Divided Peoples: Indigenous Rights and Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Border

In the United States, U.S. citizenship and a high degree of “Indian blood” are significant aspects of the mainstream schema for conceptualizing Native American or Indigenous identity. This talk addresses how the popular and widely circulating discourses on Native peoples and Latin American immigrants shape perceptions about and lived realities of Indigenous peoples whose homelands are divided by the U.S.-Mexico border. It is argued that conflations of race, nationality and (in)authentic indigeneity in such discourses undermine the ancestral connections and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples at the U.S. southern border.