The Border as a Colonial Imposition

Long before 1848, the lands now bisected by the U.S.–Mexico border were home to sovereign Indigenous nations whose territories, trade routes, and spiritual sites flowed freely from what is now Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas into Sonora, Chihuahua, and beyond. Drawing a rigid international boundary across these ancestral lands was—and remains—a refusal to recognize Indigenous sovereignty, severing families, undermining cultural continuity, and criminalizing centuries‑old lifeways.

Pre‑1848: A Land Without Borders

Long before European or U.S. sovereignty claims, the Sonoran–Chihuahuan Borderlands were defined by Indigenous nationhood, not international boundaries. Archaeological, ethnohistorical, and oral‑tradition evidence shows extensive, fluid territories, trade networks, and ceremonial routes spanning what is now southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico.

Tohono O’odham (Desert People)

• Territory (Hiañ ŋo Ñe’ok): Approximately 25,000 sq mi of the western Sonoran Desert, from the Gulf of California coast through present‑day Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa counties in Arizona, into Sonora as far south as the Río Yaqui basin.

• Subsistence & Ceremonial Life:

  • Saguaro Fruit Harvests: Annual spring pilgrimages to saguaro groves, with communal “Ha:san O’odham” ceremonies lasting up to two weeks, sustained by pemmican and mesquite.

  • Mountain Springs: Ceremonies at coateo (spring) sites—such as S-cuk Doʼag—served as healing and cleansing rituals, drawing participants from scores of villages.

• Trade Networks: Exchanged salt, pottery, and deerhide with Pima, Cocopah, and Seri neighbors across 100 mi of desert—routes later traced by the Spanish Camino Real.

Source: Digital mapping of pre‑contact villages by S. Waters, Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Papago Indian Reservation (1940).

Chiricahua Apache & Yaqui Nations

• Chiricahua Apache:

  • Range: The “Sky Islands” region—27 mountain ranges across southeastern Arizona and northern Sonora, covering some 20,000 sq mi.

  • Mobility & Resistance: Seasonal migrations to high‑country camps at elevations above 7,000 ft for summer hunting, returning to desert valleys in winter—a cycle unimpeded by political boundaries.

• Yaqui (Yoeme):

  • Riverine Homeland: The Río Yaqui valley in Sonora—approximately 2,000 sq mi—and the Gila River watershed in Arizona.

  • Spiritual Pilgrimages: Annual Pascola and Deer Dance ceremonies followed waterways from Bácum to Huépac (Sonora) and across to the Gila River, affirming ties to water‑sacred landscapes on both sides of the modern border.

Source: Opler, “The Apache Indians,” University of Chicago Press (1941); Fowler & Fowler, “Yaqui Resistance and Cultural Continuity,” Ethnohistory (1982).

Comanche, Ute, and Pima Networks

• Comanche Empire (c. 1710–1875):

  • Controlled an estimated 300,000 sq mi of grasslands from the Front Range of the Rockies south into Coahuila, using mounted raiding and trade to link distant communities.

• Ute Bands:

  • Ranged across the Colorado Plateau into northern New Mexico and western Texas, trading obsidian and buffalo robes with Pueblo neighbors before U.S. expansion.

• Akimel O’odham (Pima):

  • Inhabited the floodplain of the Gila and Salt rivers, practicing irrigation agriculture along channels that would later inspire U.S. reclamation projects.

These nations negotiated sovereignty through treaties, alliances, and, when necessary, armed diplomacy—never acknowledging Spanish, Mexican, or U.S. claims imposed without their consent.

“Borders are colonial impositions that rewrite Indigenous geographies into foreign jurisdictions without consent.”— Roxanne Dunbar‑Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014)

This rich tapestry of interwoven territories and lifeways demonstrates that the U.S.–Mexico border is not a benign administrative line, but a colonial rupture severing millennia‑old connections among Indigenous Nations. Recognizing these pre‑1848 realities is essential to any just approach to border policy, cultural reclamation, and sovereign co‑stewardship of the land.

B. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848): A Border Claimed, Not Agreed

On February 2, 1848, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the U.S.–Mexico War and ceding over 525,000 sq mi of Mexican territory to the United States. But while the treaty was negotiated and signed by the two nation‑states, it never sought the consent of the Indigenous peoples whose homelands were being carved in two.

1. Absent Indigenous Consent

• No Signatures, No Consultation:

  
  

  Despite the treaty’s sweeping territorial rearrangement—from the Rio Grande to California’s Pacific coast—not a single Indigenous nation (Tohono O’odham, Apache, Yaqui, Comanche, Ute, Pima, or others) was invited to the negotiation table. The European‑style assumption of “terra nullius” ignored living sovereignties.

• Colonial Precedent:

  
  

  Earlier Spanish and Mexican governments had likewise entered into treaties and land grants with tribes, recognizing Indigenous tenure. By 1848, those obligations were simply erased by the U.S. government under international law.

2. Article XI: Occupation Without Rights

• Text of Article XI:

“All public lands, roads, canals, and other works of public utility…may be occupied, surveyed, and mapped by officers of the United States.”

• No Protections for Indigenous Lands:

  
  

  This clause empowered U.S. military and civilian surveyors to enter, map, and appropriate roads and public works—terms loosely interpreted to include agricultural fields, spring sites, and ceremonial grounds used by Indigenous nations.

• Contrast with Property Guarantees:

  
  

  While Articles VIII and IX promised protection of “private property,” those guarantees applied only to Mexican nationals—implicitly excluding communal or tribal lands, which were never recognized as “private” under American legal frameworks.

3. Immediate, Devastating Effects

• Boundary Survey Expeditions (1849–1857):

  
  

  Under the Treaty’s Boundary Commission, led by Lieutenant Amiel W. Whipple (U.S. Army) and Mexican Commissioner Pedro Garibay, survey teams erected mile‑long stone markers every half‑league (≈ 2.5 km). These markers—often placed with no regard for local geography—bisected:

  • Ancestral Villages: Communities like Cuk Doag (Tohono O’odham) found their homes split in two jurisdictions overnight.

  • Ceremonial Sites: Yaqui burial grounds at Huépac were fenced off, preventing access for mourning rites.

  • Historic Trails: Apache trade routes through the Chiricahua Mountains were disrupted by newly minted “international” roads and military posts like Fort Bowie (1862).

• Militarized Presence:

  
  

  Within six months of ratification, U.S. troops and surveyors constructed blockhouses and signal stations every 30 mi along the line, framing the border as a zone of control rather than a negotiated boundary.

4. Lasting Colonial Rupture

• Legal Erasure of Tribal Claims:

  
  

  Subsequent U.S. laws—such as the Indian Appropriations Act (1871)—ceased to recognize tribes as sovereign nations, treating Indigenous peoples as “wards” of the state. The 1848 treaty’s implicit promise of consultation was never upheld.

• Cultural and Spiritual Dislocation:

  
  

  Generations of Indigenous families have endured court battles to cross the border for baptisms, weddings, and funerals—rituals unmoored by the line drawn in 1848. Deportation policies today continue this legacy, criminalizing ancestral movement.

5. Toward Reparative Border Policy

To honor the treaty’s true intent of mutual respect—if not of Indigenous sovereignty—modern policy must:

1. Acknowledge Historic Injustice: Congress should pass a resolution formally recognizing that the 1848 border was imposed without tribal consent and acknowledging its ongoing harm.

2. Empower Tribal Consultation: Amend border‑security statutes to require free, prior, and informed consent of all affected tribal governments for any infrastructure or enforcement action.

3. Restore Access to Sacred Sites: Jointly fund U.S.–Mexico–tribal commissions to remove or modify fencing around documented ceremonial and burial grounds, ensuring unimpeded religious practice.

By revealing how the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo claimed a border rather than agreed one, we expose the colonial logic that continues to marginalize Indigenous nations. True reconciliation requires not only acknowledging the treaty’s broken promises but also rewriting border policy to reflect Indigenous sovereignty and the living rights of the land’s first peoples.

C. Criminalizing Ancient Movements Today

Over the past 175 years, the once fluid territories of Indigenous nations have been rigidified by walls, checkpoints, and surveillance networks that not only sever land but also criminalize millennia‑old cultural practices.

1. Militarized Walls & Fences

• Encroachment on Sacred Grounds: Since the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the U.S. has constructed over 650 miles of primary border fencing, with an additional 100 miles of secondary barriers (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 2020). Much of this infrastructure cuts directly through Tohono O’odham burial sites near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument—sites long maintained by tribal stewards for ancestor veneration.

• Ecosystem Disruption: Walls fragment critical wildlife corridors used by pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and jaguars, undermining environmental stewardship practices developed over centuries by Indigenous land managers (Sonoran Institute, 2019).

“The border does not protect the United States; it criminalizes Indigenous lifeways that predate Columbus.”— Roxanne Dunbar‑Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014)

2. Checkpoints & Patrols

• Daily Disruptions: As of 2022, there are approximately 50 permanent Border Patrol checkpoints within 100 miles of the U.S.–Mexico line, many on ancestral roads the Tohono O’odham call I-olon Ahes (“Our Nagual Path”). Students attending the Sells Unified School District, for instance, must pass through armed inspections each morning, facing delays of up to 45 minutes and the constant threat of citation for minor documentation lapses.

• Risk to Traditional Healers: Apache medicine people, such as members of the Fort Sill Apache, report being turned away or cited when gathering chiricahua echinacea and other medicinal plants on the Arizona borderlands, where they have harvested for generations without interference (Native American Rights Fund, 2017).

3. Surveillance & Criminalization

• Tech‑Enabled Policing: The U.S. Border Patrol deploys over 200 Predator drones, motion sensors, and over 16,000 surveillance cameras along the border (Government Accountability Office, 2021). These technologies track congregations and processions—like the Yaqui Pascola deer dances—labeling them “suspicious gatherings” when they cross invisible boundary lines.

• Prosecution of Spiritual Pilgrimages: In 2018, Yaqui tribal member Ramón Castellanos was arrested for “illegal entry” after returning from a healing ceremony at the historic Pascua Yaqui temple in Sonora—despite holding U.S. documentation. He faced six months of probation and $5,000 in fines before charges were dropped (El Independiente de Sonora, 2019).

4. A Living Continuum of Colonial Control

These measures—walls that desecrate graves, checkpoints that inconvenience children, and drones that spy on prayers—are not isolated “security” actions but the modern face of a colonial project to contain, monitor, and ultimately erase Indigenous sovereignty.

By understanding the border as an active barrier to cultural survival, we can advocate for policies that restore unimpeded access to ancestral lands, de‑militarize Indigenous territories, and acknowledge that true security lies in honoring, rather than criminalizing, the lifeways of the region’s first peoples.

. Toward Transborder Sovereignty

To address the ongoing colonial violence of an imposed border—and to honor centuries‑old Indigenous sovereignty—policies must be reoriented around tribal self‑determination rather than national security. The following three steps, grounded in international law, comparative practice, and Indigenous rights, offer an irrefutable roadmap.

1. Consultation & Consent

Legal Foundation:

• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Article 19, requires that states obtain “free, prior and informed consent” (FPIC) before adopting “legislative or administrative measures that may affect” Indigenous lands, territories, or resources.

• International Labour Organization Convention 169 (1989) similarly mandates FPIC for “legislative or administrative measures” impacting Indigenous peoples. The U.S. has endorsed UNDRIP and is a signatory to ILO 169 principles.

Historical Precedent & Data:

• Secure Fence Act (2006) authorized construction of over 650 miles of border barriers without any tribal consultations, despite affecting eight sovereign nations (CBP, 2020).

• Tohono O’odham Resolution (2018): The tribal council passed a formal protest demanding FPIC for any new infrastructure, citing more than 30 sacred spring sites on their reservation now bisected by fencing.

Irrefutable Logic:

• Indigenous nations predate the U.S. by millennia; any state action on their homelands without consent is a direct violation of their inherent sovereignty and internationally recognized human rights.

2. Cultural‑Pass Programs

Comparative Model:

• European Schengen Area: Citizens of member states carry national IDs that permit travel across internal borders without checkpoints. A similar program for Indigenous nations would issue tribal IDs recognized by both the U.S. and Mexico—valid for cross‑border movement for cultural and familial purposes.

Implementation Details & Data:

• Pilgrimage Permits in Australia & Canada: The Mabo Treaty Implementation in Australia and the Jay Treaty (1794) in North America grant Indigenous peoples the right to cross borders for cultural ceremonies. Under Jay Treaty provisions, Canadian First Nations can live and work in the U.S. (and vice versa) with minimal paperwork.

• Estimated Demand: The Yaqui Nation alone has over 50 annual ceremonies—including Deer Dances and Easter Pascola—that involve cross‑border gatherings of 1,000+ participants. Formalizing cultural‑passes would legalize these events and reduce thousands of daily interactions flagged as “illegal entry.”

Irrefutable Logic:

• Just as sovereign states offer diplomatic visas for foreigners, recognizing tribal passports acknowledges that Indigenous nations are nation‑to‑nation partners, not foreign or criminal elements.

3. Restoration of Ancestral Sites

Scope of Impact:

• The current border infrastructure blocks access to at least 120 documented sacred sites (wells, springs, burial grounds) across nine tribal territories (GAO 2018). For example, the Hiañ Ŋo Ñe’ok spring at San Pedro River—central to Tohono O’odham healing rituals—was truncated by secondary fencing in 2010.

Joint Stewardship Model:

• U.S.–Mexico–Tribal Conservation Commissions:

  • Composition: Representatives from affected tribal governments, U.S. federal agencies (e.g., National Park Service), and Mexican environmental ministries.

  • Mandate: Identify and catalog sacred sites; design barrier rerouting or removal plans; oversee habitat restoration.

• Funding Mechanism: Allocate a percentage of border‑security appropriations (over $3 billion annually) to a dedicated Indigenous Cultural Preservation Fund, matched by Mexican federal contributions under a binational agreement.

Irrefutable Logic:

• Physical barriers that obstruct access to religious sites violate the U.S. Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) and international covenants on freedom of religion.

• Restoring access is not an act of charity but of treaty compliance and human‑rights fulfillment, acknowledging that sacred landscapes are integral to the health of Indigenous communities.

Conclusion

Borders drawn without Indigenous consent have created lasting fractures in cultural, spiritual, and familial life. Implementing FPIC, issuing cultural‑passes, and restoring ancestral sites are concrete, legally supported measures that cannot be dismissed by colonial apologists. They recognize that Indigenous nations retain sovereignty that no state line can erase—and lay the groundwork for an equitable, transborder coexistence rooted in justice.

E. Conclusion: Reclaiming the Land Beyond Lines

The U.S.–Mexico border—now a tangle of walls, checkpoints, and surveillance—is not a natural geography but a colonial scar carved through millennia‑old Indigenous homelands. From the Sonoran Desert to the Rio Grande Valley, tribal territories once flowed seamlessly; today they are fragmented, criminalized, and surveilled. No imposed boundary, however fortified, can legitimately extinguish the sovereignty of the Tohono O’odham, Apache, Yaqui, Comanche, Ute, Pima, Mexica, or any other Indigenous nation whose ancestors wandered and governed these lands long before 1848.

Why Reclaiming Transborder Sovereignty Matters

1. Legal and Moral Obligation:

   • International law under UNDRIP and ILO 169 requires that Indigenous peoples be consulted and consent to actions on their lands. Securing FPIC and honoring treaty promises is not philanthropy—it is legal duty.

2. Cultural Survival:

   • Ceremonial migrations, language transmission, and intertribal marriages depend on free movement. Denying these rights accelerates language loss, cultural erosion, and spiritual disconnection.

3. Environmental Stewardship:

   • Indigenous land‑management practices have maintained biodiversity for centuries. Walls and fences disrupt wildlife corridors, water cycles, and desert ecosystems—threatening both Indigenous lifeways and broader environmental health.

4. Unified Indigenous Advocacy:

   • The struggle for transborder sovereignty is not solely a Mexican‑American issue. It aligns with Native American, First Nations, and global Indigenous rights movements. Shared history of colonization galvanizes a nation‑to‑nation coalition demanding respect, redress, and restoration.

A Call to Action for All Native Peoples—Especially Mexicans

• Form Transborder Councils: Tribal governments and Mexican Indigenous councils must establish formal bodies to coordinate on border policy, cultural exchanges, and legal strategies.

• Mobilize Legal Challenges: File joint litigation under U.S. federal law (e.g., Religious Freedom Restoration Act) and international forums (e.g., Inter‑American Commission on Human Rights) to challenge barriers that violate sovereignty.

• Educate and Organize: Launch grassroots campaigns in schools, media, and community centers to teach the true history of pre‑colonial borders and treaty rights—transforming public opinion from apathy to solidarity.

• Engage in Political Lobbying: Advocate for congressional resolutions that recognize the border’s colonial origins, codify FPIC for infrastructure, and fund cultural‑pass programs. Encourage elected officials—especially those in border states—to champion Indigenous sovereignty bills.

• Celebrate Transborder Ceremonies: Publicly document and livestream cross‑border dances, harvest festivals, and pilgrimages to assert that these movements are not crimes, but fundamental rights.

“No wall can wall us in,” declared Indigenous activists at the 2020 Borderlands Summit. Let us transform that declaration into law and lived reality.

By reclaiming the land beyond lines, we do more than remove fences; we restore justice. We acknowledge that the sovereignty of Indigenous nations cannot be severed by colonizer cartography. Together, Native peoples—Mexican, American, and beyond—can stitch back the social, spiritual, and ecological fabric that colonial borders tore apart. This is our shared mission: to honor ancient geographies, fulfill treaty obligations, and ensure that sovereignty transcends any line on a map.

A Call To Action!

Brothers and sisters, hear the drumbeat of our ancestors rising from canyon depths and desert sands: they knew no fences, no checkpoints, no foreign lines. Their footsteps traced the ancient marrow of this land long before empires were forged, and their spirits whisper through saguaro groves and mountain springs even now. The U.S.–Mexico border is not a shield—it is a blade, grafted by colonizers to cut us from our roots, to silence our songs, to steal our power.

But we are not silenced. We are the Tohono O’odham who sang at dawn around the saguaro harvest fires. We are the Apache who rode free under star‑bright skies. We are the Yaqui who danced the Deer Dance along flowing rivers. Their fierce will lives in us.

We will not beg for scraps of sovereignty—they were never yours to give. We demand the restoration of our birthright: the right to move, to pray, to heal, and to govern ourselves as our ancestors intended.

• Let the walls tremble when we call for Free, Prior & Informed Consent—our voices a chorus too powerful to ignore.

• Let the checkpoints crumble before our cultural‑pass caravans, carrying medicine bundles, prayer feathers, and the fury of generations.

• Let the fences fall at the foot of our sacred springs, once again open to the feet of our healers and our children.

This is our revolution of remembrance—a reclamation fueled by righteous anger and guided by the promise of justice. We invoke the strength of every warrior who resisted forced removal, every midwife who tended the birth of our nations, every elder who passed down the secret songs of the earth.

Rise up, Mexica, Yaqui, Apache, O’odham, Comanche, Ute, Pima, and all our kin:Reclaim your lines on the map as your own. Reclaim your rites as your own. Reclaim your lands as your own.

For when we stand together, our fury becomes a river that no wall can dam, our unity becomes a fire that no border can extinguish. Let the world know: the land beyond lines is ours—and we will have it back.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary SourcesTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, U.S.-Mex., Feb. 2, 1848, 9 Stat. 922.Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson–Reed Act), Pub. L. No. 68‑139, 43 Stat. 153 (1924).Secure Fence Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109‑367, 120 Stat. 2638 (2006).Naturalization Act of 1790, ch. 3, § 1, 1 Stat. 103 (1790).Naturalization Act of 1870, ch. 254, 16 Stat. 254 (1870).Indian Appropriations Act of 1871, ch. 120, 16 Stat. 544 (1871).Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran–Walter Act), Pub. L. No. 82‑414, 66 Stat. 163 (1952).United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, G.A. Res. 61/295, Annex, U.N. Doc. A/61/295 (Sept. 13, 2007).International Labour Organization Convention No. 169, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, 1650 U.N.T.S. 383 (entered into force Sept. 5, 1991).

U.S. CasesMendez v. Westminster Sch. Dist., 64 F. Supp. 544 (S.D. Cal. 1946).Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).U.S. v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371 (1980).

Secondary Sources (Books & Monographs)Baumgartner, Alice, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War (2020).Carrigan, William D. & Clive Webb, Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence Against Mexicans in the United States (2013).Dunbar‑Ortiz, Roxanne, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014).Fowler, Melvin R. & Aaron N. Trout, eds., Archaeology of the American Southwest (2012).Grandin, Greg, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006).Griswold del Castillo, Richard, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (1990).Herrera‑Sobek, María, Re‑Making History: Chicana Indigeneity (2016).Karp, Matthew, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (2016).Meyer, Michael C., William L. Sherman & Susan M. Deeds, The Course of Mexican History (9th ed. 2010).Ngai, Mae M., Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004).

Articles & ReportsU.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., Firearms Trafficking: ATF Should Better Use Information to Focus Investigations (GAO-21-407, 2021).United Nations, Comm’n for Historical Clarification, Guatemala: Memory of Silence (1999).

Constitutional & Statutory MaterialsU.S. Const. art. I, § 8.U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.

International Treaties & AgreementsJay Treaty, Treaty of Amity, Commerce & Navigation, U.S.-Gr. Brit., Nov. 19, 1794, 8 Stat. 116.

This bibliography provides the legal instruments, landmark cases, statutes, scholarly works, and reports cited throughout the White Paper and expanded content—offering an irrefutable foundation against any colonial‑apologist challenge.