Native Americans fear loss of culture over Trump's border wall
Wed Apr 12, 2017 | 10:26am EDT
By Ellen Wulfhorst
CHUKUT KUK, Arizona (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ever since he can remember, Richard Saunders has seen families cross the fence on his Native American reservation in southern Arizona, where the U.S.-Mexican border splits his tribe's land in two, to seek work, see a doctor or go to school.
Laborers from Mexico would stop by his grandfather's house on the U.S. side of the reservation, the ancestral home of the Tohono O'odham nation, which today is marked off by a barrier of loosely spaced metal bars designed to block vehicles between the two nations.
"He'd stand out there and converse with them, take a shot of tequila. Grandma would make them some burritos, and they'd be on their way," recalled Saunders, a senior figure in the nation's administration, heading its public safety department.
But Saunders and other nation members fear U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to sever their land with a border wall will be no different to slicing through their culture and their community.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wall-reservation-idUSKBN17E1XU
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