RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
“‘Our Constitution Makes Provisions for All These Things:’ Changing Tohono O’odham Protocols and Powers in the 1930s” Journal of Arizona History (JAH), 65, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 203-226
“G-Men, Green Men, and Red Land: Extraterrestrial Miscreants, Federal Jurisdiction, and Exceptional Space in the 1970s.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ), 45, no. 1 (2021): 71-83
RESEARCH INTERESTS: Native American & Indigenous Studies, Indigenous Research Methodologies, Indigenous Land & Law, Settler Colonialism; Borders, Boundaries, and Movements; Native American History; Comparative Ethnic Studies; Interdisciplinary Methods
“‘Our Constitution Makes Provisions for All These Things:’ Changing Tohono O’odham Protocols and Powers in the 1930s” Journal of Arizona History (JAH), 65, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 203-226
“G-Men, Green Men, and Red Land: Extraterrestrial Miscreants, Federal Jurisdiction, and Exceptional Space in the 1970s.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ), 45, no. 1 (2021): 71-83
RESEARCH INTERESTS: Native American & Indigenous Studies, Indigenous Research Methodologies, Indigenous Land & Law, Settler Colonialism; Borders, Boundaries, and Movements; Native American History; Comparative Ethnic Studies; Interdisciplinary Methods
MY RESEARCH:
Broadly, my scholarship follows a conspicuous disjunction between "the border" in the news, on social media, and in the national imaginary and the border that I have as an O'odham person experienced, seen, and crossed. The political discourse surrounding the US-Mexico border appears to have little to do with either the communities who occupy the US-Mexico borderlands—as of 2019 over thirty cities, tribes, and tribal organizations have passed resolutions condemning the border wall (Nomoreborderwall, 2019)—or the fact that there are multiple barriers already in place there (Madsen 2011). Speaking materially, Trump supporters chanting “build the wall” would be more accurate if they chanted, “build new walls,” “replace old walls,” “extend existing walls.”
The disjunction between the imagined wall and the material one is evident in the very first TV ad released by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The ad featured grainy footage of dozens of people hopping over a fence. An unidentified narrator says, “He’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for” (Trump 2016). While the coupling of narration and video implies that the people pictured are “illegal immigrants” coming over the US-Mexico border, the video actually pictures the border fence around Melilla, one of two Spanish cities in Morocco. A world away, the people pictured hopping the fence are entering the European Union on the African continent.
Contemporary political discourses around the US-Mexico border are disembodied. The majority of US citizens encounter “the wall” as a discourse before if ever they encounter it as a material reality. Even as individuals feel passionately, act aggressively, and vote in support or against them, these political discourses have little to do with the people and the land in or passing through the southwestern United States, and yet these discourses materialize on the ground through violence, militarization, and architecture.
With this problematic in mind, three questions guide my work: How are the borderlands produced and negotiated by resident communities? How are the borderlands mediated by the state? How and in what form do national border-discourses manifest here? I answer these questions through historical research and fieldwork in the contemporary communities that work, reside, and move through the borderlands.
CURRENT PROJECT:
My current book project, Bordering the Nation: Land, Life, and Law at the US-Mexico Border and on O’odham Jeved (Land), begins to address these questions. In it, I investigate the construction of intra and inter national borders and borderlands on O'odham land in Southern Arizona from 1900-2020.
To learn more about "Bordering the Nation" click the buttons below.
Broadly, my scholarship follows a conspicuous disjunction between "the border" in the news, on social media, and in the national imaginary and the border that I have as an O'odham person experienced, seen, and crossed. The political discourse surrounding the US-Mexico border appears to have little to do with either the communities who occupy the US-Mexico borderlands—as of 2019 over thirty cities, tribes, and tribal organizations have passed resolutions condemning the border wall (Nomoreborderwall, 2019)—or the fact that there are multiple barriers already in place there (Madsen 2011). Speaking materially, Trump supporters chanting “build the wall” would be more accurate if they chanted, “build new walls,” “replace old walls,” “extend existing walls.”
The disjunction between the imagined wall and the material one is evident in the very first TV ad released by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The ad featured grainy footage of dozens of people hopping over a fence. An unidentified narrator says, “He’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for” (Trump 2016). While the coupling of narration and video implies that the people pictured are “illegal immigrants” coming over the US-Mexico border, the video actually pictures the border fence around Melilla, one of two Spanish cities in Morocco. A world away, the people pictured hopping the fence are entering the European Union on the African continent.
Contemporary political discourses around the US-Mexico border are disembodied. The majority of US citizens encounter “the wall” as a discourse before if ever they encounter it as a material reality. Even as individuals feel passionately, act aggressively, and vote in support or against them, these political discourses have little to do with the people and the land in or passing through the southwestern United States, and yet these discourses materialize on the ground through violence, militarization, and architecture.
With this problematic in mind, three questions guide my work: How are the borderlands produced and negotiated by resident communities? How are the borderlands mediated by the state? How and in what form do national border-discourses manifest here? I answer these questions through historical research and fieldwork in the contemporary communities that work, reside, and move through the borderlands.
CURRENT PROJECT:
My current book project, Bordering the Nation: Land, Life, and Law at the US-Mexico Border and on O’odham Jeved (Land), begins to address these questions. In it, I investigate the construction of intra and inter national borders and borderlands on O'odham land in Southern Arizona from 1900-2020.
To learn more about "Bordering the Nation" click the buttons below.