Papers by Blake Gentry
AmaConsultants, 2015
ABSTRACT
The full document, Exclusion of Indigenous Language Speaking Immigrants (ILSI) In the U... more ABSTRACT
The full document, Exclusion of Indigenous Language Speaking Immigrants (ILSI) In the US Immigration System, a technical review illustrates language exclusion contacts for immigrants who speak indigenous languages: during their arrest at the border or in the interior, in short and long term detention, in immigration and Streamline courts, and in shelters for unaccompanied children. As depicted in four separate processes, indigenous language speaking immigrants encounter a minimum of 35 and at least a maximum of 54 language exclusion contacts from arrest to deportation or release from detention. Programmatic failures to implement an equitable Limited English Proficiency Protocol in three federal departments and their relevant agencies are outlined in the Appendix: ILSI Language Exclusion in the US Immigration System.
Executive Order 13166 established in 2000 a Federal Limited English Proficiency (LEP) policy which called for equal language access to services under federal law. Denying such access is a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on national origin or race. Subsequent LEP Guidance issued subsequently for implementation of LEP policy by the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services suffers from five major deficits: 1) It does not implement a mechanism for baseline language assessments of encountered language populations at the border; 2. It does not create language assessment tools for individual assessment based on assessed language needs; 3 It has not planned for nor trained front line personnel for individual language assessment; 4. It does not measure language transmission and makes gross assumptions about human communication; 5. It does not recognize Indigenous language speakers as a vulnerable population which facilitates their prolonged incarceration in the world’s largest prison system without redress against language exclusion.
Journal of Latin American Geography, 2019
This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land stru... more This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O'odham communities of Wo'oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O'odham ("desert peoples"). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militariza-tion of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O'odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O'odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility-in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O'odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O'odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.
Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review
IntroduCtIon O'odham Niok? is a common phrase uttered by speakers of O'odham, a language in the U... more IntroduCtIon O'odham Niok? is a common phrase uttered by speakers of O'odham, a language in the Uto-Aztecan language family; a language spoken in communities from Central Arizona to Southern Durango, Mexico, covering a geography of 1200 miles. On March 27, 2018 at 2:00 PM, a fifty-seven-year-old O'odham man arrived at the Tohono O'odham Reservation in Arizona from his O'odham community, Kom Wahia (El Cumalito in Spanish), in Sonora, Mexico. He crossed the international border on foot onto the Tohono O'odham Nation, the United States' second largest reservation, and was arrested by Border Patrol at 3:00 PM. He left the reservation in the back of a Border Patrol vehicle and was deported to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, 139 miles' distance. He had never been to Nogales. Despite the fact that he is a legal member of the Tohono O'odham Nation sanctioned by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, and that the Tohono O'odham Nation was recognized as an indigenous nation with limited sovereignty in 1917 by Executive Order, 1 at no time during his arrest, his transshipment, overnight stay in the Border Patrol Headquarters in Tucson, or his expulsion from the port of Nogales, Arizona on 29 March, 2018 into Mexico, did a single U.S. official speak to him in the only language he speaks: O'odham. No interpreters were called to communicate with him. His controversial "illegal" entry charge aside, 2 as an O'odham, he acted as O'odham
Journal of Latin American Geography
This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land stru... more This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O'odham communities of Wo'oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O'odham ("desert peoples"). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militariza-tion of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O'odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O'odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility-in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O'odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O'odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.
Journal of Latin American Geography, vol. 18, no. 1 , 2019
Abstract
This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of ... more Abstract
This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O’odham communities of Wo’oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O’odham (“desert peoples”). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O’odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O’odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility–in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O’odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O’odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.
Resumen
Este articulo aplica el marco teórico de colonialismo
de asentamiento para examinar tres generaciones de lucha territorial que involucran las comunidades Tohono O’odham de Wo’oson y Cedagĭ Wahia en Sonora, Mexico. Rastrea como la refroma agraria y el control de recursos hídricos siguieron la revolución mexicana y permitieron la consolidación de una economía ganadera que requirió el despojo de tierras y aguas consuetudinarias accedidos estacionalmente por los Tohono O’odham. En el período contemporáneo, la ganadería ha sido suplantada por el contrabando organizado y la militarización de la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos, generando nuevas presiones y amenazas a la sobreviviencia de los Tohono O’odham en Sonora. Refleccionando en lo anterior, hacemos una contribución a la teoría del colonialismo de asentamiento por argumentar que para gente de tierras áridas como los Tohono O’odham el despojo del territorio es a la misma vez y también un despolojo de la movilidad – en este caso, las formas consuetudinarias de movilidad que definen sus relaciones entre unos y otros y con su patria desiértica para milenios. Concluimos examinando como los Tohono O’odham en Sonora actualmente están resistiendo este lógico y trajaban para renovar su autonomía y estilo de vida para generaciones presentes y futuras.
Our task then is to make our national laws actually work --to shape a system that reflects our va... more Our task then is to make our national laws actually work --to shape a system that reflects our values as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. … But our borders are just too vast for us to be able to solve the problem only with fences and border patrols. It won't work. …we have more boots on the ground near the Southwest border than at any time in our history…We doubled the personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts along the border.* Recuperar nuestra capacidad de pensar en medio de tanta brutalidad quiere decir recuperar nuestra dignidad.
This technical review examines indigenous language speaking immigrants (ILSIs) and Federal Limite... more This technical review examines indigenous language speaking immigrants (ILSIs) and Federal Limited English Proficiency (LEP) policy by reviewing LEP policy and practice within the US immigration system, by demonstrating the points of language exclusion contact for indigenous language speaking individuals, families, and unaccompanied children, and by making recommendations for effective language inclusion of indigenous language speaking immigrants.
The size of the indigenous language speaking migrant population affected by immigration enforcement and legal proceedings remains unknown largely due to their persistent exclusion as a racial class and the exclusion of their languages. The operational scope of federal LEP policy appears superficially applied in an irregular program by semi-autonomous federal immigration agencies.
Though the origin of federal LEP policy lies in the Executive Office, federal departments’ programmatic formulation of the LEP policy initiative has been weak. Therefore, in addition to the main tasks, this review specifically examines both the undefined nature of that gap in policy, and the resulting gap in practice.
This report analyzes human rights violations experienced by women, men, and children in seven DHS... more This report analyzes human rights violations experienced by women, men, and children in seven DHS short term incarceration facilities in Southern Arizona: Border Patrol Stations, Land Ports of Entry, and Service Processing Centers. Guatemalan, Honduran, Salvadoran, and Mexican immigrant
families generally were transferred from border facilities and then held in the 17,000 square feet of holding rooms at Border Patrol Headquarters in Tucson before their legal release.6 Findings and graphic illustrations of select findings are available in Section 4.0.
Papers & Book Chapters by Blake Gentry
Journal of Latin American Geography, 2019
Table of Contents:
Unsettling territory: Indigenous mobilizations, the territorial turn, and th... more Table of Contents:
Unsettling territory: Indigenous mobilizations, the territorial turn, and the limits of land rights in the Paraguay-Brazil borderlands (Joel E. Correia)
Geographic Rift in the Urban Periphery, and Its Concrete Manifestations in Morelia, Mexico (Brian M. Napoletano, Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Yadira Méndez-Lemus, & Antonio Vieyra)
Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities (Blake Gentry, Geofrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, & Samuel N. Chambers)
La frontera en el septentrión del Obispado de Michoacán, Nueva España, 1536–1650 (América Alejandra Navarro López & Pedro Sergio Urquijo Torres)
Can the Use of a Specific Species Influence Habitat Conservation? Case Study of the Ethnobotany of the Palm Iriartea Deltoidea and Conservation in Northwestern Ecuador (Maria Fadiman)
La agricultura en terrazas en la adaptación a la variabilidad climática en la Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, México (Gerardo Bocco, Berenice Solís Castillo, Quetzalcóatl Orozco-Ramírez, & Adrián Ortega-Iturriaga)
In Good Faith: Land Grabbing, Legal Dispossession, and Land Restitution in Colombia (Max Counter)
Trump’s Border Militarization and the Limits to Capital (Jeremy Slack)
Bolsonaro and the Inequalities of Geographical Development in Brazil (Nelson Rojas de Carvalho & Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior)
The Embers of Radical Ecology and Revolutionary Ideology in Nicaragua’s Protests (Michael A. Petriello & Audrey J. Joslin)
Truncated Transnationalism, the Tenuousness of Temporary Protected Status, and Trump (Ines Miyares, Richard Wright, Alison Mountz, & Adrian Bailey)
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Papers by Blake Gentry
The full document, Exclusion of Indigenous Language Speaking Immigrants (ILSI) In the US Immigration System, a technical review illustrates language exclusion contacts for immigrants who speak indigenous languages: during their arrest at the border or in the interior, in short and long term detention, in immigration and Streamline courts, and in shelters for unaccompanied children. As depicted in four separate processes, indigenous language speaking immigrants encounter a minimum of 35 and at least a maximum of 54 language exclusion contacts from arrest to deportation or release from detention. Programmatic failures to implement an equitable Limited English Proficiency Protocol in three federal departments and their relevant agencies are outlined in the Appendix: ILSI Language Exclusion in the US Immigration System.
Executive Order 13166 established in 2000 a Federal Limited English Proficiency (LEP) policy which called for equal language access to services under federal law. Denying such access is a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on national origin or race. Subsequent LEP Guidance issued subsequently for implementation of LEP policy by the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services suffers from five major deficits: 1) It does not implement a mechanism for baseline language assessments of encountered language populations at the border; 2. It does not create language assessment tools for individual assessment based on assessed language needs; 3 It has not planned for nor trained front line personnel for individual language assessment; 4. It does not measure language transmission and makes gross assumptions about human communication; 5. It does not recognize Indigenous language speakers as a vulnerable population which facilitates their prolonged incarceration in the world’s largest prison system without redress against language exclusion.
This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O’odham communities of Wo’oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O’odham (“desert peoples”). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O’odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O’odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility–in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O’odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O’odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.
Resumen
Este articulo aplica el marco teórico de colonialismo
de asentamiento para examinar tres generaciones de lucha territorial que involucran las comunidades Tohono O’odham de Wo’oson y Cedagĭ Wahia en Sonora, Mexico. Rastrea como la refroma agraria y el control de recursos hídricos siguieron la revolución mexicana y permitieron la consolidación de una economía ganadera que requirió el despojo de tierras y aguas consuetudinarias accedidos estacionalmente por los Tohono O’odham. En el período contemporáneo, la ganadería ha sido suplantada por el contrabando organizado y la militarización de la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos, generando nuevas presiones y amenazas a la sobreviviencia de los Tohono O’odham en Sonora. Refleccionando en lo anterior, hacemos una contribución a la teoría del colonialismo de asentamiento por argumentar que para gente de tierras áridas como los Tohono O’odham el despojo del territorio es a la misma vez y también un despolojo de la movilidad – en este caso, las formas consuetudinarias de movilidad que definen sus relaciones entre unos y otros y con su patria desiértica para milenios. Concluimos examinando como los Tohono O’odham en Sonora actualmente están resistiendo este lógico y trajaban para renovar su autonomía y estilo de vida para generaciones presentes y futuras.
The size of the indigenous language speaking migrant population affected by immigration enforcement and legal proceedings remains unknown largely due to their persistent exclusion as a racial class and the exclusion of their languages. The operational scope of federal LEP policy appears superficially applied in an irregular program by semi-autonomous federal immigration agencies.
Though the origin of federal LEP policy lies in the Executive Office, federal departments’ programmatic formulation of the LEP policy initiative has been weak. Therefore, in addition to the main tasks, this review specifically examines both the undefined nature of that gap in policy, and the resulting gap in practice.
families generally were transferred from border facilities and then held in the 17,000 square feet of holding rooms at Border Patrol Headquarters in Tucson before their legal release.6 Findings and graphic illustrations of select findings are available in Section 4.0.
Papers & Book Chapters by Blake Gentry
Unsettling territory: Indigenous mobilizations, the territorial turn, and the limits of land rights in the Paraguay-Brazil borderlands (Joel E. Correia)
Geographic Rift in the Urban Periphery, and Its Concrete Manifestations in Morelia, Mexico (Brian M. Napoletano, Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Yadira Méndez-Lemus, & Antonio Vieyra)
Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities (Blake Gentry, Geofrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, & Samuel N. Chambers)
La frontera en el septentrión del Obispado de Michoacán, Nueva España, 1536–1650 (América Alejandra Navarro López & Pedro Sergio Urquijo Torres)
Can the Use of a Specific Species Influence Habitat Conservation? Case Study of the Ethnobotany of the Palm Iriartea Deltoidea and Conservation in Northwestern Ecuador (Maria Fadiman)
La agricultura en terrazas en la adaptación a la variabilidad climática en la Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, México (Gerardo Bocco, Berenice Solís Castillo, Quetzalcóatl Orozco-Ramírez, & Adrián Ortega-Iturriaga)
In Good Faith: Land Grabbing, Legal Dispossession, and Land Restitution in Colombia (Max Counter)
Trump’s Border Militarization and the Limits to Capital (Jeremy Slack)
Bolsonaro and the Inequalities of Geographical Development in Brazil (Nelson Rojas de Carvalho & Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior)
The Embers of Radical Ecology and Revolutionary Ideology in Nicaragua’s Protests (Michael A. Petriello & Audrey J. Joslin)
Truncated Transnationalism, the Tenuousness of Temporary Protected Status, and Trump (Ines Miyares, Richard Wright, Alison Mountz, & Adrian Bailey)
The full document, Exclusion of Indigenous Language Speaking Immigrants (ILSI) In the US Immigration System, a technical review illustrates language exclusion contacts for immigrants who speak indigenous languages: during their arrest at the border or in the interior, in short and long term detention, in immigration and Streamline courts, and in shelters for unaccompanied children. As depicted in four separate processes, indigenous language speaking immigrants encounter a minimum of 35 and at least a maximum of 54 language exclusion contacts from arrest to deportation or release from detention. Programmatic failures to implement an equitable Limited English Proficiency Protocol in three federal departments and their relevant agencies are outlined in the Appendix: ILSI Language Exclusion in the US Immigration System.
Executive Order 13166 established in 2000 a Federal Limited English Proficiency (LEP) policy which called for equal language access to services under federal law. Denying such access is a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on national origin or race. Subsequent LEP Guidance issued subsequently for implementation of LEP policy by the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services suffers from five major deficits: 1) It does not implement a mechanism for baseline language assessments of encountered language populations at the border; 2. It does not create language assessment tools for individual assessment based on assessed language needs; 3 It has not planned for nor trained front line personnel for individual language assessment; 4. It does not measure language transmission and makes gross assumptions about human communication; 5. It does not recognize Indigenous language speakers as a vulnerable population which facilitates their prolonged incarceration in the world’s largest prison system without redress against language exclusion.
This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O’odham communities of Wo’oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O’odham (“desert peoples”). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O’odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O’odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility–in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O’odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O’odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.
Resumen
Este articulo aplica el marco teórico de colonialismo
de asentamiento para examinar tres generaciones de lucha territorial que involucran las comunidades Tohono O’odham de Wo’oson y Cedagĭ Wahia en Sonora, Mexico. Rastrea como la refroma agraria y el control de recursos hídricos siguieron la revolución mexicana y permitieron la consolidación de una economía ganadera que requirió el despojo de tierras y aguas consuetudinarias accedidos estacionalmente por los Tohono O’odham. En el período contemporáneo, la ganadería ha sido suplantada por el contrabando organizado y la militarización de la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos, generando nuevas presiones y amenazas a la sobreviviencia de los Tohono O’odham en Sonora. Refleccionando en lo anterior, hacemos una contribución a la teoría del colonialismo de asentamiento por argumentar que para gente de tierras áridas como los Tohono O’odham el despojo del territorio es a la misma vez y también un despolojo de la movilidad – en este caso, las formas consuetudinarias de movilidad que definen sus relaciones entre unos y otros y con su patria desiértica para milenios. Concluimos examinando como los Tohono O’odham en Sonora actualmente están resistiendo este lógico y trajaban para renovar su autonomía y estilo de vida para generaciones presentes y futuras.
The size of the indigenous language speaking migrant population affected by immigration enforcement and legal proceedings remains unknown largely due to their persistent exclusion as a racial class and the exclusion of their languages. The operational scope of federal LEP policy appears superficially applied in an irregular program by semi-autonomous federal immigration agencies.
Though the origin of federal LEP policy lies in the Executive Office, federal departments’ programmatic formulation of the LEP policy initiative has been weak. Therefore, in addition to the main tasks, this review specifically examines both the undefined nature of that gap in policy, and the resulting gap in practice.
families generally were transferred from border facilities and then held in the 17,000 square feet of holding rooms at Border Patrol Headquarters in Tucson before their legal release.6 Findings and graphic illustrations of select findings are available in Section 4.0.
Unsettling territory: Indigenous mobilizations, the territorial turn, and the limits of land rights in the Paraguay-Brazil borderlands (Joel E. Correia)
Geographic Rift in the Urban Periphery, and Its Concrete Manifestations in Morelia, Mexico (Brian M. Napoletano, Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Yadira Méndez-Lemus, & Antonio Vieyra)
Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities (Blake Gentry, Geofrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, & Samuel N. Chambers)
La frontera en el septentrión del Obispado de Michoacán, Nueva España, 1536–1650 (América Alejandra Navarro López & Pedro Sergio Urquijo Torres)
Can the Use of a Specific Species Influence Habitat Conservation? Case Study of the Ethnobotany of the Palm Iriartea Deltoidea and Conservation in Northwestern Ecuador (Maria Fadiman)
La agricultura en terrazas en la adaptación a la variabilidad climática en la Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, México (Gerardo Bocco, Berenice Solís Castillo, Quetzalcóatl Orozco-Ramírez, & Adrián Ortega-Iturriaga)
In Good Faith: Land Grabbing, Legal Dispossession, and Land Restitution in Colombia (Max Counter)
Trump’s Border Militarization and the Limits to Capital (Jeremy Slack)
Bolsonaro and the Inequalities of Geographical Development in Brazil (Nelson Rojas de Carvalho & Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior)
The Embers of Radical Ecology and Revolutionary Ideology in Nicaragua’s Protests (Michael A. Petriello & Audrey J. Joslin)
Truncated Transnationalism, the Tenuousness of Temporary Protected Status, and Trump (Ines Miyares, Richard Wright, Alison Mountz, & Adrian Bailey)