Are We Not Foreigners Here? Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands by Jeffrey M. Schulze (review)

Jeffrey M. Schulze's innovative and important new study explores the ways in which the creation and hardening of the U.S.–Mexico border impacted the self-conception and actions of three different Indigenous groups: the Tohono O'odham, the Kickapoo, and the Yaqui. It also tells of the often-remarkable ability of these three Indigenous nations to sustain themselves (and sometimes even thrive) in the face of daunting obstacles. Schulze reverses the recent trend of scholarship on Indigenous peoples and borders (which usually explores the ways in which they, as transnational actors, used and/or were limited by borders to advance their own agendas) by focusing on the ways in which Indigenous people imagined, understood, and created as best they could their own sovereignty and nationhood. This seemingly subtle shift puts Indigenous peoples at the center of the story rather than relegating them to the margins where they might appear to be mere pawns in a larger series of national and international events undertaken by others.

Schulze works with a definition of a nation and nationhood that is both accurate and reflects these Indigenous groups' own self-understanding of themselves as Indigenous nations. He adopts Edward Spicer's definition of people "'who identify with one another on the basis of some degree of awareness of common historical experience'" (p. 14), thus undermining the notion that because Indigenous people do not maintain strict sovereignty over their territory—indeed, no nation does—and do not have active militaries in the modern sense of the word, they are not nations. In fact, he demonstrates that Indigenous peoples spoke of themselves and acted as members of nations from the moment of first contact with outsiders (and probably prior as well). Perhaps most importantly, Schulze shows us that Indigenous peoples' willingness to seek federal recognition and some level of semi-sovereignty and self-rule often came at moments of crisis, not strength, and had as many negative as positive effects. Thus, focusing on Indigenous people as semi-sovereign peoples within other nation-states (clearly an accurate contemporary political classification from the point of view of nation-states) is not a viable approach if we want to accurately capture their histories.

Schulze explores the ways in which the Yaqui and the Kickapoo used migration as a means of maintaining some sense of autonomy—the Yaqui migrating across the U.S.–Mexico border to the United States and the Kickapoo in the opposite direction. While these migrations provided them with some advantages, they also served to separate and disrupt tribal communities. The Tohono O'odham, on the other hand, did not need to migrate to be divided. Instead, their ancestral homeland was split in half by the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. In any case, Schulze is right to note that the use of mobility to overcome and lessen the negative impact of these forced migrations and separations built on already existing tribal practices of mobility. Schulze then goes on to examine the ways that, in spite of their differences—for example, the United States made use of reservations and Mexico did not—U.S. and Mexican Indian policies mirrored each other quite closely. This was especially true for attempts on both sides of the border to promote economic integration into the larger national economy as well as the use of education as a means of promoting assimilation. Much of this was the result of liberal sharing of ideas by intellectual elites as well as public-policy makers across borders, but Mexican elites (who often adopted Indigenous policy implementation later than in the United States) also worked to learn from past U.S. mistakes.

Given that both the United States and Mexico promoted "modernization" and assimilation, it ought to come as some surprise that the Indigenous nations persevered so well. This is the set of stories that...