Caught in the Crossfire: Border Crisis Threatens Traditional Way of Life for Sovereign Tohono O'odham Nation

By Tom Boswell

You’ve seen the headlines. You would need to have your head stuck deep in sand to have missed the story: migrants streaming across the border, coyotes, drug cartels, the Border Patrol and Minutemen. People dying in the desert and a raging national debate over immigration policy. And, lest we forget, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (recently re-elected) and an anti-immigration law that makes it a crime not to carry immigration documents.

But there’s another story that many may have missed: a supposedly sovereign nation that preceded all these conflicting groups by 2,000 years, now caught in the crossfire on the Arizona-Mexico border. Amid competing cries of “Secure our borders” and “Civil rights for immigrants” is the Tohono O’odham, America’s second-largest Indian nation, still struggling after all these years for its survival. Continue Reading Here -