Cross-Border Issues Focus of California Native American Day Kickoff

By Ioana Patringenaru | Oct. 1, 2007

Louie Guassac, the keynote speaker at Friday's California Native American Day kickoff.

They helped secure visas for Native Americans in Baja California. They give toys, food and other goods at Christmas. They are working to set up vineyards in the Guadalupe Valley. Members of the Kumeyaay nation in San Diego County are reaching out to fellow Native Americans who live across the border in Mexico.

“We want to help them become more self-sufficient,” said Louie Guassac, executive director of the Kumeyaay Border Task Force.

Guassac was this year’s keynote speaker during the kickoff of the California Native American Day celebration at UCSD. Last year, the event spanned two days. This is year, it spans nearly two months, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox pointed out.  

Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.

“I am sure we are really going to learn some wonderful things,” she told the audience at the Sun God Lounge, where the kickoff was held.

UCSD is making concentrated efforts to boost recruitment of Native American students, faculty and staff members, Fox said. Last spring, 60 potential students and their parents visited here. The Native American Student Alliance was revived this year and a new Native American alumni chapter has been created.

The campus also is strengthening its ties with the local Native American community, Fox said. For example, the university has helped provide high-speed Internet connections. That in turn led to computer-based tutoring and literacy classes.

During the coming months, Native American leaders and experts will come to campus to discuss their culture. On Oct. 23, Anthony Pico, former chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, will give a talk titled “Sovereignty in Contemporary Native America.”

Friday, it was Guassac’s turn to address the campus community. The U.S.-Mexico border cuts Kumeyaay territory in half, he said. The Kumeyaay Border Task Force was created in 1998 in an effort to help resolve the issues this partition created.

Chancellor Fox and other audience members listening to a speaker.

Operation Gatekeeper, which sought to tighten controls at the border, made it more difficult for the Kumeyaay who lived in Mexico to visit their relatives in the United States, Guassac said. The border task force worked with the Department of Justice to secure six-month visas for them, known as Laser B1 and B2 visas. So far about 1,000 visas have been issued, Guassac said. Tribes are now opposing regulations proposed under the Patriot Act that would threaten the visas.

Perse Hooper, president of the Native American alumni chapter.

Meanwhile, the Kumeyaay also are working on economic partnerships. They will soon open a store in Old Town, where Native American artisans from Mexico will be able to sell their crafts. They forged a partnership in the Guadalupe Valley to cultivate vineyards. Every Christmas, when work is scare in Mexico, U.S. tribal members load trucks full of toys, food and other goods and deliver them to Native American communities south of the border. Similar trips happen all across Baja California.

“For me, it’s a true honor and privilege,” Guassac said of his service on the task force.

After Guassac spoke, Shae Lynn Zastrow, a fourth-year student and a member of the Native American Student Alliance, also addressed the audience at the Sun God Lounge. “I am really impressed with the movement toward community here,” she said. Others had positive comments too.

“For the first time, I feel really proud of UCSD,” said Perse Hooper, head of the campus’ Native American alumni chapter. “I see so many people working together to make this happen. It’s really impressive.”