as that in honor of their “composite saint,” Francisco Xavier of Magdalena (147). These border crossings became more difficult with the U.S. immigration reforms of the 1980s, but they have not stopped altogether. Even today they remain in conflict with the United States over the enforcement of the international boundary line that runs through their reserve.

[Esther Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extensive History

This book is a masterpiece of the migration among the Indians that first owned our land. It documents their hardships, their transitions & their migration. Highly recommend

[Remington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and informative read.