Before being assigned Storming the Wall, I had no idea who the Tohono O’odham people were. By the name and further reading, I understood that they were native people located in the Arizona/Mexico area; however, that is all I really knew. That is, until I got into the nitty gritty.
Sadly, I wasn’t very surprised to hear that these natives, over the years, have been treated poorly by our government. Our Border Patrol in particular has been very heinous where it is stationed down towards where Mexico meets the United States. What I read from Storming the Wall depicts all sorts of incidents with the natives as well as other people passing through; however, when I was searching, I found something specific that made my eyebrows raise.
A Tohono O’odham citizen was struck in (basically) a drive by done by a border patrol agent. Crazy, right? There’s even a video of the whole incident, including the moment the person was hit. Luckily, they weren’t hurt too badly. The citizen was treated at the local hospital for non-life threatening injuries. My question, though, is what brought this on?
Apparently, there's been tension for awhile between our government and the native Tohono O'odham people (again, not surprising). And, lately, it's gotten even worse because of one man and his crazy ideas. I'm talking about Trump and his border walls. If built, the dividing structure will go through their territory and the natives are against it. Below is a video that I saw featured on several articles. I figured I'd put it here too.
They aren’t the only ones who oppose the wall. In fact, if you just type in border wall opposition into the Google, so many similar articles pop up. They also talk about different groups of people who don’t want that idea turning into something tangible. This one in particular talks about how Texans along the border don’t want the wall installed.
This country is already so divided. So why does our government keep making it worse?
This was a really great blog post, before reading Storming the wall I had also never heard of the Tohono O’odham people. This country is divided and it is really sad.
ReplyDeleteI like how you looked at the O'odham people and found more about them. I was also curious about them when they were brought up in the reading. It is truly sad that they are treated so horribly when they are peaceful people. The wall is a terrible idea and I think more need to understand why.
ReplyDeleteThanks for helping me learn more about the O'odham people. I watched the drive by video you link to - disturbing!
ReplyDeleteThat video was very deplorable and was utterly disgusting to watch. Makes me realize that others have it a lot worse when it comes to dealing with border patrol. It makes us look bad to the rest of the world, and we are supposedly built to lead the world
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