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In Unsettled Borders Felicity Amaya Schaeffer examines the ongoing settler colonial war over the US-Mexico border from the perspective of Apache, Tohono O'odham, and Maya who fight to protect their sacred land. Schaeffer traces the scientific and technological development of militarized border surveillance across time and space from Spanish colonial lookout points in Arizona and Mexico to the Indian wars, when the US cavalry hired Native scouts to track Apache fleeing into Mexico, to the occupation of the Tohono O'odham reservation and the recent launch of robotic bee swarms. Labeled "Optics Valley," Arizona builds on a global history of violent dispossession and containment of Native peoples and migrants by branding itself as a profitable hub for surveillance. Schaeffer reverses the logic of borders by turning to Indigenous sacredsciences: ancestral land-based practices that are critical to reversing the ecological and social violence of surveillance, extraction, and occupation.
List of contents
Preface. TimeSpaces of Dispossession to the Forging of Indigenous Relations with Land ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Tracking Footprints: Settler Surveillance across Unsettled Borders 1
1. “The Eyes of the Army”: Indian Scouts and the Rise of Military Innovation during the Apache Wars 29
2. Occupation on Sacred Land: Colliding Sovereignties on the Tohono O’odham Reservation 55
3. Automated Border Control: Criminalizing the “Hidden Intent” of Migrant/Native Embodiment 81
4. From the Eyes of the Bees: Biorobotic Border Security and the Resurgence of Bee Collectives in the Yucatán 104
Conclusion. Wild versus Sacred: The Ongoing Border War against Indigenous Peoples 139
Notes 153
Bibliography 185
Index 201
About the author
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Summary
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer traces the scientific and technological development of militarized surveillance at the US-Mexico border across time and space as well as the efforts of Native peoples to continue ancestral practices in the face of ecological and social violence.
