NDÉ ISDZÁNÉ ŁANOHWILE’~~Lipan Apache Women Defense ~~El Calaboz Rancheria, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: Peter Schey

Showing posts with label Peter Schey. Show all posts

Friday, April 24, 2009

"THE UNITED STATES TAKES THE LAND, BUT THEY WILL NOT TAKE MY VOICE" --Eloisa Garcia Tamez

US seizes Tamez/Lipan Apache lands on the Texas-Mexico border for border wall
By Brenda NorrellEL CALABOZ, Texas --

With the hope of change evaporating during the Obama Administration, a federal judge ruled that Homeland Security can seize the Tamez family land. After a court battle, with an alert to the international community, the Tamez family said a federal judge condemned the Lipan Apache family land for the US/Mexico border wall.

"A federal judge in Brownsville, Texas issued an order today granting the federal government's request to condemn the ancestral land of the Tamez Family, who are Lipan Apaches," the Tamez family said April 16. "Although this land has been in the Tamez family prior to the Spanish colonization, and also designated to them through Spanish Crown law (1767, as of today, it is in the possession of the United States Department of Homeland Security.""The landowner, Eloisa Tamez, heard about Judge Hanen's order while participating in the Western Social Sciences Association Conference in Albuquerque, where she was participating in a Three part panel: 'Indigenous People's and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Militarization, Resistance, and Rights.' She is with a group of colleagues from several bi-national Indigenous Border communities and experts on militarization and the impact of the border wall," the Tamez family said in a statement.

The seizure of the Tamez family land raises new questions about the actual intent of the US government as it acquires private property from California to Texas for the border wall. The US covert scheme to acquire borderlands includes seizing private land and seizing the use of American Indian lands, such as Tohono O'odham land in Arizona, for the border wall corridor.
The land seizures were facilitated by the fear created by 9/11, then fueled by immigrant racism and xenophobia on television news and finally accelerated by the so-called drug war in northern Mexico. However, more questions are now being raised regarding the covert US government's role in the drug and weapons trafficking in the borderzone. The Zetas, the most notorious murderers, were trained as US Special Forces, while the US appetite for drugs provides the demand. The weapons also come from the US.

Meanwhile, in Texas, the Tamez family reports that this is an urgent situation which needs international attention and wide press coverage.

An interview with Eloisa Tamez, by Ansel Herz, is here.

Excerpt: "Mediahacker: I know that you met Barack Obama while he was campaigning. Have you seen any changes in terms of DHS policy since his taking office and do you hold out any hope that him and the new Homeland Security Secretary will change plans at all?
Tamez: I see no change. I’ve seen no comment on it. I don’t know what the plans are, because, well, they haven’t said much. So I’m still wondering what we’re going to see. And I still remember that he voted for the wall when he was a Senator. He voted for it ..."

Friday, October 31, 2008

Notes on Border Walls and Cultural Exchange: From conversations with Wendy Kenin - by Clare Kinberg, Editor, Bridges Journal, A Jewish Feminist Journal

Attached article:

Interesting perspective on the inter-cultural between Jewish and Native American, via borders, walls, militarism, forced removals, genocide.

Also interesting comparative analysis of 'historical trauma', 'historical memory' and Michael Chertoff, Peter Schey, and indigenous women of the Mexico-U.S. border...

Note: error! There are two federally recognized tribes in Texas. The Kickapoo and Tiguas are recognized. Texas, in a blanket policy, does not officially recognize the Aboriginal and First Peoples of Texas, which includes several Apache groups, who have specific historical, ancient presence in Texas and other Mexico-U.S.border states. (There are 10 border states).

--Margo Tamez

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Eloisa Garcia Tamez & Peter Schey, Federal Court, February 7 2008, Brownsville, Texas

Indigenous women's sensibility of collective versus 'individual' is an ongoing educational campaign in the struggle of Lipan Apache women of El Calaboz, Lower Rio Grande, MX-US border region.
Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez firmly positions indigneous women's concepts of land, community, collectivity, ancestral relations to land as first people, and the obstacles that the United States government puts in the pathways of indigenous livelihoods, ecologies, cultural rights and human rights to live on their lands, in their aboriginal territories. She repeats her sustained message, in the clip linked below.
"This is not for personal gain. The sole reason ... is for my children, my
grandchildren and for the children and grandchildren and the future generations
of all Americans."
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SQ1OZMUWGwM

DECOLONIZATION & INDIGENEITY

LAW-Defense is re-structuring our web presence based upon on-going dialogues with Nde' peoples of Konitsaii Gokiyaa. Key Themes are:

Indigenous Peoples' Knowledge
Nde' world views
Indigenous human rights
Elders
Gender violence
Indigenous Women
Indigenous Youth
Indigenous Workers
History, historical correction and recovery Self-determination in social, economic, spiritual and political realms,
Decision-making on all matters related to Nde' peoples, Nde' governance, customary lands, and territories.

LAW Defense actively engages U.N. CERD, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Inter-American Commission/ OAS system, and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues, among others.

Decolonization.

Indigeneity.

Indigenous Cultural, Social, Economic, and Political Decision-making.

Indigenous Empowerment.

Nde' Truth Commission on Genocidal Violence (new!).

Racism, Gender violence and Settler Colonialism.

The Doctrine of Discovery and Domination (new!)

Indigenous Oral and Written Narrative.

Indigenous Media and Documentation.

Self-Determination & Self-Governance.

Indigenous security, health, and equilibrium.

ABOUT US~~LIPAN APACHE WOMEN DEFENSE

Lipan Apache Women Defense (El Calaboz Rancheria) organized in the summer of 2007 to address centuries and recent decades of land-based struggles, recognition, territories, self-determination, and indigenous peoples' world views.

Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense) is an Indigenous Peoples' Organization. It supports local capacity building, documentation, research, and investigations related to Indigenous peoples' rights affirmed in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ratified in 2007, and adopted by the United States on December 16, 2010.

LAW-Defense documents and advocates for the rights of the indigenous originarios, Nde', and Nakaiiye-Nde lineal clan members of Lipan Apache peoples who are the Real People: original rancheria communities along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo.

Our projects embrace Indigenous Peoples' rights, as taught, transmitted, and upheld by the Elders and Knowledge Keepers.

Context:
Lipan Apache women of El Calaboz Rancheria took up the cultural, social, legal, political, and economic protection against armed and forced dispossession of Indigenous Peoples' lands by the U.S. D.H.S. et al.

We organized community support, empowerment and decision-making processes to protect integral and inherent Indigenous relationships to lands, sacred sites, burial grounds, and biodiversity in the face of a series of armed and forced takings of local peoples' lands, as a direct consequence of the implementation of the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006, Sec. 102, provided the Secretary (Department of Homeland Security) the unilateral power to waive 36 Federal laws and this laid the pavement for destruction of languages, kin-ship practices, ceremonies, traditional medicinal knowledges, burial grounds, sacred sites, subsistence herding and farming, and cultural restoration projects already in implementation by local leaders. See, "Constitution Free Zone."

Indigenous peoples from the El Calaboz Rancheria lineal clans stood firm against the U.S. possession of traditional lands. Securing our lands, resources, livelihoods, ecologically-based economies, and way of life are at the heart of the matter for Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Rio Grande, who continue to struggle against settler and state violence stemming from colonization by Spaniards in the early 1520s, and subsequent waves of settlement, development, and privatization by Euro-American colonizers.

The United States and Nde' Customary Perspectives
In U.S. law, there are significant legal fictions which assume the religious and racial superiority of Euro-American settler juridical systems above those of indigenous peoples inherent and inalienable rights to self-governance, lands and territories. The following models entail excessive aggression and armed violence, which were used to dispossess lands illegally through force and coercion against Lower Rio Grande River communities:
1. Eminent Domain,
2. the Declaration of Taking, and
3. Condemnation Proceedings.

Impacted Nde' and Nnee Peoples of the Texas-Mexico Border--Beyond the Doctrine of Discovery
Specifically impacted Indigenous people, the Lipan Apache, Jumano-Apache, and Mexican-American land grant peoples whose ancestors' presence in the hemisphere pre-date European conquest.

The Lipan Apache Women Defense organized legal, social, cultural and political resistance to U.S. militarized violence, abuse of state power, and abuse of the Rule of Law

This work raises critical questions and organizes forums for serious debate, participation and collective decision-making about Indigenous inherent Aboriginal Title, and the State's sovereignty.

To date, the U.S. border wall project has been unsuccessful in El Calaboz Rancheria, Lower Rio Grande Valley, South Texas because it has not achieved its goal: genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, presence, history, creativity, and resilient spirit.

By foregrounding community organization, documentation, research and education the Lipan Apache Women Defense has strengthened the Indigenous People's resolve to persist in Indigenous, U.S. and International law systems to restore democratic principles and rule.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR EFFORT to PROTECT INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS ALONG THE BORDER AND BORDER WALL.
(FEBRUARY 2012)