What Side Are You On?

Michael Steven Wilson (Tohono O’odham) is a human rights activist, US military retiree, and film documentarian. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
For more information about Michael Steven Wilson, visit the Author Page.

José Antonio Lucero is Chair and Professor of the Comparative History of Ideas Department at the University of Washington, Seattle and holds a joint appointment in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.
For more information about José Antonio Lucero, visit the Author Page.

"Brilliant, moving, and wholly unique.... Wilson and Lucero have produced a groundbreaking book that mixes memoir, testimonio, political science, and history to tell the complex story of an Indigenous man's journey through the civil rights era, the Cold War, and America's war on undocumented migrants along the US-Mexico border."—Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

"Mike Wilson's life history and varied experiences reveal that Native lives are complex, adaptive, and entirely modern. Wilson and Lucero’s unique dual-story approach is extremely effective. I can’t think of another book quite like this one."—K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Arizona State University

"An engaging and valuable book. By tacking between Wilson’s first-person life history and Lucero’s contextual 'interludes,' this collaborative work provides both an intimate account of lived experience and a historical analysis of the larger structures of power that have a hand in shaping life as an Indigenous person along the US-Mexico border."—Shannon Speed, University of California, Los Angeles