Native America Calling: Native in the Spotlight with Michael Steven Wilson

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Native America Calling: Native in the Spotlight with Michael Steven Wilson

Monday, August 18, 2025

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Native in the Spotlight: Michael Steven Wilson

Michael Steven Wilson (Tohono O’odham) was a lay pastor on the Tohono O’odham Nation in the early 2000s when he started putting out water for migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico.

Wilson considered it a religious and ethical calling. But it put him at odds with U.S. immigration officials, his church — and even his own Native nation.

Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, in the 1950s, Wilson endured racism and poverty. He witnessed injustice in South America while serving in the military — and he confronted questions about his Christian faith while in seminary school in the ’90s.

Wilson’s experiences and observations informed his decision to help relieve the suffering of the migrants risking their lives to cross the Sonoran Desert. All are documented in the memoir, What Side Are You On? A Tohono O’odham Life across Borders. [PDF: Flyer from The University of North Carolina Press]

Wilson is Native America Calling’s August Native in the Spotlight.

What Side Are You On?: A Tohono O’odham Life across Borders by Michael Steven Wilson (The University of North Carolina Press 2024)

What Side Are You On?: A Tohono O’odham Life across Borders

A fence of the Tohono O’odham Nation denotes the border between the United States and Mexico. Photo: Jeffrey D. Hendricks / Meditations on the Collapse