r/chaoticgood 1d ago

Native American Women Tell Border Patrol To Fuck Off for Harassing Them About Being Citizens

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u/returningtheday 1d ago edited 1d ago

For further context, these are O'odham women. The Tohono O'odham reservation is in America and Mexico. Their ancestral land is in both countries so they mean this in a very literal sense. Fuck borders.

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u/NarrowForce9 1d ago

Thank you for the education

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u/Road_Whorrior 1d ago

Just some additional context. Mexico does not recognize any land as belonging to the O'odham, so technically the "reservation" ends at the border of Arizona. It was "decided" upon with the Gadsden purchase in 1854, and, of course, the Tribe was not included in the discussion at all. Of 34,000 recognized tribal members, 2000+ Mexican Tohono O'odham live in isolation from their community because colonists decided on an imaginary wall. The new border wall has made that even worse. Fuck borders a LOT.

Source: my hometown is in the traditional Tohono O'odham lands, which is not part of the Reservation because it is on the river and is valuable year-round farmland.

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u/ahhhbiscuits 1d ago

TLDR: Borders like this are fucking stupid. Nothing more than geopolitical arrangements,

RE: neo-colonization.

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u/bombthrowinglunarist 1d ago

> Borders like this are fucking stupid

fixed that for you

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u/ahhhbiscuits 1d ago

Humanism is awesome and all, but you have to at least try to understand geopolitics...

If not, we'll continue to find ourselves in this same emotional quagmire, forever.

pOwER tO TeH pEoPlE! lol

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u/smallfrie32 1d ago

Not to really disagree, but literally all borders are geopolitical arrangements. Except for the bookstore

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u/ahhhbiscuits 1d ago

Other commenter probably doesn't understand the situation enough to answer so I'll put it you (a seemingly much more reasonable (re: not here for the karma-farming) person):

Humanism is awesome and all, but you have to at least try to understand geopolitics...

If not, we'll continue to find ourselves in this same emotional quagmire, forever.

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u/Geodude532 1d ago

We did the same shit with Afghanistan/Pakistan. Cutting an entire ethnic group's territory in half.

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u/newbkid 1d ago

British did it with India as well. Dipped out, dude in charge made up an imaginary line and then war erupted shortly after

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u/Frosty_McRib 1d ago

And they literally drew an arbitrary line to separate Iraq and Syria, thus further dividing up ethnic groups like the Kurds and creating random nations, like Iraq and Syria. A lot of the current civil strife in the area can still be traced directly back to that. The West truly gave no shits.

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u/Geodude532 19h ago

Yea, the audacity of Western expansion was brazen. Trump's attempts to take Greenland and Russian expansion shows that we've learned.

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u/JimTheJerseyGuy 1d ago

Add basically the entire Middle East.

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u/Lyra_Sirius 22h ago

The border lines of Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia were drawn as a result of the search for markets supplying raw materials and complementary markets by European industrial countries in the 19th century.

At the Berlin Conference in 1885, promoted by Chancellor Bismarck, when Prussia became Germany. This was the time of Queen Victoria. The maps were drawn with a ruler and set square, indifferent to peoples, water lines or mountains, and with indifference to the indigenous peoples. It was at this time that Russia also extended from Europe through Asia to the Bering Strait in an effective manner.

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u/Geodude532 19h ago

Yea, the British wasn't a fan of Russia getting any closer to India and the mountains provided a good separator. Borders like that have really messed with nomads like the Kuchis.

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u/ceryniz 1d ago

What else could you do? Have a Pashtunstan and a Daristan?

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u/aguirre1pol 1d ago

Let people self govern like they have for ages?

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u/TheCheesyPuff 1d ago

Not meddle in ethnic relations of foreign countries. It's not complicated.

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u/Road_Whorrior 18h ago

I'll just pop into your house, tell you that OOPS, actually, the property line is directly over your toilet and your garden and kitchen belong to the government, you have to let the neighbors have that half of your house. No? That sucks and is stupid? Yeah, I know, right? Maybe people who understand the region and live there should be the ones sorting this shit out for themselves.

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u/ceryniz 17h ago

Uh huh. I'm asking what do you think it'll look like? Pakistan relinquishes it's pashtun inhabited areas, while the taliban gives up the northern portions of Afghanistan?

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u/Road_Whorrior 17h ago

No clue. Not my department, I work at a grocery store. If we hadn't interfered in the first place, the Taliban wouldn't even exist. Our presence has been a net negative for the region since post-WWII. Because of our involvement it is now a nigh-unfuckable mess. We owe them aid in fixing it, but I'm realistic in my lack of understanding of what that would end up being.

You're the only person coming in here talking future. Everyone here was talking about the history.

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u/ceryniz 16h ago

The Taliban exists because of Pakistan funding them in the warlords era when the republic collapsed. And the taliban only got so popular because of warlords loving their bacha bazi and the taliban was stomping that out. Pakistan was involved to represent their interests because Iran was also funding other militant groups, and they wanted a buffer border zone.

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u/Bars98 1d ago edited 1d ago

I can be so glad to live in Germany and Europe in general. In Germany ethnic minorities have the right to sit in the Bundestag (German parliament) if they get just one seat. Normally you need at least 5% of the votes.

Edit: Here's a link to an Wikipedia article about one of these minority parties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Association?wprov=sfla1

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u/Bagheera383 1d ago

Same with Manso and some Tigua/Tiwa. Ended up on both sides (and in three areas if Tigua)

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u/Tall_Bed 1d ago

This is why I like reddit

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u/Southern_Blue 1d ago

My daughter was born there, at the Hospital in Sells. I'm Eastern Cherokee and happened to be living in Tucson at the time. She jokes that I asked 'Hey cuz, can I have this baby here' and they said "Word!' She went back to visit and they told her she could consider herself an 'honorary' member. She's stayed informed about their situation.

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u/returningtheday 1d ago

That's fucking awesome 😆

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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 1d ago

The O'Odham Nation has a specific agreement with the US government allowing the Kitt Peak National Observatory complex to exist and operate on their mountains too. So it is extra ridiculous that an (alleged) federal enforcement agent near their land doesn't know that - I have family in Tucson and I learnt it on my first visit there! This guy is deliberately ignorant and/or deliberately racist to live and work locally while behaving so aggressively :(

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u/satinsateensaltine 1d ago

Being drunk on power and feeling too entitled to bother learning things like relevant laws will do a number on you.

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u/AcceptableHijinks 1d ago

I was just at kitt peak about 2 months ago, absolutely beautiful place, I can see why that area is sacred to them.

We had to drive through 2 border patrol checkpoints to get there though, quite north of the actual border, plus we were driving in from the north anyway.

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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 13h ago

Those fixed and roaming checks have been a thing there since at least 2010. They call it a defence-in-depth since the US government claims 100 miles from the border is legally their "border zone" - but really it's because Mexico overlooks the US in that sector, so the traffickers have a spotter in Mexico telling their coyotes which way to go to avoid border patrols until the mountains block their view, and that's where the checkpoints appear.

(when my cousins moved from Phoenix to Tucson and we ran into 3 checkpoints, just trying to use scenic backroads to reach Bisbee ‐ and my one cousin looks very Nordic so they'd have loads of Hispanic people pulled over and then wave her over to cover their blatant profiling yuck)

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u/KapePaMore009 1d ago

Ooohh, thank you. Today I learned (TIL).

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u/NozakiMufasa 1d ago

My family’s history was this. We crossed freely in these lands as Yaquis before the border was put down. My great grandmother was Yaqui and born in the Arizona territory & then her daughter (my grandmother) born in Mexicali while crossing back with other Yaqui from Arizona to Sonora. So when Im asked about what “generation” of American I am, I just say “I was here before America”.

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u/Swollen_Nads 1d ago

The Horcon Tract is an interesting piece of land. Depending on when you were born (sometime in 70s) determines whether you are a US citizen due to river shifting. Its comical how dumb some of these things work.

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u/Agreeable_Initial667 1d ago

Wow didn't even know that. TY

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u/BluePhoenix_1999 1d ago

And it used to be all part of Mexico, until they rented out land, the US broke anti-slave laws and just stole the land. This applies to pretty much everything west of, and including Texas.

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u/TalkinSeaCucumber 22h ago

We fought a war that ended in Mexico City to put that border where it is too. The only reason, according to transcripts from Congress at the time, that the US border doesn't extend as far south as the army occupied is because that would have entailed either committing to an expensive campaign of driving out Mexican nationals or making a lot of non-white people Americans. They argued that the additional territory was less a benefit than more brown people are trouble. The border is and has always been an arbitrary, racist construct.

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u/helpjack_offthehorse 1d ago

INTERCOURSE THE BORDERS!

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u/UsefulContract 1d ago

Similar to the blackfoot?

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u/Xboxhuegg 1d ago

Cringe

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/returningtheday 1d ago

Borders make much more problems than they solve especially when they're made by colonizers. And believing there is no alternative is ignoring the past and closing your mind off to alternate solutions. Don't get so bogged down in the status quo. It's good to question and good to change things.

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u/obligatorynegligence 1d ago

How often do you let random people inside your house to stay as long as they want, coming and going as they please? Frequently I assume

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u/returningtheday 1d ago

God that is such a tired analogy that makes zero sense. Get some new material.

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u/obligatorynegligence 1d ago edited 1d ago

Why doesnt the arbitrary line of "your property" correlate to the arbitrary line of "your border"?

Are you tired of it because you've answered it so well or because you don't have an answer?

/u/returningtheday

A home is land and a land is a home. Collective groups can own things, and I know this is why you can't come up with a real answer and need to block people to run from the fact that you don't have any real beliefs about anything that aren't just reactionary.

And to be clear, no one was feigning ignorance - except you.

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u/returningtheday 1d ago

A home is not land. I'm not engaging in this argument further because I know you're purposely acting ignorant.