Wilson
said the Tohono O'odham Nation spent $16 million to build a new
cultural center. "Not one penny was spent to prevent migrant deaths."
It
is time, he said, for Native people to stop the romantic myth of
sovereignty and the cloaking and choking on victimization. It is time
to emerge from silence about the women, men, children and unborn
children who die on Indian lands for want of a drink of water.
"Do
not think your silence honors me as a Tohono O'odham person. It
dishonors me."
Wilson said it is time for all people to become a voice
for the mummified migrants found dead in the desert.
"They have no voice."
Wilson displayed a huge pile of his plastic water jugs from his
water stations on O'odham land that had been slashed. He said people
talk of outside Minutemen, but these are "O'odham Minutemen."
Singing
with a strong voice a song for Leonard Peltier, Foster called for
freedom for Peltier. Foster said he visits Peltier three times a year
for the sweatlodge ceremony. "They gave him the Pipe, but they will not
let him have tobacco."
"Leonard's health is not good. We miss
him and pray for him," Foster said as he described the hope of
Peltier's release. "Leonard sends his love and support and is in
solidarity."
Petuuche Gilbert, Acoma Pueblo from New Mexico,
described the colonized thinking that the border delegation experienced
on Tohono O'odham land on Thursday, during a tour of where the border
barrier is being built.
Gilbert recalled the words of an Acoma Pueblo referring to the Catholic Church.
"They made slaves out of us to make this church. I guess that's why we are Catholics now."
Gilbert said the border wall is going up on Indian lands because Indian Nations are not functioning as true sovereign nations.
"Because
we do not have that sovereignty over our lands, territories and natural
resources." Gilbert said that one day, Indian Nations would be
sovereign nations again.
Jay Johnson Castro described abuses at
the prisons for profit. Those include Don T. Hutto Detention Center
near Austin, Texas, where migrant babies and children are imprisoned,
and Raymondville migrant internment camp near Brownsville, Texas.
"Near
the Texas capitol, there are hundreds of children in prison for
profit," Castro said of Hutto. Describing conditions before the
protests began, he said children were kept in cells separate from their
parents, wore prison uniforms and given out-dated milk to drink at
Hutto.
"If they were to take a cookie to their cells, they would
be punished." In the cells, when they used the toilet, anyone walking
by their cells could watch them.
One woman was sexually
assaulted by a guard in front of her child and was never charged. "We
don't know what happened to the mother and child," Castro said.
Homeland
Security denied entry to the United Nations' Rapporteur on migrants,
Jorge Bustamante, in May. At Raymondville internment camp, a prison
guard exposed the fact that migrants were being fed food with maggots
in it. The United States is one of only two countries in the world, the
other one being Somalia, who does not ensure the rights of the child
and has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child.
Castro also described the "Endgame," a United States policy to remove all "aliens" that is now in its fourth year.
The
Border Summit concluded with the chicken scratch sounds of Gertie and
the TO Boys, followed by the resistance vocals and chords of Blackfire,
sounding out the need to keep San Francisco Peaks sacred from waste
water. Blackfire's Navajo family band of Klee, Jeneda and Clayson
Benally called for justice for the political prisoners: migrants at the
border and Leonard Peltier.
Klee Benally told the gathering that
the arrest of Maoris in New Zealand, organized for self-determination,
was both a test and an indicator for what is to come here.
Standing
in solidarity with Maoris and Apaches protecting Mount Graham in
Arizona, Blackfire joined the summit in declaring an end to borders,
discrimination against migrants and a new era of human rights. Jones
Benally joined his children onstage for traditional Dine' songs with
the drum.
The Border Summit, emboldened by the delegation of
Mohawks, renewed their determination on Saturday to halt the border
wall and hold the Tohono O'odham Nation responsible for the deaths of
men, women, children and unborn children who have died on O'odham lands
"for want of a drink of water."
After traveling to the Tohono
O'odham Nation border with Mexico, an Indigenous Peoples' delegation
from the summit unleashed a new movement to honor the lives and deaths
of migrants.
Diana Joe, Yaqui, among the Indigenous women
present who worked the fields as a child, said, "May the farm worker
people live long!"
Indigenous Peoples called for action to bring
down the wall and stop the deaths of Indigenous Peoples' walking to a
better life. This land, all of Turtle Island from the north to the
south, is the home to Indigenous Peoples.
As Indigenous Peoples
here stood in solidarity with those walking, Native people said it is
the white people in the United States who are the invaders. They
arrived here without papers, visas or passports.
Kahentinetha
Horn said it is time to stop "crying about all our suffering," acting
subjugated and time to take action."Why don't we just go out and pick
those people up," she said of the Indigenous Peoples walking in the
desert.
Speaking of the Tohono O'dham who allow people to die
for a drink of water, Kahentinetha said, "They make Hitler look like a
school boy."
She urged people to start taking down the border wall.
As Mohawk Mark Maracle put it, "It doesn't take a lot of people to bring down this border wall!"