Blockading the Border Bulldozers: Amber Lee Ortega on Hia Ced O’odham Resistance

In this podcast, Ortega discusses why she chose to face a judge to protect a sacred spring on the Arizona-Mexico Border.

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The Border Chronicle Podcast
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February 10, 2022

On September 9, 2020, Tohono and Hia Ced O’odham members Amber Lee Ortega and Nellie Jo David were at the sacred Quitobaquito Springs, located on the U.S. side of the border in southern Arizona, when they heard the loud beeping sounds. Their response was automatic: both women jumped to their feet and ran to blockade an earthmover that had come to clear the way for the border wall. In the following audio interview, Ortega recounts this with vivid and personal detail, including a back-and-forth she had with officials who kept asking her to leave, to which she kept responding by asking them to leave. The ancestral land of the O’odham spans from Arizona to deep in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. The O’odham people, who have lived in this region for thousands of years, were not consulted when the border was drawn by the U.S. government, bisecting their land, in the mid 19th century.

In the interview, Ortega discusses the trial that followed their arrest and the surprising not-guilty verdict (she was charged with two misdemeanors) rendered in January. Throughout the discussion she weaves in the bigger picture: what the border is and what its ever-intensifying enforcement has meant for the O’odham people, and her deeply spiritual journey in resisting it from a young age (including speaking to agents in the O’odham language). Given the court ruling, Ortega’s resistance might now have set a precedent for fighting the border apparatus.

And lastly, to note, due to some audio difficulties we had to record this interview twice. So many thanks to Amber Lee Ortega for making time in her busy life as a student to do so. The audio challenges returned a little bit during the second recording, but luckily we did a backup! Please enjoy.

Author
Todd Miller

Todd Miller is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of The Border Chronicle. He is the author of four books that examine border militarization and its externalization, surveillance technology and industry, climate change, and the search for alternatives. His books include Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021) Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019),  Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014).

Todd’s forthcoming book is a deep examination of water as a border issue in an age of climate-induced heat waves and drought. It will be published by Seven Stories Press in 2027.

Besides The Border Chronicle, articles by Todd have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, TomDispatch, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. He has also authored and co-authored reports on border surveillance, the border industrial complex, and climate change for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, where he is a fellow.

Todd’s book Storming the Wall received the Izzy Award in 2018 for “path-breaking and in-depth reporting.” He also received first place in “Community immigration reporting” by the Arizona Press Club in 2013. Todd has a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Journalism from Prescott College, where he is also an adjunct professor.

In his spare time, Todd likes to travel, read, philosophize, and hang out with his two kids—whether it be going to a dance recital or being a basketball coach.

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