"Tribal Nation Condemns ‘Desecration’ to Build Border Wall"

"Construction of a wall on the Arizona border is endangering sacred Indigenous sites — including an oasis that has supported human beings for the last 16,000 years."

"LUKEVILLE, Ariz. — Cut down a saguaro cactus in Arizona and you can face years in prison. But over the past several weeks, work crews have been destroying dozens of the protected cactuses, which can live for 200 years, to build a new wall on the southwestern border.

The remains of chopped-up saguaros are now visible along a swath of the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona, part of what Native American leaders warn is a range of environmental and archaeological threats posed by the Trump administration’s scramble to build the wall.

Work along the border, according to tribal leaders of the Tohono O’odham Nation who live on both sides of the border, is blasting ancient burial sites and siphoning an aquifer that feeds a desert oasis where human beings have slaked their thirst for 16,000 years."

Simon Romero reports for the New York Times with photographs by Adriana Zehbrauskas February 26, 2020.

Source: NY Times, 02/27/2020