A Sovereign People: Indigenous Nationhood, Traditional Law, and the Covenants of the Cheyenne Nation by Leo K. Killsback (review)

Abstract

S p r i n g 2 0 2 1 W i C A Z O S A r E V i E W Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 2019, it was but the latest chapter in the ongoing war against Indigenous peoples. The U.S. government destroyed O’odham burial sites, artifacts, petroglyphs, and ancient saguaro relatives on the grounds that it was “protecting the O’odham and their land from immigrants who supposedly threaten to turn the land ‘wild,’ or return it to a savage and lawless frontier” (p. 143). For the O’odham, however, land is only “wild” when it is uncared for, not when it is empty of all human presence. Unsettled Borders is a small monograph with enormous ambition and scope. By combining past, present, and future; migrant and Indigenous histories; critical theories from half a dozen disciplines; drones and the erotics of beekeeping, it will be of great interest to a wide range of border studies scholars. It is a timely reminder that understanding more about how border regimes come into being is key to dismantling them.