A California Indian tribe filed suit this week in a California federal district court challenging the construction of President Trump's border wall. The complaint (full text) in La Posta Band of Diegueno Mission Indians v. Trump, (SD CA, filed 8/11/2020), alleges in part:
Since time immemorial, the Kumeyaay people have lived in the area ... surrounding what is now the United States-Mexico border. Since the arrival of Europeans in the region, the Kumeyaay territory, culture, religion, and very existence have been under attack to make way for non-Indian settlement. In the most recent episode of Indigenous erasure, the President of the United States and his administration are desecrating Kumeyaay ancestral burial and sacred sites to make way for a wall along the United States’ southern border. The La Posta Band of the Diegueño Mission Indians ... bring this complaint to halt the construction of the border wall—a project being funded and constructed without authorization from Congress and which is violating the constitutional rights of the La Posta citizens—until the Defendants can guarantee adequate consultation and protection of La Posta religious practices and cultural heritage....
The Defendants are excavating and desecrating Kumeyaay burials without allowing La Posta access to properly treat the exhumed remains....
The border wall has made and will continue to make Kumeyaay sacred sites that lie within and south of the Project Area inaccessible....
Times of San Diego reports on the lawsuit.
