April 2020: Intertribal & Interfaith Alliance Condemns Damage to Sacred Sites, Plants, Waters, Cemeteries, Shrines and Burials By Border Wall Construction & Seeks Legal Protection of Religious Freedom Guaranteed by U.S. Constitution
The undersigned representatives of Tribal members, Tribal leaders, Indigenous rights organizations, and Interfaith organizations request meetings with Homeland Security as well as Congressional and Senate Committees with Oversight on the Border and Its Natural Resources to substantively address violations of religious freedom resulting from border wall construction.
Our tribal and faith communities stand united in expressing our concern, grief and outrage regarding how Homeland Security, the Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors have repeatedly disrupted religious expressions, damaged sacred sites, killed ceremonial plants, and threatened sacramental waters during the last six months or border wall construction.
When Indigenous peoples’ religious rights and place-based spiritual practices are desecrated by government actions, all people of faith are negatively affected by this threat to our Constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom and fundamental human rights.
This interfaith coalition–including Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and other religions– stands firm that place-based spiritual practices of Indigenous border tribes are legally and theologically equivalent to those of these faiths. Therefore, any assault on their living place-based spiritual practices at the border is an assault on the sanctity of all of our practices.
In the particular case of impending and nearby border wall construction at Quitobaquito Springs in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, we are deeply concerned that:
- Both native (O’odham) spiritual practices and those of the Roman Catholic faith persist at this sacred sanctuary in an unbroken chain from 1698 AD to the present, justifying the landscape’s status as a Traditional Cultural Property under federal law and as Holy Ground under our Creator.
- The sacred salt pilgrimages of the Akimel O’odham, Tohono O’odham and Hia c-ed O’odham that have passed across the border at several sites—including Quitobaquito—have been put at risk by the wall, and cannot be rectified by a single door at one of many locations historically used along the international boundary line,
- The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed by President Polk in 1848 guarantees indigenous persons and their communities (such as the O’odham and Quechan historically associated with Quitobaquito) that were once part of Mexico the inviolable continuation of their rights to property and religious practice as U.S citizens.
- In the enabling legislation establishing Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (in which the Quitobaquito Springs are located) O’odham tribal members are guaranteed unrestricted rights to harvest cactus fruits, both for sustenance and for the sacramental use of cactus-wine in religious ceremonies.
- All National Park Service superintendents have granted the O’odham access to cactus fruit harvesting, to care for graves, and for ceremonies at Quitobaquito without abandonment of those practices or abrogation of those rights until the present moment.
- Seven different sacramental, ceremonial and medicinal plants associated with O’odham spiritual practices occur at the site, including some species not found away from the springs; several of these are already in decline and may be lost to groundwater pumping for wall construction continues.
- Both burial sites and sacramental resources have been bulldozed by Homeland Security contractors, even though their locations were fully provided to Homeland Security officials, who were informed of these sensitive sites months in advance.
Tribal spiritual and political leaders have witnessed how current border wall construction policies violate their religious freedom, but Homeland Security officials either falsely claim that no cultural properties like human burials have been damaged, or that the Presidential Declaration of an emergency at the border overrides all of these concerns. If that were correct, Homeland Security officials would not have made earlier promises to heed their concerns, nor would they have started transplanting saguaros after months of allowing contractors to bulldoze them. While Homeland Security deems that certain federal laws must be waived in relation to the so-called “border crisis,” the Constitution itself has not been waived.
We remain as concerned about disruptions of sacred pilgrimage routes to the Sierra Pinacate, a sacred mountain, through other federal lands west of Organ Pipe, and to the east, across Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge to Baboquivari Peak, a sacred mountain.
The special government-to-government relationship that the United States has with the Tohono O’odham Nation should ensure substantive consultation, avoidance of, or remediation and re-consecration of sacred sites be undertaken to protect their religious freedoms.
As Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris, Jr has stated before Congress, “Look at the reaction when Notre Dame burned down… You feel an emotional connection to that, even if you’re not Catholic. That kind of emotional connection is abundant in the case of the border issues for the Tohono O’odham.”
We request that all work be immediately halted on or near Quitobaquito Springs and surrounding areas –including well pumping–until Tohono O’odham spiritual practitioners, the Traditional O’odham leaders and the impacted tribes, and the Tohono O’odham Nation are properly consulted through direct engagement by all departments, agencies, contractors or affiliates constructing the wall in order to devise alternatives to avoid violation of the Tohono O’odham religious rights and freedoms.
We firmly stand with our brothers and sisters of O’odham culture in condemning the indiscriminate and illegal destruction of their sacred sites, ancient burial grounds and tribal cemeteries. United we grieve this unjust matter and call for immediate action to cease all activity.
Signed by the OEF Servant Council,
Bruce James Kay, OEF; Jacoba Ketchum, OEF; Betty Lou Leaver, OEF; Markie Oliver, OEF; Juniper Robertson, OEF
