Unsettled Borders: The Militarized Science of Surveillance on Sacred Indigenous Land

Dissident Acts

by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer

In Unsettled Borders Felicity Amaya Schaeffer examines the ongoing settler colonial war over the US-Mexico border from the perspective of Apache, Tohono O’odham, and Maya who fight to protect their sacred land. Schaeffer traces the scientific and technological development of militarized border surveillance across time and space from Spanish colonial lookout points in Arizona and Mexico to the Indian wars, when the US cavalry hired Native scouts to track Apache fleeing into Mexico, to the occupation of the Tohono O’odham reservation and the recent launch of robotic bee swarms. Labeled “Optics Valley,” Arizona builds on a global history of violent dispossession and containment of Native peoples and migrants by branding itself as a profitable hub for surveillance. Schaeffer reverses the logic of borders by turning to Indigenous ancestral land-based practices that are critical to reversing the ecological and social violence of surveillance, extraction, and occupation.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

Published August 31, 2022

Reviews

[Ryan G-M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too often, Latinx and non-Indigenous scholars, in writing about the border, ignore or sideline Indigenous knowledge when theorizing on what the border region is and represents. This book is a much needed rebuttal to that academic whitewashing, and it examines how colonial borders and occupation seek to appropriate and erase O’odham relations to the land and their ancestors. It shows the potential for solidarity between immigrants, many of whom are Maya, and Indigenous nations in North America.

[Mia Huynh · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The land was, is, and will again be Indigenous."

"Automated surveillance technologies allowed the state to absolve itself of violence and to extend its reach beyond US national boundaries, law, and jurisdiction, especially onto Native American reservations."

Unsettled Borders by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer is a text that examines the relationship between the Indigenous "sacredsciences" that have been exploited and appropriated by the United States for the purpose of militarized border security. In this, Schaeffer does an amazing job at dissecting the history, culture, and meaning of Indigenous practices that have been utilized by the United States in their process of militarization. From these moments, the audience is able to obtain perspective into the violence enacted on these peoples by the United States government for the "sake" of protection and environmental conservatism.

Overall, Unsettled Borders excels in providing insight on how Indigenous populations have lived; their culture, practices, and beliefs; and the harm done against these people on their own land. However, as an academic reading on migrants, border surveillance, and the direct effects on Indigenous peoples, the book is lacking. Each chapter seems to have a different direction that isn't quite cohesive nor builds upon any other chapters within the book. Rather than developing a theoretical proposal or framework, she spends the majority of the time telling the history of a specific practice. It would've been powerful to offer something more. In addition, she doesn't state a clear thesis—while reading, I was unsure about what her central stance or framework was regarding what topic (there seemed to be many). Furthermore, her methodology was a bit disappointing. Despite heavily discussing and centralizing her argument on Indigenous peoples, she does not include the accounts of any nor does she state quite what her connection to these groups are. Is she just an external researcher? Does she accurately represent the beliefs and accounts of Indigenous peoples during these processes? If so, why weren't they included? While her discussions were informative, her text and overall argument would have been made much stronger had it been an ethnographic work.