Caught in the Crossfire

By Tom Boswell

You’ve seen the headlines. You would need to have your head stuck deep in sand to have missed the story: migrants streaming across the border, coyotes, drug cartels, the Border Patrol and Minutemen. People dying in the desert and a raging national debate over immigration policy. And, lest we forget, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (recently re-elected) and an anti-immigration law that makes it a crime not to carry immigration documents.

But there’s another story that many may have missed: a supposedly sovereign nation that preceded all these conflicting groups by 2,000 years, now caught in the crossfire on the Arizona-Mexico border. Amid competing cries of “Secure our borders” and “Civil rights for immigrants” is the Tohono O’odham, America’s second-largest Indian nation, still struggling after all these years for its survival.