[ad_1]
NEW YORK, May 14 (AP) For four hours, Raymond V Buelna, cultural leader of the Pascua Yaqui tribe, sat on a metal bench in a concrete containment area on the U.S.-Mexico border, Separated from the two men he took for an Easter service on tribal land in Arizona, wondered when they could be released.
It was February 2022, and Buelna, a U.S. citizen, was driving the couple — both from related tribal communities in the sovereign Native American state of northwestern Mexico — from their home to the reservation southwest of Tucson. They were authorized by U.S. officials to transit. But when Burner asked an agent why they were being detained, he was told to wait for the officer who brought him in.
“They knew we were coming,” said Brner, who has attended various ceremonies for 20 years. “We did all this work and then we’re still sitting there.”
Now, the Pascua Yaqui tribe is trying to change that — for themselves and possibly dozens of other tribes in the United States.
Read also | Democracy in Pakistan hangs in the balance and the judiciary can save it, says Imran Khan.
Tribal officials worked with the Department of Homeland Security’s recently formed Tribal Homeland Security Advisory Committee, which is composed of 15 Indigenous officials from across the United States, to draft regulations to regulate the transit process
Their work could provide a template for dozens of Native American nations whose homelands, such as that of the Pasquayakee tribe, are bisected by the borders of modern-day America.
Christina Leza, an associate professor of anthropology at Colorado College, said that if approved, the rules would be the first in the United States to have clearly established transit procedures for Native American tribes that others could use.
The regulations, which will last for five years, are updated and amended as needed, and require training for local U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and consular personnel in tribal cultural heritage, language and traditions. This entails providing Yaqui interpreters when needed. It also requires close coordination with tribes to allow for swift border crossings.
“This helps everyone,” said Pascua Yaqui Tribal Attorney General Fred Urbina. “It will make things more efficient.”
Urbina said the tribe has met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the proposal. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment by phone and email on the status of the regulations.
When family members, deer dancers or musicians living in Sonora, Mexico, travel to the United States for ceremonies, tribal celebrations or family events, they typically receive an ID card issued by the tribe and a visitor visa or parole permit from the U.S. government. Still, they confront border officials who they say lack the cultural awareness to handle them smoothly.
In the past two years, Brner said he made about 18 trips and was detained on four occasions. He said border officials interrogated his escorts, whose first language was Yaqui, without an interpreter, and confiscated cultural items such as deer and pig’s trotters. Officials had access to ritual paraphernalia, even though the tribe only allowed certain people to do so.
Urbina explained that when the Department of Homeland Security was created and border security increased after 9/11, the tribe faced new challenges. This situation became more pronounced in 2020, when the United States banned “non-essential” cross-border travel to control the spread of the coronavirus. That ban ended this week, but new restrictions are in place.
As a matter of sovereignty, Native American nations should be able to determine the ability of their peoples to cross borders to maintain the ceremonial life of their communities, Leza said.
“If the federal government says our particular priority, which is our interest in securing our borders, trumps your interest as a sovereign nation, then that’s not a real recognition of the sovereignty of these tribal nations,” she said.
Tribes on the U.S.-Canada border face similar problems.
Sioux St. The Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians is based in Michigan, but 173 of its more than 49,000 registered members live in Canada. Kimberly Hampton, the tribe’s official secretary and vice chair of the tribe’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, said the members crossed the border to pray, fast and visit traditional healers and family, but border officials brutally searched for eagle feathers and other cultures they were carrying. items.
Hampton hopes to reach an agreement that includes the creation of tribal liaisons at border crossings and training that the tribe has developed for border personnel.
Member of Sault Ste. The Mary and St. Regis Mohawk tribes, which have about 8,000 members in the United States and about 8,000 in Canada, said they were also required at the border to prove they were at least 50 percent “American Indian in origin.” “It arose from a requirement in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that an “American Indian” born in Canada could not be denied entry to the United States if he could prove it — usually through a letter from the tribe.
Saint Regis Mohawk tribal leader Michael L Conners wants to eliminate the requirement for border guards and increase education on local and national tribal issues. Drafting regulations against the tribe, as the Pasquayaki are doing, “would bring a lot of peace of mind to our entire community,” he said.
Brner said he waited in that concrete waiting space and was reunited with the couple only after he told border officials he thought they had been ignored after a shift change, he said.
“Why can’t there be a system?” Brna asked. “Why can’t we already have a line that can deliver the proper paperwork, everything we need and continue on our way?” (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
share now
[ad_2]
Source link