NDÉ ISDZÁNÉ ŁANOHWILE’~~Lipan Apache Women Defense ~~El Calaboz Rancheria, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, Eloisa Garcia Tamez and Margo Tamez Call on Indigenous & Environmental Experts To Weigh in on Survey

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, Eloisa Garcia Tamez and Margo Tamez Call on Indigenous & Environmental Experts To Weigh in on Survey

--FOR WIDE DISTRIBUTION--

The Government plans to have a Border Patrol agent and two environmental engineers visit Dr. Eloisa Tamez’s property in El Calaboz, Texas, for a preliminary environmental assessment on Tuesday at 1 PM.

If possible, it would be very helpful if a small team of experts could be assembled including one or more experts on (1) border environmental issues, (2) cultural / indigenous issues, and (3) land value issues (including easements). This team will be crucial not only to assist property owners during these initial stages of surveying border properties, but even more importantly when in a few months the Government starts to condemn land permanently mainly in AZ and Texas to build a border wall. Formulating an expert border team is critically important.

Please circulate this email to anyone with expertise who may be interested. Academics, please circulate to your listservs. Experts interested in helping, please email me your resume and a couple of sentences about your interest.

If any experts may be available to be at Dr. Tamez’s land in El Calaboz on Tuesday at 1 PM, please email Eloisa Tamez Eloisa.tamez1@gmail.com , Margo Tamez sumalhepa.nde.defense@gmail.com and pschey@centerforhumanrights.org. Thanks.

Best wishes,

Peter
_____________________

Peter A. Schey
President and Executive Director
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
256 S. Occidental Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca. 90057
Telephone: (213) 388-8693 ext. 104
Facsimile: (213) 386-9484
Electronic mail: pschey@centerforhumanrights.org
www.centerforhumanrights.org http://www.centerforhumanrights.org
www.legalizationusa.org http://www.legalizationusa.org
www.immigrantchildren.org http://www.immigrantchildren.org
www.casa-libre.org http://www.casa-libre.org/
www.vocesunidas.org http://www.vocesunidas.org
www.unityblueprint.org http://www.unityblueprint.org

2 comments:

kjk4Peace said...: Fellow Citizens: Let us come together in a historic showing we firmly oppose arm chair take over of our community life, our lands and our will to live free and independent lives. Cruel acts forced on us by narrow minded leaders must be non-violently challenged through the use of peacemaking and face to face negotiation with those who come forth with the intent to disregard the Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty and life as it has been lived for centuries.

Sudden change pursuant to ill-thought out views can only have negative outcomes that is not for humankind. We react with love and warm regard for our country and our neighbors throughout this Hemisphere and around the world. We believe by working one with another no differences can not be so great as to build walls that end up separating us and causing more and more harm.

We profess to be peace loving human beings who ask and asked for the law and constitutional rights of our democratic Republic to be adhered to and upheld in the face of leaders who have gone overboard and who seek to mismanage our environment, our economy, our views on education and our system for living our daily lives in harmony one with another.

I support the land owners rights to assemble and speak against harm being forced upon those who live near the Mexico-US and US-Canada Borders and we ask all government representatives to meet with us, not solely Homeland Security workers led by poorly informed personnel. Beyond our demand for a Town Hall Meeting and a Call for a Referendum respecting 1763 Land Grant rights, US constitutional rights, Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty Rights and for fair and reasonable negotiations under them and the Federal Court considerations that have come forth and those which are yet to be considered.

I am intent upon speaking at the El Calaboz Colonia meeting Tuesday, April 22, 2008 and ask that all who will join in be fully respected regardless of whether they utter what is on their hearts and in their minds. It is time that our Government abide by the will of the people at the local community level.; April 20, 2008 at 11:09 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm Psychotherapist Kenneth Koym
Let me reiterate, let us support the call of Eloisa, Margo and other Lipan Apache Women in Defense of Tough Government Personnel who threaten them with actions designed to set aside a 300-year old land Grant that existed before our country was founded in 1776.; April 21, 2008 at 6:31 AM

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)