My name is Ophelia Rivas, but my family knows me as Ilya. You know, the place where I come from is beautiful land. We've lived there for centuries and we have a way of life that we've followed for all those years. We continue parts of it right now, but the political effects that are imposed on our people because of these borders are greatly impacting our people.
After 9/11 the world discovered that there was the O'Odham nation, which is the second largest reservation in the United States after the Navajo. These reservations are considered concentration camps of the indigenous people in the United States. Our traditional lands are divided into different political boundaries. Less than one-third of our lands are now cordoned off, like a concentration camp.
We have three main roads that exit our reservation. Each of those exits have a border patrol checkpoint. We have to declare what citizens we are, on our own lands – whether we're US citizens or Mexican citizens. I have resisted throughout my life, so I always say I am O'Odham, and we're on O'Odham land. I receive different responses to that. Sometimes I'm pulled into a secondary checkpoint and held there for hours, and have a drug-sniffing dog put into my car.
