#opheliarivas — Public Fediverse posts

Contesting #Surveillance Infrastructure on #IndigenousLands

by #OpheliaRivas, #CaitlinBlanchfield, and #NinaKolowratnik

"The broad slope and rounded crest of O’ks Tak’am Do’ak outline the profile of a woman sitting and facing the west. Her name is O’ks Ta’kam. She is part the O’odham origin story, passed down through oral history. She sits there vigilant, a warrior protecting, and will warn the people when a catastrophic event will occur. When this event comes, she will stand and gather the smallest creatures in her skirt to protect them.

"The mountain forms part of the Tak’Va’Vak range which cuts through #TohonoOodham land, joining peaks like Han’a-mek and Ma’mke-mad. These mountains are known as a place to gather sweet fruits from the chu-chues (organ pipe cactus). They are home to caves, springs, and seasonal water holes. Each year ceremonies and hunts take place all across the Tak’Va’Vak, and trails lead through the mountain passes, connecting the springs at A’al Va’pai (Quitobaqito) to O’odham villages in Sonora, and leading all the way to the salty Ge-Ka-ch’k (Sea of Cortez). The mountains hold deer, mountain rams, javalina. They hold burial places. Medicines grow there. In the evening they are especially beautiful, bathed in crimson.

"The Tak’Va’Vak range also forms one border of the Tohono O’odham Nation. The boundary runs along the ridge line and separates the reservation from the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a United States national park to the west.

"The border with the #NationalMonument is one of three that divide Tohono O’odham Nation from the #UnitedStates; the reservation’s southern border is with #Mexico. It is this border that dominates the others—both in its real effects and in media representations—and with good reason, especially in the last decades, and acutely in the present moment. It separates the Tohono O’odham in Sonora from those in Arizona, dividing the people; and its securitization has brought violence and destruction to O’odham lands on both sides in different ways. Yet these two borders—one between nation states and one between reservation and national park—work together: they are part of the same process of colonialism and dispossession that have been constricting O’odham life for hundreds of years. The construction of the US-Mexico border is intertwined with the expropriation of #IndigenousLand and the subsequent creation of #NativeAmerican reservations as much as it is with United States expansionism and policies of exclusion. More than that, the US-Mexico border, and the many weapons, technologies of surveillance, and #BorderPatrol officers that comprise it, is an extension of the United States’ ongoing, violent, and racialized campaign to contain and assimilate Indigenous peoples—it is a settler colonial border. But as Salt River Pima-Maricopa scholar #FantasiaPainter reminds us, the #borderlands are not yet settled, and they are unsettled: this is because of the refusal of Tohono O’odham and other #IndigenousPeoples to see and accept their lands as not their own."

Read more:
https://urbannext.net/significant-impact-contesting-surveillance/

#SettlerColonialism #SurveillanceState #USPol #CulturalGenocide
#NoBorderWall #TrumpsBorderWall
#ProtectTheSacred #EnvironmentalProtectionAct
#RespectTheTreaties #AbolishICE #DefundDHS #MurderPatrol #BorderPatrol #IndigenousSacredSites
#DepartmentOfHomelandInsecurity

U.S. Justice Department Rejects #CivilRights Complaint Filed for Murder of #RaymondMattia by #USBorderPatrol

By #OpheliaRivas, O'odham Voice Against the Wall, via #CensoredNews, January 6, 2025

"The system of justice for the killing of an American Indian is as expected by the people. The numerous federal agents on the Tohono O'odham reservation are justified in killing our people as they will not be held accountable by the system that pays them to be heavily armed and unmonitored on our land.

"The border patrol have not been prosecuted for deaths, rapes, molestations and human and drug trafficking.

"The Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice wrote to me:

"'The tragic death of Raymond Mattia, who was shot and killed at his home, by officers of U.S Customs and Border Patrol agents Whitehouse, SiFuentes, and Torralva, on May 18, 2023.'

'Mr. Mattia’s death was indeed a tragic loss. Mr. Mattia’s death was indeed a tragic loss. However, the information provided about the circumstances surrounding his death does not disclose a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes enforced by the Criminal Section. Therefore, we regret that we are unable to assist with this matter."

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/01/us-justice-dept-rejects-civil-rights.html

#JusticeForRay #JusticeForRayMattia #ACAB #CivilRightsViolation
#Murder #Tohono #Oodham #Arizona #MurderPatrol