Pablo Lewis

Undocumented member, veteran, subject to arrest, prosecution and deportation

I do not think of myself as a Mexican. I am O'odham. That's what I am. My parents were O'odham.

I was born in Bacoachi, Sonora, in 1928. I remember my father telling me there were a lot of our O'odham around Bacoachi. I do not remember how our family traveled to my nation's lands here in the north. I think we came in a wagon. We came north before I started school. My mother and father spoke O'odham. They taught me to speak O'odham. My father always said this was very important.

"Speak O'odham, speak O'odham," he would say.

I went to primary school in Sells on my nation's lands to the north. We lived in a small village called Buenos Aires just north of the boundary. When I finished school in Sells, I went to work in the fields to pick cotton around Eloy and Coolidge. Many O'odham worked up that way in the fields. I worked in the fields for about three years and then I went back to school. I graduated from St. John's Indian School in 1950.

After graduation, I enlisted in the Army. We studied the war in school and I wanted to help. I was a corporal in the Second Armored Division and I was stationed in Germany. I earned a Good Conduct Medal. They called my Division "Hell on Wheels." When my three years were up, the Army asked me to stay on. I probably should have stayed, but I said to the Army people, no, no, I have to go to my home in the land of the cactus. I feel very proud to have served with the Second Armored Division.

Once I was back on my nation's lands, I started to work for the federal government as a civilian. First I worked for what we now call the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Roads Department and then I worked for the veteran's hospital in Tucson. Later on, I worked for Sears in the warehouse.

I have worked hard all of my life, but I can no longer work. Recently I went to the Social Security office to get my benefits. The Social Security lady asked me for my birth certificate. This was the first time in my life that anyone ever asked me for my birth certificate. When I enlisted in the Army, they never asked me. When I worked for the federal government, they never asked me. When I first got my Social Security card, they never asked me. I do not have a birth certificate, but I do have a baptism certificate. I took my baptism certificate to the Social Security lady and she sent me to the Office of the Chairman of my nation. The Social Security lady said there was a lawyer there who might help me. What I wanted to know was where Bacoachi is. Until the Social Security lady told me, I did not know that Bacoachi was south of the U.S.-Mexico boundary. I just always thought that I was born on O'odham lands. Now I worry. I worry that my Social Security might not get straightened out. I worry that the U.S. Border Patrol might make me leave.

I live here. I came from somewhere else, but I am home. Here I am home. I am O'odham.

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