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Sergeant Bravie Soto is known as the first Native American casualty of the Vietnam War. He was 26 years old when he was killed in the Bien Hoa province of South Vietnam in September of 1967. Awarded the Purple Heart, Sgt. Soto was Cocopah or Kwapa, also known as River People. The Cocopah Indian Tribe has long lived along the lower reaches of the Colorado River near present-day Yuma, Arizona and the Mexican border.
Today there are about 1,000 enrolled Cocopah tribal members who live and work on or near the reservation. Over the years, many have served in the armed forces, and some, like Sgt. Soto, paid the ultimate price.
This Memorial Day, imagine a U.S. President that would take money away from the military and use it for a campaign stunt that walls off the Cocopah, the River People, from the river. Imagine this is being done without the consent of Congress, and that it is only seven miles of a 500-mile border walling blitz that is destroying National Parks and Wildlife Refuges, walling off rivers, and impacting many Native American tribes.
You don’t have to imagine the absurdity and corruption of this border wall nightmare, because it’s real.
But there is some good news, at least for the Cocopah… [see the news -- near bottom, below...]
– Because the “proposed” project has already begun!
Ignoring the public and keeping us in the dark is just one hallmark of a despotic, authoritarian state. Another is a disempowered Congress. The U.S. Congress did not consent to most of the hundreds of miles of border wall imposition schemes illegally happening now in all four U.S. southern border states. It’s being funded (no, not by Mexico) with stolen taxpayer dollars that were supposed to support the U.S. military. Billions are being siphoned away from the troops and into a destructive campaign promise.
| Corruption is rampant in this administration, especially when it comes to border wall contracts. A half-dozen right-wing contractors have landed all of the hundreds of miles of recent wall deals, netting hundreds of millions and in some cases billions of these stolen taxpayer dollars. The companies are: Posillico (NY), Caddell (AL), SLS (TX), Barnard (MT), Kiewit (NE) and Fisher (ND). Some of these contracts have been awarded no-bid, and a dozen contracting laws have been waived, leaving no recourse for the American people or the U.S. military to get their money back. Contracting laws waived? Yes, they are among 65 laws that no longer protect those of us living in border communities. Laws meant to ensure public consultation, clean air and water, endangered species and Native American religious protection, all have been flushed down the toilet by this administration in order to fast-track the 2020 Election Wall. With no protection laws in place, an area the size of the U.S. West Coast is now being systematically destroyed, under the cover of a pandemic that has us all distracted. I am most disturbed by the loss of Arizona’s Camino del Diablo, or Devil’s Highway, and the southern portion of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Groundwater is being depleted, natural flows of water and wildlife blocked, all-night lighting installed, and roadless wilderness being bulldozed, for mile after mile after mile. |
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Recent destruction of the Tinajas Altas Mountains. Credit: Center for Biological Diversity.
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| The San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, both home to endangered species found nowhere else in the United States, are suffering the same fate. And the list goes on: Otay and the Jacumbas in California, the Quechan Indian Reservation near Yuma, the Tinajas Altas Mountains, Coronado National Forest, Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers in Arizona. The Arizona Trail. All walled off or on the chopping block. |
| This Memorial Day, the image is bleak: Everyone in the border region lives under martial law. Freedom of movement is limited by permanent racial-profiling checkpoints on our highways. You can’t leave the Tohono O’odham Nation, on pavement anyway, without being subjected to questioning, x-ray scans, and drug-sniffing dogs. Border Patrol agents of European heritage interrogate O’odham people, on O’odham land: “Are you a U.S. citizen?” |
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| And that’s really what this whole thing is about, isn’t it? Who belongs, and who doesn’t. What you’re supposed to look like to be “American.” I have the power, and you don’t. This is nothing new. This is white supremacy. |
The system of white Supremacy has been in my face all day, every day, pretty much since birth. And I’m a privileged white guy. But white supremacy has been there, haunting me, helping me, hurting me. And not just me… Everyone. We all must FIGHT the system of white supremacy, until we DESTROY it.
How to confront white supremacy in your own life is a complicated personal quest. Sierra Club’s Equity Department has free resources to make it a little easier. But it’s never easy. Clearly, Job One right now is to expel the White Supremacist in Chief from the White House, and let justice rain down on him, his co-conspirators and enablers.
Every month I thank you for caring about the borderlands.
This month, I invite you to inquire deep within yourself:
“Do I care? How much do I care? Why do I care?”
Our borderlands are NOT defined by walls, razor wire, desert dunes, and White ranchers. Our borderlands are full of water and wildlife. Our borderlands are home to majority Latinx and Indigenous people, and they always have been.
Which brings us back to the Cocopah Indian Tribe.
Wednesday, Sierra Club, ACLU and the Southern Border Communities Coalition learned through our lawsuit to stop the border walls that the 7 miles of wall through Cocopah lands have been de-funded by the Department of Defense!
For now, at least, the River People are not in danger of losing access to the sacred, eternal waters of the Colorado.
I cannot speak for Sergeant Soto, his family, or his people.But the Sierra Club, our Borderlands Program, and our Military Outdoors personnel all rise in solidarity with the River People.
We congratulate them on their win against a tyrannical wall through Indigenous land. We recognize all American lands as Native American lands, and all border walls as crimes against humanity and all creation.
Seven miles have been stopped. We demand an immediate end to the rest of it – a nearly 500-mile monument to White Supremacy.
The border wall is an abomination that is being imposed, Memorial Day and every day, on Indigenous land from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico.
We say, “No border wall!”
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Dan Millis Borderlands Program Manager (520) 620-6401 dan.millis@sierraclub.org http://www.sierraclub.org/borderlands |
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