THE BORDER WALL: THE LAST STAND AT MAKING THE US A WHITE GATED COMMUNITY

by Mark Karlin, Truthout / News Analysis

Sunday 11 March 2012

This is the first in an occasional Truthout series on viewing the US "immigration" and Mexican border policies through a social justice lens, focusing on the lower Rio Grande Valley. Brownsville, Texas, area. Mark Karlin, editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout, visited the region recently to file these reports.  (Photos by Mark Karlin)

The physical Mexican-American wall starts as a newly fortified metal barrier extending 300 feet into the warm, balmy waters of Southern California and ends up some 2,000 miles later just east of Brownsville, Texas. But it would be wrong to think of it as continuous, because only about a third of that distance has some form of visible barrier running like a scar across the US border with Mexico.

The origins of the billions of dollars spent on the largely symbolic, highly visible wall really starts much farther north with US organizations and people advocating for a white political power structure, groups like one recently represented at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which contend that a multicultural society is a danger to America. The wall also begins with the efforts of states like Arizona to erase Mexican-American culture from the textbooks  in state schools, even in districts where the vast majority of students are of Mexican descent. It begins with Republicans such as Mitt Romney welcoming the endorsements of white nationalists who campaign at his side. It starts with draconian Alabama's, Arizona's and Georgia's harsh anti-"immigrant" laws that are spreading to many state legislatures, born of racism and self-serving industry lobbies such as privatized prisons.

The construction of the "barrier" wall - accompanying large-scale militarization (the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, the military etc.) - is on America's southern border, and there is meaning in that. Its location is prima facie evidence that the "immigration issue" is really a euphemism for keeping poor brown-skinned people out of the US - as well as creating a "practice" zone for protecting American economic and political interests in Mexico and Central America.

Migration Is Not About Opportunism; It's About Survival

The overwhelming majority of migrants from Mexico who seek undocumented entrance to US are desperate, not gold diggers. They are often victims of an indigenous subsistence agricultural and rural economy that is disappearing, due to NAFTA and US subsidies of American farmers, who can sell for lower competitive prices "south of the border." Often facing an arduous, dangerous trip up from southern Mexico or Central America, they are willing to confront possible death in the deserts, sometimes relying on treacherous "coyotes" (guides), who claim to offer them safe passage to the US in return for exorbitant fees, and professional criminals, who abuse and steal from them as they head to the border.

The strong anti-"immigration" laws of many states and the harsh enforcement of the federal government, however, may be backfiring, because migrants in dire economic need will work for very little under squalid conditions - and, therefore, are a valued "commodity." A 2011 Christian Science Monitor article notes that in Alabama, "farmers fearing a labor shortage are protesting recent immigration laws they say are too harsh, forcing undocumented workers to flee to prevent deportation." The farmers say, "US workers are unwilling to endure the rigorous conditions of farm work and that" local farmers may go bankrupt. But the proponents of white American exceptionalism have no tolerance for a multicultural society, even if such a stance hurts the US agricultural (and other low-pay labor areas) financial penchant for labor exploitation.

Can the US Wall Off a Culturally Diverse Society?

"It seems to me that the notion of a literal wall between Mexico and the US signifies both the physical and existential threat that many white Americans perceive from those with darker skin," Timothy Wise, an expert on how the fear of power being shared in America by its diverse population is creating racial anxiety in many whites, told Truthout. "On the one hand, there is the sense that such persons are literally going to harm us - through crime, the mythical overuse of taxpayer funded services or some other thing - and on the other, the larger paranoia that they pose a threat to the cultural and social survival of America as 'we have known it'."

Recently, I stood in downtown Brownsville on a sliver of land ironically called "Hope Park." I read about how ferries used to cross the narrow stretch of the Rio Grande there, making it easier for the citizens of both nations to move unimpeded from one country to another. Instead, as I looked toward Mexico, there was a high fence of vertical bars in front of me, one of the more "attractive" versions of the wall, which varies in construction design from location to location (in some places it is just corrugated sheets of metal and in others it may be three consecutive physical barriers). "Hope," the celebration of a blended heritage and opportunity, had literally been fenced off from this wedge of land.

The border wall divides people of common culture and heritage, including not just Mexicans, but also Native Americans. Just to the west of Brownsville, is the town of El Calaboz, an indigenous community where Lipan Apache, Tlaxcalteca, Nahua, Comanche and Basque colonists have had extensive interactions since the Spanish colonial era. Margo Tamez, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia - who holds a cross-appointment in indigenous studies and gender and women's studies - grew up there, learning the history of native oppression from her Lipan Apache elders.

Tamez, like Wise, views the wall as a physical symbol of oppression of peoples who are not white. Talking with Tamez, one gets a sense of the richness of her heritage and what a toll that squashing out diversity - instead of embracing it - takes. Tamez wants her lineage to be clear. She is a member of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas, or in their language, of the Konitsaaíí ndé ("Big Water Clan") and Cúelcahén ("Tall Grass People Clan"), the southernmost of the Athabascan peoples, who stretch from British Columbia to Tamaulipas and Coahuila, Mexico. The Athabascan peoples span three borders, as does their common culture.

Indigenous peoples along the Texas border wall were also the first peoples, according to Tamez, with whom the Spanish colonial government entered into land grants. Tamez's mother, Eloisa García Tamez (whose family was granted a plot in 1767 by Spain), is lead plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against the federal government claiming the wall's construction is a violation of Texas land law; Crown land grant and riparian laws; treaties among Lipan Apaches, Texas and the US; and international law.

Tamez told Truthout that the wall is representative of the "genealogy of hate and an entrenched worldview which is based upon contempt and disdain for indigenous peoples globally. The wall represents the legacy of that particular world view - a 'deathscape' which is a means of continuing to colonize through mechanization of cages and walls at a vast scale, and which demands its own existence through indigenous peoples' containment in open air prisons in our homelands, our traditional territories." Tamez maintains a web site about the Apache struggle for indigenous rights and lands in which she writes,"Apachean peoples still have a deep sense of being cloistered, imprisoned, contained, detained, and displaced in fractured ways by those visibly militarized architectural features on our territorial spaces."  

Lower Rio Grand Valley Is a Cage for Many

Indeed, the lower Rio Grand Valley is literally a cage for many. If you travel north by car on the only highway out of Brownsville, Route 77, after about an hour, you come to an immigration checkpoint. If you are undocumented, you will likely be apprehended here and deported, unless you have some foolproof, forged papers. If you are an American citizen (of brown skin color) and are suspected of being an "illegal alien," you may be searched and harassed. In short, without a passport or a driver's license, many residents of the lower Rio Grande Valley are trapped.

(For complete article... click).

KEYSTONE EMINENT DOMAIN TARGETS COULD LEARN FROM INDIGNEOUS PEOPLES AND THE TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER WALL

A response to "Keystone Pipeline Sparks Property Rights Backlash," 2/17/2012, The Texas Tribune.

                                  Source: Todd Wiseman / Jay Root, The Texas Tribune.

It is an interesting twist of irony that the Keystone is shrink-wrapped as a "security" issue... and just one hair shy of being packaged and spun as a buffer/buttress against "terrorism." Indigenous Peoples of Konitsaaii Gokiyaa ('Lipan Home Land') have extensive experience and history with this 21st century phase of a longer history of dispossession, deception, and violent domination by those seeking only to serve the interests of the few.

It is important for those who are the targeted, as well as other critically involved actors, to consider the similar features of the discourses and rhetoric which the transnational and the state use to condemn these Texas property owners' lands, and compare them to the discourses and practices that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security used to condemn 70 miles of lands to construct the violent mega-project: the Border Wall on the Texas border.

There are important overlaps and intersections that should not be dismissed lightly, or artificially wrapped into a false rationale of "that is different because we have to protect our border against ____."  This is a dangerous fallacy.  The border wall could be incredibly useful analytical piece for white 'interior' property owners in this instance who are fighting a colossal battle to protect their rights and interests in land within Texas' territorial boundary, in competition against the desires and alleged 'rights' of a transnational, the elite U.S.-Canadian-Global 1-5% who will benefit, and the supposed "security" of the "nation." Consider the following:

In the case of the Texas-Mexico Border Wall, over 20 corporations have profited quite nicely on this immensely destructive project, which exploited the poverty and political marginalization of Indigenous peoples who are the original land owners, and whose title underlies and predates the U.S. and Texas for that matter. 

In that case, the majority of the impacted peoples hold legitimate Aboriginal Title (recognized by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples--which, btw, was endorsed by the United States last year), Crown Title, Treaties (for example, the wall infringes on the Lipan Apache Band of Texas' treaties with Spain, Mexico, Texas and the U.S.; and on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo).

The following statement should be critically re-examined, as it is a useful way to link the way the transnationals use the state to spin and to deploy the ax to constitutional rights beyond borders (scroll down to paragraph 8):

"He said the company already had 99 percent of the easements it needed for the Texas segment and was working on snapping up the remaining holdouts."

In 2007, 2008, and 2009, former US DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff used nearly identical discourses and rhetoric against property owners along the Texas border.  Indigenous peoples who had clear title to their lands vis-a-vis arrangements with the Spanish Crown; Hispanic and Latino private property owners many of whom had their land grant title confirmed by the first constitutional government of Texas; white farmers (mostly Euro-American emigrants to the region) whose properties had been in their families for 304 generations--were all condemned by the Secretary for the "security" and "protection" of the "nation."

As a result of the vehement resistance by Texas land owners against dispossession, (across race, class, religion, vocation, and different historical paths to land ownership--and dispossession...) the Secretary invented the mega waiver. Remember that?

Section 102 ('mega-waiver') was the provision which instrumentally voided 35 Federal Laws which effectively made it possible for big government to wipe out legal opposition, delay, and any possible relief to condemnation. This also obstructed the path towards remedy, redress, restitution, compensation...as well, which is one of the underlying pillars of the Lipan Apaches' 2009 petition to and hearing before the Inter-American Commission/Organization of American States--an ongoing investigation of the U.S. violations of international law and human rights conventions against Indigenous land owners. 

Who benefitted directly from the mega waivers and the expedited condemnations? The government contractor corporations, elected politicians, and elite private individuals whose interests they serve. They got millions expedited and into their bank accounts. 

Who benefitted from the construction jobs? Not locals. Other 'U.S. citizens' who the contractors imported from Other U.S. states and congressional districts, with the approval and complicity of Texas politicians. Remember, the many vehicles with Nebraska license plates which suddenly appeared out of thin air in 2009 and 2010 in Cameron County, Texas? Locals testified that it was as if an invasion of non-local and dominantly white 'supervisory' labor converged upon all the LRG Valley --and were highly 'visible' in local Mexican restaurants as an obvious non-local group?
 

The transnationals have profited quite nicely from the give-aways and gates that the majority Republicans opened for large scale dispossession in South Texas with mega-projects such as the Border Wall and the Keystone on the premise of "security." "Security" is used to rationalize the large-scale, overthrow of democratic constitutional rights--and Texas property law and ownership is the key 'test' in their laboratory. The most recent and yet hyper-censored dispossession in South Texas is related to the yellow-cake uranium exploration in Lipan Apache Traditional Territory.

Building wealth for the elite 1%, on the backs of Texas property owners--in fact, was designed and architected by Texas Senators Hutchinson and Cornyn, who have consistently produced legislation and the means for not only whittling away, but hacking away at Texas property rights for the "security" of the "nation." In fact, the 35 federal laws that were voided to construct the Border Wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, were never re-instated by President Obama, and Hutchinson and Cornyn have been instrumental in ensuring that it stays that way in perpetuity.

I think most folks, who do not have access to anything beyond the narrow confines of corporate-controlled television, radio, and mainstream 'news', should be offered more diverse tools to wrap their heads around these questions: whose nation? what "good" and for whose benefit? Whose "security"? Certain property owners in Texas are deemed as violable and rapable--as proven along the 18 foot tall Border Wall. The message of Manifest Destiny 'deep in the heart of Texas' was made explicitly clear by the majority of Texans (Republicans, conservative, white-streamed), that if you are Indigenous, a woman, an Elder, poor, a farmer, a pastoralist-subsistence herder, Catholic, refuse to assimilate and critically question the underlying rationale of the U.S. regime and goons of the transnationals, you are very likely to be severed of your land rights in the name of "security."

The best defense is a collective defense. Those currently targeted could save themselves a great amount of suffering and stress, and save themselves a huge amount of $$ and precious energy by studying the arguments against eminent domain, condemnation, and expedited taking ... as these played out in the LRG Valley. By studying the tactics and methods deployed by the government and corporations against land owners in the Lower Rio Grande Valley--and their push back--currently targeted peoples may be able to alter the debate. The pertinent documents are all available on the University of Texas School of Law website devoted to the cases. At http://www.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/borderwall/

Don't be surprised if suddenly, all the properties along the path of the Keystone are suddenly found to be the "hiding places" of "terrorists", "drug lords", "cartels" and "potential threats" because that is the legal-moral framework that the government used to violently take the lands from Indigenous nations along the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

When I say 'violently' I mean that, when the collective action of hundreds of affected land owners organized significant resistance--refusing the government access to their lands-- the U.S. sent in armed personnel, used the presence of "boots on the ground", in the act of 'visiting' the property owners, one by one, in each community to enforce the taking of lands. Armed personnel (paid by U.S. tax payers) are used by the government to tell the targeted peoples that the constitution no longer exists in the targeted lands. Thank the Patriot Act for this reality--yea, it will eventually come after you, no matter what you thought your racial-religious-citizenship-geography protection buffer is/was. Now, folks along the Lower Rio Grande River and the Border Wall, are currently debating questions like this:

"It will be interesting to see if the dominant group--white Texans in the 'heartland'--and big ranchers’ voices are stronger--and if it will be decided that their property rights (perceived as inviolable and sacred)--are worth preserving. It will be interesting to see if the Texas dominant society will oppose the condemnation of those groups' lands. Why? Because in all their 'public opinions' of 2006 (Secure Fence Act, etc.) and 2007-2009 (during the construction of the Border Wall), they made it quite clear that it was 'OK" to use eminent domain to condemn the Aboriginal Title, Treaty Lands, Crown Grant lands, and individual private property of the low-income, Indigenous South Texans who lost land to eminent domain for the "security" of the "nation."

Perhaps the transnationals are now puncturing peoples' fragile conceptions of who is the 'enemy'?

Perhaps it would be an irony, if the most impoverished in Texas (not coincidentally all the counties of the Texas border are the highest poverty zones across the ENTIRE U.S....) though not without agency, put their vote with economic "security" ...
Afterall, that is what the transnationals have already counted on. Just as they calculated correctly that the majority of non-Indigenous peoples would not think, but rather would react to a barrage of anti-terror and 'security of the nation' jingoism which were key factors in the condemnations along the Texas border.

Interesting juncture, eh?

Finally, I wish to say a heartfelt 'good luck' to those whose lives are being destroyed by the Keystone-project which is connected to one of the most violent mass-scale destructive acts on our beautiful planet Earth. Decolonize Your Mind. If we are all going to go down due to the extreme disconnect, greed, selfishness, and self-absorption of the 1% and their 'end game', shall we not work to decolonize the borders of hate and isolation they have constructed, and instead, work collectively for dignity?

When will humanity (in Texas beyond borders) stand together, beyond differences, deception, corruption, the hate and isolation, the fictions, and dismantle completely this thoroughly violent and cannibalistic system?

Iinidii Ideeshch'il [There is Thunder; There is Lightning]

TEXAS AND THE FEDERAL GOVT TARGET TEXAS BORDER COMMUNITIES AS STAGING GROUND FOR INTER-AMERICAN WAR: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES BEYOND BORDERS EXPENDABLE

Military Operation Architects in Partnership with the  'South Texan's Property Rights Association', whose members are included in photo with McCaffrey.   Photo Source: BR McCaffrey Associates LLC, at  http://www.mccaffreyassociates.com/pages/photos.htm, accessed February 9, 2011.

"Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, September 2011" [CLICK]


Excerpt:

"I. PURPOSE
A: The Task In June 2011, Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples requested that two senior military officers, Gen. Barry McCaffrey (Ret.) and Gen. Robert Scales (Ret.), develop and recommend a military-style strategy and operational and tactical requirements to secure the Texas portion of the U.S.-Mexico border. He also requested specific information related to the financial, manpower, technology and other resources needed to secure the Texas-Mexico border; and ways in which the roles and resources of U.S. federal agencies could be optimally deployed to facilitate implementation of these recommendations" (15).

"Texas Rangers Lead the Fight

 
The first principle of Texas border security operations is to empower local law enforcement. Soldiers often say that bad strategies cannot be salvaged by good tactics--- but bad tactics can defeat a good strategy. This saying simply reinforces the truism that no national strategy that seeks to defeat narco-terrorism can be adequately confronted unless tactical units, such as local police and federal border security stations, are properly staffed, resourced, competent and well-led.

"The Texas Rangers lead a cooperative program that brings together a ground, air and marine assault capability. Ranger Reconnaissance Teams are the tactical combat elements in the war against narco-terrorists. Each participating federal, state and local agency voluntarily adds its unique capabilities to the teams. The Texas Highway Patrol acts as an outer perimeter for the Rangers by funneling traffic toward Ranger border positions.

Tactical contact teams, deploying along the Rio Grande in small, concealed positions, are able to respond immediately to intelligence from Autonomous Surveillance Platform (ASP) units, DPS and National Guard surveillance helicopters, as well as calls to UCs from local police or citizens. DPS Dive Teams conduct SONAR scans of the Rio Grande and assist in recovery of vehicles and contraband in splashdown areas" (12-13).

LAW-Defense Commentary:

Not coincidentally, State and Federal military strategy on the so-called 'war on terror' will increase endangerment and suffering to humanity in the Texas-Mexico border region, many who are Indigenous peoples--not immigrants--of the region and the Americas.  

In the Texas-Mexico border region, it is racism, land dispossession, subjugation, exploitation effected through organized armed violence, militarization and militarism which have negatively affected  human suffering, disease, poverty, hunger, health,  biodiversity, and cultural revitalization.  The accumulative violent impacts of war and armed conflict has impacted Indigenous peoples which in the above scenario are abstracted and distorted as minor factors.  Once again, a resource war is being waged and Indigenous peoples are being crafted as 'suspects', 'expendables', and 'foreigners' in our own lands, and violence is key to the colonizers' war.   

The questions are who are the privileged 'local' decision-makers architecting the use of a military assault against the least privileged and most culturally, socially, economically, and legally disadvantaged communities along the Texas border?  And, who are the so-called 'local' interest groups colluding at the table with the State and Federal government to destroy lands, cultures, families, heritage, histories, and existences?   And, to what extent is their an entanglement or intersection between this war plan and uranium mining, oil extraction, water privatization, and mega-projects (border wall, highways, rail systems) in the region?  What are the social relations at the decision-making table?

Those responsible for the architecting of neo-ethnocide are enabling the U.S. and Texas military industrial complex to 'throw-away' the Indigenous communities along the Texas border deemed retrograde, 'savage', in the way of elites' development.  The use of massively organized violence, and the construction of Indigenous peoples as 'suspects', and as expendable in the war against Mother Earth, i.e. colonialist 'progress', is a genocidal movement. 

LAW-Defense denounces the "Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment."  It is the current-day extension of the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny into the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and a revisiting of the massacres and removals experienced by our foreparents. It is a template for genocide.

LAW-Defense calls upon the Obama administration and U.S. Congress to uphold the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights laws. 

LAW-Defense invokes the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for the protection of humanity of the Texas-Mexico border region against neo-settler colonialism, militarism, and genocide. 

Letter of Protest to Valley Morning Star Article: "Ranches of Significance"

Dear Editor, Valley Morning Star

Ha’shi? Danzho. Warm greetings.

I am the daughter of hereditary Chiefly families of the Ndé, and the Hada’didla Ndé, related to the Cúelcahén Ndé, Nakaiyé Ndé and Suma Ndé through my maternal and paternal lineage. I am a direct lineal descendent of Lipan Apache Chiefly peoples, and the Chiefly peoples of the Moctezuma family with Crown Land Grant Titles made between Indigenous peoples and Spain. In American, this would be translated as: I am Lipan Apache, Jumano Apache, Tlaxcalteca, and Nahua, and Indigenous to the Traditional Territory of Konitsąąįį gokíyaa (Big Water Lipan Country).

Recently my mother mailed me a copy of the article entitled, “Ranches of Significance,” (Rio Living, Section D, January 22, 2012), because she wished to share the published list of the rancherías, ranchos, and comunidades which are relevant to our families’ long place-based and land-based history in the Texas-northeast Mexico region.

At first glance, I was hoping to be encouraged on the author’s emphasis on local heritage life ways of the Original Peoples, which are the underlying roots of South Texas cultures. The European immigrant and settler societies borrowed fundamental concepts and knowledge systems from Indigenous peoples of the entire South Texas-North-eastern Mexico region.

After beginning to read this article, unfortunately, I encountered a firm barrier which deeply impacted my reading of this article.

I am troubled by the continuation of a particular discursive pattern, one which has for too long saturated the settler society’s racist imaginary of Indigenous peoples of our homelands. I want to share my views of the negative characterizations of ‘Native Americans’ perpetuated in Mr. Rozeff’s article, and to comment with an Indigenous perspective about why I think it is cruel, harmful and wrong for this kind of bias to be published in popular, mainstream Texas media. 

I want to take this opportunity to provide critical feedback about the misinformation published in this article, and help the Editors gauge the diverse and critical consciousness of your readership. I also hope that this letter to the Editor will provide you a moment to re-think how race functions when minimally researched information is being provided to your readers as ‘facts’ and the harmful and indoctrinating role that public media plays in perpetuating racism against Native Americans-Indigenous peoples. I hope that my review comments will be used to educate your readers, and provide insights to your staff members.

An important misconception which circulates among the settler society in Texas, specifically South Texas, is that “Indians”, “Natives”, and “Native Americans” are ‘vanished’, ‘disappeared’, and in the ‘past.’ Nothing is further than the truth in South Texas, where indigenous peoples are a majority-minoritized population. Read ‘minoritized’ as colonized and subjugated. According to the National Congress of American Indians latest findings, Texas is #10, among all 50 U.S. States, for the highest number of Native Americans today, and growing every day. Over 250,000 persons of Native American heritage were counted in the 2010 Census data. (See “Census releases data on American Indian population,” at http://news.yahoo.com/census-releases-data-american-indian-population-205256402.html.) However, when Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahua, and numerous other Native American groups are figured, this would substantially increase Texas’ Native American population. However, state practices which lump all Native American people together in Texas as “Mexican”, “Hispanic” or “Latinos” works to mask the underlying reality.

This information is relevant to my critique, because it ensures that the readers of your paper get an 21^st century, Indigenous perspective and critical view of an entrenched racial bias that continues to be circulated among settler societies and the media they control, thus furthering ideological objectives geared to hard-wire problematic views about “Native Americans” among the masses.

In his second paragraph, when he opened his article with large generalizations about Spain’s colonization of the (current-day) Lower Rio Grande and (current-day) northeastern Mexico, Mr Rozeff states: “Aggressive Native Americans were no longer a major problem to the primitive settlers.” This is a problematic in several ways. Today, it is considered an act of violence to use adjectives and qualifiers, grafted from 19^th century texts and discourses, i.e. “aggressive”, next to “Native Americans.” This qualifier has been mass-produced and mass-circulated across many diverse mediums (films, pamphlets, comic books, postcards, advertisement, novels, news clippings, hate literature, etc.), and specifically attached to social and legal processes constructed to systematically destroy Native Americans in Texas. 

This discourse immediately instructs readers to adopt, uncritically, the anti-Indigenous racism, biases, ideas, and belief systems that are bound up in that qualifier, instructing readers to think about Indigenous peoples in narrowly conceived ways. It teaches the point of view of settlers, empires, nations, and developers who often used cultural, social, legal, and military force to remove, relocate, enslave, traffic, and subjugate Native American-Indigenous peoples into forced labour in institutions developed specifically to control the Indigenous land owners’ behaviours.

It is important to provide the Indigenous counter-history, perspective and up-to-date facts about the realities, not the Texas Cultural Myths. 

In the sentence, referring again to Native Americans, Rozeff alludes that Indigenous peoples “were no longer a problem.” In a sweeping generalization, Rozeff glazes over the literal and violent reality of complex processes whereby Indigenous diplomacy, broken agreements, deceptions, and extreme resistances against dispossession and roaming killing gangs led to numerous violent confrontations where Indigenous peoples were violently subjugated against our will and consent. 

The underlying reality, what Rozeff is so easily dismissing, is genocidal methods which were deployed by resource-hungry settler groups, individuals, and powerful elites who based their wealth on dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ traditional territory. Rozeff’s statements disguise genocide as an acceptable history and treatment of Native American Sovereigns, i.e. the Proprietary Title Holders, also known as Aboriginal Title holders in international law. Aboriginal Title is still a contentious issue, i.e. unresolved and ongoing, between the current-day lineal, hereditary descendants of aforementioned Aboriginal peoples who live all across each and every county in South Texas: the Ndé, anthropologically known as ‘Lipan Apaches.’

Furthermore, in the very same sentence , Rozeff refers to “the primitive settlers.” Thanks to the excellent development of critical and peer-reviewed investigations of South Texas’ Indigenous history and ongoing present, we know now that the majority of peoples receiving land grants from Spain (who Rozeff is so quick to racialize as “primitives” and so easily dislocates from indigenous place through use of “settlers”) were Indigenous peoples. Hereditary descendants of Chiefly Tlaxcalteca and Nahua peoples entered into Sovereign agreements, treaties, and ‘Grants” with the Spanish Sovereigns. The founding Indigenous Land Grant peoples comprised a highly complex society of Indigenous peoples who gained ‘rights’ to lands through a variety of legal measures. Three of these strategies for gaining land grant titles were through military service, conversion to Catholicism, and agricultural/ranching promises to work the lands granted. There is extensive literature about the Lipan Apache wars against the Tlaxcalteca and Nahua settlement in Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, as well as South Texas—key battlegrounds of Lipan Apache homeland defense. Thus, a great majority of the so-called, alleged “primitives” and “settlers” with Crown Title grants, were in fact Tlaxcalteca, Nahua, Otomi, Purepecha, and diverse indigenous peoples who made and who their direct descendants have made immense contributions to South Texas society today. 

It is considered highly problematic in the United States and in international law to describe Indigenous peoples, and any group deemed as a ‘racial minority’ within a State as “primitive.” The discourse of the “primitive” has long been used through settler colonial regimes and societies to enact violence and to perpetuate ideologies of hate, oppression, marginalization, exploitation, and normalized poverty. South Texas is analyzed through this lens by numerous researchers globally.

It is unacceptable to allow this pernicious form of racism and oppression to be allowed to be published and disseminated broadly in mass media communication in South Texas, Texas, the U.S. and in the bi-national region. I think there more work could be done to examine how the values and misinformed perceptions of history as perpetuated by the colonizing groups’ descendants are deemed ‘fact’ and ‘scientific’, and automatically qualify to be ‘waived’ for any verification of fact or truth. 

This form of unverified ‘authenticity’ is one of the many ways in which non-Indigenous peoples carry out some of the tools of domination they carry around in their ‘knapsack’ of privilege. Without critical examination of the underlying structures which enable dehumanizing and racist writing, it is allowed to be ‘out-ed’ as ‘history’. This pattern and this article demands that I protest this form of Native American bashing, and this be disrupted.

Entrenched and normalized racism, discrimination, and criminalization of Indigenous Peoples in the Texas-Mexico border region is allowed to go without critical review, and without disruption causes deep and irreparable harm against Indigenous peoples in the Valley and South Texas who are forced to endure the banal ignorance of those who continue to minimize our massive contributions to world knowledge, world history, and hemispheric systems upon which everyone depends for daily sustenance. Our peoples, our cultures, our values, and our ongoing existences are not ‘folklore’, nor ‘myth’; we are not frozen in ‘ancient pasts’; we are not your grotesque spectacle and backdrops for settler society’s degrading notions of ‘cultural’ and ‘multicultural’ tourism, consumption and continuing theft and appropriation of our heritage—a complete knowledge system—not a ‘fiesta’.

The Native American-Indigenous peoples of South Texas and North-eastern Mexico are not ‘primitive’ fixtures and backdrops of the settler society’s privileged ‘heroic pioneer’ stories. The ‘pioneer’ legacy is an reality of violent disenfranchisement, colonization, and subjugation of the Aboriginal Title owners. When you gaze upon the massive impoverished communities along the border wall, remember, you are looking into the ongoing effects of the ‘pioneers’ racialized debasement of Native Americans ability to exercise our self-determination in the 21^st century. 

Indigenous peoples of diverse heritage lineages are the majority population in the past and in the present of South Texas. However, settlers must still be educated by Indigenous peoples to use critical lenses to ‘see’ us without racist lenses and racist stories handed to you by the official histories of colonizing Texas Creation Myths. The majority of the so-called ‘Mexican’, ‘Mexican-American’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latinos’—as the settler society insists on naming us—are the Indigenous peoples who comprise the backbone of the LRG Valley and South Texas majority population. Indigenous peoples are still living in our original homelands, our land base at the fringes of economic, health, education, and political participation in controlling our destinies. This is the flip side of the legacy of settler pioneer society. Today, we are struggling to revitalize our cultures, values, spirituality, governance practices, community practices, and extended family institutions and Indigenous Knowledge Systems—regardless of the settler ideologies of imposed race.

Mr. Rozeff’s article put race at the center of the public mind-eye, and set the theme for this response to counter-narrate Rozeff’s “aggressive Native Americans” and “primitive settlers.” There are numerous other errors published in this article that deserve close and sustained public scrutiny and sustained criticism by all critical readers. The public of Texas and the Texas-Mexico transborder and transnational region deserves better, and deserves an open and respectful space to share community-based knowledge of local peoples’ Indigenous histories—and ongoing presence and present, which is a dynamic and exciting terrain of issues! However, when we as Indigenous peoples must continue to have to educate the settler society, by engaging this kind of ‘conquering history’—and refuse to be further marginalized, shut-down, silenced, shamed, and forced to swallow this kind of rhetoric –it only promotes a climate of fear, intimidation, and anger against the colonizers. My intention is to open up a space where deep learning, critical thinking, dialogue and a paradigm shift will occur.

It is my hope that my critique opens a community-wide dialogue about ongoing forms and modes of racism perpetrated against Native American peoples of the Americas in Texas. In our Ndé and Nahua languages, we have no real word for border or wall. We have to force our language to make new words to adapt to the ongoing violent dispossession waged against Indigenous peoples of the Lower Rio Grande and South Texas. We had to force our Indigenous mother tongues to create new words for ‘border’ and ‘wall.’ 

The Ndé are in a process of self-determination, land reclamation, cultural revitalization, and self-governance. It is likely that within our lifetimes, Texas will finally be held accountable in international law for a history of genocide committed against Indigenous peoples. It is likely in our lifetimes that Texas and the U.S. will be pressured to formally, officially and politically recognize the Aboriginal Title of Ndé peoples. 

History written by, with, for, and alongside Indigenous Peoples is an innovative site for building a different world view and framework that will provide a more secure, stable and prosperous society, economy, and multi-plural society with Indigenous peoples engaged in self-determination. 

Conquering history, written without Indigenous Peoples, and without an examination of colonization, dispossession, erasure, and structural violence, will only continue to sculpt and inscribe very painful and contentious divides between Indigenous peoples of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, South Texas, the transborder region ... and the colonizing settler society. 

Ahe’he’e, Gracias, Thank you.

Margo Tamez, Ph.D.

Member, Lipan Apache Band of Texas

Co-Founder, Lipan Apache Women Defense, El Calaboz Ranchería

Co-Founder, Emilio Institute for Indigenous Human Rights, El Calaboz Ranchería

O Holy Night, in Dine' ('Navajo') by Jana Mashonee and Silent Night in Apache

Indigenous Language Loss and Revitalization: While Nde' of South Texas and Lower Rio Grande River region have suffered irreparable harm related to language loss, and language revitalization efforts occur without the aid of Texas and the U.S.--historical oppressors--today, the effort to recuperate language is aided by inspiration derived from closely related indigenous peoples with historical ties to Nde of Texas.

Texas (and Northeastern Mexico) is the traditional homeland and customary territory of Southern Nde' Peoples, who are close cultural relatives of Navajo, Western and Eastern Apache, and Dene peoples of North America, inclusive to northeastern Mexico.

Indigenous Peoples have the right to practice, speak, learn in, read, and to be educated in our mother tongues. Though our mother tongues have been forcefully stolen from us, through the assimilative violence of states and colonizing laws, today, thanks to the decades of hard work at the international level, Indigenous Peoples have rights--globally and at the local level (that means in the country, state, province in which we reside)-- to revitalize and recover what has been stolen and lost through no fault of our own.

Today, States have a duty and responsibility to change assimilative laws and practices, and to provide economic, social, and political aid to ensure that Indigenous Peoples in their respective bounded areas are protected from further cultural harm and must aid in the processes to support Indigenous Peoples to speak, read, and learn in our own languages.

Texas has been historically severely resistant to breaking from its oppressive and subjugating political, economic, and social systems as they affect Lipan Apaches and many indigenous peoples in the state.

Lipan Apaches continue to work systematically for self-determination and to break the violent chains of non recognition, internal colonization, and 4th World status in our own homeland Konitsaahii gokiyaa.

See, UNDRIP, Articles 11, 13, 14.

O Holy Night (Written in Navajo)
Hodiyin tł’ée’go Sǫ’ bee da’dinnídíingo Áko Yisdá’iiníiłii bi’dizhchį́ Diné ti’dahooníhę́ę baazhníyáago Bijéí biyi’di haa bił dahóózhǫǫd ’Áádóó ch’ééh deeskai yę́ę bił nídahoozhǫǫd Háálá chohoo’̨́ bee ’adideezdláád Yaa ’ádaahnééh diyingo nidaal’a’í ’Éí deísółts’ą́ą́’! Christ yizhchį́ yaa dahalne’ Hodiyin tł’éego Christ ’éí bi’dizhchį́!

Enjoy this beautiful example of indigenous language empowerment and self-determination!

Gozhoo (In beauty)

U.S. OFFICIAL 'APOLOGY' TO NATIVE AMERICANS, "A SORRY SAGA OR FIRST STEP?"

Without Procedures for Redress and Restitution, Obama's 'Apology' to Native Americans for Historical and Contemporary Harms is Severely Insufficient to Address Genocide Histories and Realities Involved in the Necessary Process Related to Supporting the Recovery, Recuperation and Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples in Texas and the Confluent Texas-Mexico Indigenous Border(ed) Region.

Commentary excerpted from:

Fourth World Eye

A Sorry Saga or a First Step?

Feb 17, 2010 by adol77dai51

An article recently surfaced in Indian Country Today entitled “A Sorry Saga,” in which the author brings attention to the Native American Apology Resolution signed by President Obama on December 19^th, as part of a defense appropriation spending bill. While the Resolution had passed as a stand-alone piece of legislation in the Senate, it was attached to and passed with a defense appropriations spending bill within the House before making its way to President Obama. The final version of the resolution shifted from being an official apology from the US government to an apology “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.” The real crux of the Indian Country Today article revolves around the lack of publicity surrounding the apology and asks the question, “Is an apology that’s not said out loud really an apology?”

Prior to this apology, President Obama has been largely lauded for keeping his prior commitments to Indian Country (convening a tribal leaders summit in November to hear concerns; appointing tribal leaders to IHS and Native American Affairs posts; largely maintaining and even, in some cases, increasing funding to Indian Country for this year’s budget). Ironically, it is this hidden apology that has caused some to backpeddle their vocal support for the Obama Administration. I would argue that many may view this obscure and amalgamous apology as a step backward rather than forward as it provides the perfect metaphor for the US’ longstanding nebulous public policy toward American Indian people. The US, throughout the years, has managed to promote a half in half out relationship with Indian Country in which sovereignty is recognized in pieces rather than in whole (as a long-standing continuation of the Western colonial reductionist vein of thought that brought us the Dawes Act, etc). Thus this apology, passed with no public acknowledgement, coming from the “American people” rather than the US government, and with a caveat to ensure that it cannot be construed to allow legal culpability, reeks of this prior paradigm that many in Indian Country counted would change and were hoping was changing with the election of President Obama.

Revisiting Indian Country Today’s question, I would propose what I believe to be a more pertinent question: Is an apology without subsequent action really an apology? A true apology, publicized or not, must be followed by real demonstrable action that marriages sentiments to words, words to policy, and policy to action. I laud this apology as long as it is a step toward such action. A relevant and pressing issue of substance is the current US stance against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In 2007, the US, along with Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, were the only countries to vote against the adoption of the UNDRIP. Australia has since overturned their decision in early 2009 and did so only two months after their official governmental apology to the Aboriginal populations. A true test then of the intent of the Native American Apology Resolution will be if the Obama Administration utilizes this apology as a foothold for reversing the current US position opposing the UNDRIP. Such an adoption would truly demonstrate President Obama’s commitment to and respect for Indian Nations and for creating a new paradigm in which true nation to nation relations can begin.

The Upscale of U.S. Military Operations Targets Texas Border and Northeastern Mexico

"Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, September 2011"
Report commissioned by Texas Department of Agriculture, Todd Staples, Commissioner.

An Open Letter to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: A Shawnee-Lenape Perspective

 


 

An Open Letter to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: A Lenape Perspective
10 October 2011

by Steven Newcomb

Greetings on Colonization Day,

I begin by prayerfully remembering our free and independent ancestors, the Lenape and all the Original Nations and Peoples of this vast TurtleIsland(Mother Earth), and of the entire Western Hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America.

As you ‘occupy Wall Street,’ I ask you to reflect: You are on the island upon which our Indigenous ancestors lived and thrived for thousands and thousands of years. Please take a moment to recognize that we, the Original Nations, still exist here onTurtleIsland. We have the right to exist as free and distinct nations with full self-determination.

What is the true source of our many grievances? It is the mentality and behavior of greed. The word ‘America’ is the combination of two Latin words ame (a command form of ‘love!’) and rica (riches and wealth). The effects of an insatiable desire for and the pursuit of riches and wealth first afflicted our Indigenous nations and peoples, and now afflict all peoples. Clearly, we need to address and rectify the political economy of greed, and the destruction it has caused and continues to cause.

Greed is an unsustainable value, but it is also an illness that is rooted in addiction. It is maintained in keeping with the slogan, ‘The more you eat (consume), the more you want.’ The addict will stop at nothing to get a fix; he will sacrifice anyone and anything to feed his addiction. For this reason, an economy of greed has and will continue to sacrifice the health and well-being of women, children, men, and all living things on Mother Earth. As a great Anishinaabe leader has profoundly stated, “Their way of living is our way of dying.” It is rapidly becoming the ”way of dying” for everyone.

Today, after centuries of invasion and predatory consumption (‘devouring’) of our traditional lands, territories, and resources onTurtleIsland and elsewhere, the waters of the rivers and streams that were once pure enough for our ancestors to drink from are now filthy and poisoned. Water is Life. The chemical contamination of Water, and, therefore, of Life itself, is emblematic of a way of life predicated upon patterns of greed that are destined to collapse.

The suffering of human beings and the destructiveness to life on Mother Earth has been a direct consequence of colonization, domination, dehumanization, militarization and war.

Unfortunately, these conceptions and behaviors have become the metaphorical bricks and mortar of the current unsustainable world order. They are expressed in a number of documents issued in the fifteenth century by the Holy See at Vatican Hill in Rome; these documents called for the domination of all non-Christian peoples throughout the world, and for the theft of all our lands and territories. To this day, the ideas found in those papal documents are woven into US Indian law and policy.

Those Church documents unleashed claims to a right of conquest and domination in the name of a “right of Christian discovery.” The monarchies of Christendom used those documents to claim the territories of our nations in the Western hemisphere, simply because our territories were not yet in the possession of any Christian prince or dominator (‘dominorum christianorum’). This paradigm of domination has been used to give governments and corporations virtually unlimited access to our traditional lands and territories. If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline will be but the latest example.

Despite the destructive effects of more than five centuries of subjugation, as the Originally Free Nations and Peoples of Turtle Island, we still remember what it is to be truly free as exemplified by our ancestors. Our ancestors evolved life-ways and values that challenged European feudalism, medievalism, and lordship. Today, forces seem to be working toward neo-feudalism and neo-medievalism, with a long range plan for irreversible global domination in the name of ‘national security,’ under the unblinking eye of the surveillance state.

We have entered the ‘Brave New World’ written about by a prescient mind a generation ago. Not only have we survived, but we now have the capability of expressing ourselves in the language of the Colonizers, and we are maintaining the message that our great leaders tried to convey to your ancestors: Stop the patterns of destruction and greed before it is too late. The Chernobyl-scale release of radiation atFukushima, Japan is a clarion call.

We must invert the key symbol of domination. Once inverted, the patriarchal symbol of ‘the dome of domination’ becomes a bowl; when filled with water, the bowl is the symbol of the Sacred Feminine, as exemplified by theWhite Buffalo Calf Woman. She was the one who brought the Sacred Pipe to the Oglala Lakota Nation.

The Living Laws and Values of Turtle Island that the White Buffalo Calf Woman brought include: Honor and Respect; Compassion and Pity; Sharing and Caring (to carry the well-being of the People in one’s heart); Patience and Fortitude; Bravery and Courage; Humility; Seeking Wisdom and Seeking Understanding. In keeping with the White Buffalo Calf Woman’s teachings, Love and the Beautification of Life are healing values that need to replace the love of riches and wealth.

Next May, 2012, a year of great transformation, we will be inNew Yorkat the United Nations as part of our work toward decolonization at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The theme of the Permanent Forum will be the destructive legacy and deadly impact of the Doctrines of Discovery and Domination on Indigenous Nations and Peoples and on Mother Earth. We ask for your support by renouncing the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.

Steven Newcomb, Shawnee/Lenape, is co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and a columnist for the Indian Country Today Media Network.

OCCUPIED ON THE TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER! DECOLONIZE WALL STREET!

A Key Destination of Tar Sands Oil?... Texas-Mexico Border. Do Tell.

After watching the full testimonies held at the U.S. State Department on the issue of whether the U.S. should permit TransCanada Corporation to construct and operate a pipeline for transporting lethal oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, situated in the Traditional Territory of the Dene, I am even more alarmed about deep knowledge gaps and breakages, and the colonial blinders which are still preventing the majority spokespersons on these issues to examine the interlocking relationship of the Tar Sands in Dene country to Militarization in Nde' country (border wall, police terror state, detention centers, mega-rail, mega-bridge, and mega-highway projects connecting Lower Rio Grande Valley to northeastern Mexico 'ports'). There still seems to be an significant vaguery among the peoples (on both sides of the issue) about what could happen to the oil, the lands, peoples, water, air, and life... after refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, and where it would travel from its 'distribution' points along the Texas-Mexico border.

I'm more worried today than yesterday, witnessing the compelling testimonies and aghast at the lack of inquisitiveness on the part of the movement to follow the documentation trail left by Koch Industries (see September 24, 2011 post, scroll down). It is stunning how well the Texas connections to the oil-chemical-transportation League of Corporate Empires benefits from the colonial and racist implications of geographical-historical ignorance in the U.S. about indigenous struggles in South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande.

Again, please refer to the September 24, 2011 post on this site (scroll down), providing important details regarding Koch Industries' statement explicitly saying that the refined fuels will be going to Mexico, and from there other sites across the hemisphere. To my knowledge, this is the only site in the hemisphere that is making this crucial connection. Unfortunately, this is beginning to feel like the same isolation room that we experienced around the border wall.

I wonder if the 'progressive' camps of either movement--the anti-Keystone XL Pipeline or the Occupy Wall Street movement--perceive that their government and related corporations constructed the border wall, and now the MEGA-COLOSSAL HEAVY RAIL FREIGHT BRIDGE in concert with a much larger transhemispheric 'Security Prosperity Partnership, which entails transporting something considered a 'priority matter of national security' OVER the border wall which stands in the traditional territory of Lipan Apaches?

How will this happen on the ground?

Through 2 important mega-projects currently underway across the Texas-Mexico border:

1. A large rail transport system, which, low and behold, will traverse above the border wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Cameron County.

2. The Trans-Texas Corridor (connecting Albert, Canada to South Texas, to Mexico).

For a more in-depth view from El Calaboz, read the September 24, 2011 post.

Aboriginal Title, Indigenous Proprietary Title, and Nde' Inherent Rights to Lands and Territories, (cont'd)

Picking up where I left off earlier,

Consider this view, excerpted from Gordon I. Bennett, 27 Buff. L. Rev. 617 (1977-1978)
Aboriginal Title in the Common Law: A Stony Path through Feudal Doctrine, Bennett, Gordon I.
[ 20 pages, 617 to 636 ]

"In Johnson v. McIntosh ° and Worcester v. Georgia," two landmark
decisions that still constitute the locus classicus on the subject,
Chief Justice Marshall referred to the principle evolved by the European
powers in their settlement of America that "discovery gave title
to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was
made, against all other European governments, which title might be
consummated by possession."'' The Chief Justice added the vital
caveat, however, that this principle could not
annul the previous rights of those who had not agreed to it. It regulated
the right given by discovery among the European discoverers;
but could not affect the rights of those already in possession,'either
as aboriginal occupants, or as occupants by virtue of a discovery
made before the memory of man. It gave the exclusive right to purchase,
but did not found that right on a denial of the possessor to
sell.' 3 [The original inhabitants] were admitted to be the rightful occupants
of the soil, with a legal as well as a just claim to retain possession
of it, and to use it according to their own discretion.14
Central to Marshall's analysis was the assertion that aboriginal rights
stem from ancient occupation per se, and are not dependent on a public
grant or official acknowledgment."
...
"Nor is it true, as respondent urges, that a tribal claim to any
particular lands must be based upon a treaty, statute, or other formal
government action."

"This view is confirmed by a whole cluster of Supreme Court decisions
and, most recently, by the Court of Claims in Lipan Apache
Tribe v. United States,'8 where Judge Davis dispelled any lingering
doubts:
Indian title based on aboriginal possession does not depend on sovereign
recognition or affirmative acceptance for its survival. Once
established in fact, it endures until extinguished or abandoned..."
"The correct enquiry is, not whether the Republic of Texas accorded
or granted the Indians any rights, but whether that sovereign extinguished
their pre-existing occupancy rights."

Ponder this.

Time to rest, until tomorrow...

(to be continued)

Aboriginal Title, Indigenous Proprietary Title, and Nde' Inherent Right to Self-Governance

A Underlying Issue Still Contested from Indigenous Perspectives: Neither the U.S. nor Texas Had Rights to Extinguish Aboriginal Title of Southern Lipan Apaches of South Texas & LRGV

While many indigenous peoples have contested the final decisions of the infamous Indian Claims Commission, few if any have ever set forth an analysis ourselves of the decisions, nor critiqued how these decisions effected the ongoing self-determination, survival and existence of Nde', or Southern Lipan Apaches in South Texas and in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Why? How and why did other indigenous peoples ('Mescaleros', et. al) ever become recognized as the sole proprietary owners of the traditional territories of Nde' of what is today South Texas, Lower Rio Grande Valley & River, and our territories in Mexico?

This is a grave harm, still to be resolved for Nde' self-determination. It is clear that our peoples, under great threat of genocidal destruction before and during the time of the Indian Claims Commission, were a vulnerable indigenous people without means to counter-act or to defend against this level of deceit and injustice.

Today, it is time to convene, and to re-assess the outcomes of the ICC, several decades later, and the work that will be entailed in launching an Aboriginal Title landmark case to prove Nde' Aboriginal Title and traditional territorial rights to Konitsaii Gokiyaa, Lipan country.

For now, here is something to absorb...

I believe it is time for a critical gathering of leadership to deconstruct the assumptions built withing the conclusions of the Indian Claims Commission, and the United States and Texas as beneficiaries, which effectively left unrecognized and peripheral all Nde' families, communities, and organizations.

Here is an excerpt of the final decision, and the full document is here: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/icc/v36/iccv36p023.pdf

Excerpt, 36 Ind. Cl. Comm. 7, Docket #22-C

"The Commission found the detailed reports submitted by the above experts to be informative. However, the Commission has rejected as conjectural, speculative, and not supported by the preponderance of the evidence t h e conclusions of p l a i n t i f f s ' expert witnesses as to the extent of Lipan and Mescalero aboriginal ownership of the lands claimed herein for the time periods in question. The Commission also r e j e c t s the p l a i n t i f f ' s

experts' conclusions as of the date of taking.

The defendant's expert witness was D r . Kenneth F. Neighbours, a

historian who has written extensively about the history of Texas and about i(afg Robert Neighbors, the famous Indian agent of the Texas tribehwho served in that capacity under both the Republic of Texas and the United States governments. His report, an ethnohistory of the Lipan and Mescalero Indians, and his testimony related chiefly to the land and Indian policies of the respective sovereignties that ruled Texas through the 19th century. Be

36 Ind. C l . C m . 7 65 concluded t h a t , as a r e s u l t of such p o l i c i e s , the Indians of Texas, and p a r t i c u l a r l y the Lipan and Mescalero Indians, did not have aboriginal t i t l e to any lands within the State of Texas, although a t various times these and other Indian t r i b e s had h i s t o r i c a l l y been located a t d i f f e r e n t places within t h e area. The Commission has rejected Dr. ~ e i g h b o u r s ' legal conclusions r e l a t i v e t o Indian t i t l e in the State of Texas as contrary to the law of the case.

16. Conclusion.

Based upon the foregoing findings of f a c t and a l l the evidence of

record, the Commission has concluded as follows:

(a) From time immemorial, through the periods of Spanish and Mexican sovereignty, and the Republic of Texas, and, u n t i l November 1, 1856, when, as a r e s u l t of the actions of the United States army in carrying out federal policy, it was compelled to vacate its ancestral home, the aboriginal Lipan Apache Tribe held Indian t i t l e to the following described land situated within that area i n Texas claimed by principal p l a i n t i f f herein :

Beginning a t that point on the Rio Grande River which is the

northwest corner of Zapata County; thence e a s t e r l y along the

common boundary of Zapata and Webb counties to t h e southeast corner of Webb County; thence northeasterly on a l i n e , crossing the Nueces River, to the town of Pawnee i n Bee County; thence

northwesterly on a l i n e to the northwest corner of Bandwa County; thence northwesterly on a l i n e to the northwest corner of Edwards County; thence south along the western boundary of Edwards County and adjoining Kinney County to the southwest corner of Kinney County on the Rio Grande River; thence southeasterly along the east bank of the Rio Grande River to the place of beginning.

(b) From time immemorial, through the periods of Spanish and Mexican and occupied exclusively i n Indian fashion a l a r g e a r e a i n eouth c e n t r a l 36 Ind. C1. Comm. 7 New Mexico and west Texas between the Rio Grande River and the Pecos

River. By v i r t u e of the Executive Order of May 29, 1873, e s t a b l i s h i n g the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation i n New Mexico, the Mescalero Apache Tribe relinquished to the United S t a t e s without the payment of compensation, Indian t i t l e t o a l l lands outside of the reservation. See Mescalero Apache Tribe v. United S t a t e s , 17 Ind. C1. Comm. 100 (1966).

Accordingly, May 29, 1873, is the e f f e c t i v e date of the extinguishment of a l l Mescalero aboriginal land claims including Mescalero Indian t i t l e t o the following described area in Texas.

Beginning a t t h e southeast corner of the S t a t e of New

Mexico; thence south-southwest on a l i n e across the Pecos

River t o the southeast corner of Reeves County Texas; thence

southwest on a l i n e to Ft. Davis i n J e f f Davis County; thence

northwest on a l i n e to the town of Van Horn in Culberson County; thence northwest on a l i n e to the northeast corner El Paso County, Texas, said corner being on the southern boundary of the S t a t e of New Mexico; thence e a s t e r l y along the southern boundary of the S t a t e of New Mexico to t h e p o i n t of beginning.

(c) The evidence of record does not support Lipan and Mescalero

aboriginal t i t l e claims to lands outside of the areas awarded above.

(d) The Tonkawa Tribe of Indians, second intervenors, herein has

f a i l e d t o prove by the preponderance of the evidence t h a t s a i d t r i b e is the successor in i n t e r e s t t o the a b o r i g i n a l Lipan Apache Tribe.""

Here is another view:

from, Aboriginal Title: The Modern Jurisprudence of Tribal Land Rights, by Paul G. McHugh, (Oxford University Press, 2011), 178-179.

"In Calder, Justice Hall drew upon the American cases on extinguishment when he indicated that aboriginal title 'could not therefore be extinguished except by surrender to the Crown or by competent legislative authority, and then only be specific legislation.' His inspiration was the opinion of Davis J in Lipan Apache (1967) where it was said that in 'the absence of a "clear and plain intention" in the public records that the sovereign "intended to extinguishe all of the claimants' rights" to their property' the Indian title continued at law. That approach towards the interpretation of statutes affecting Indian title had been used in a sequence of cases from at least the early twentieth century. Ultimately, it went back to a canon for the interpretation of Indian treaties given by Chief Justice Marshall who said (1832) that treaties to 'be construed, not according to the technical meaning of their words, but in the sense in which they would naturally be understood by Indians'. As the doctrine of aboriginal title became articulated in the courts, judges routinely invoked this 'clear and plain intention' rule for the interpretation of statutes."

(to be continued)