NDÉ ISDZÁNÉ ŁANOHWILE’~~Lipan Apache Women Defense ~~El Calaboz Rancheria, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: Get Ready, Get Set... Nde' Cultural Survival in the Lower Rio Grande

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Get Ready, Get Set... Nde' Cultural Survival in the Lower Rio Grande

El Calaboz, Lower Rio Grande Valley, TX
December 18, 2009A year ago… the hostile enforcement policies of the US DHS/Secure Border Initiative against ancient border communities came to the foreground in landmark struggles on the Texas-Mexico border. The construction of the border wall through the middle of ancient, Rio Grande communities, forced Eloisa Garcia Tamez, (Lipan Apache), and community elders of El Calaboz Rancheria, as well as numerous poor Native land owners along the Rio Grande to stop the U.S. DHS from taking the community’s lands, ancient burials, archaeological resources, botanical and medicinal riparian zones, and their pastoral ways of life dependent upon cattle, grazing rights, water rights and Indigenous Peoples’ communal lifeways. The conflict raised constitutional, civil, and human rights in the face of intensified government force to pressure the community in numeros ways to surrender their lands.

Along the way… a robust independent media, and grass-roots network exposed deep corruption among local elites, scandal, and repressive government regimes managing the dispossession of the region’s poor Indigenous Peoples and persons along the Rio Grande's banks.

One year later…approximately eighty landowners continue to litigate their ancestral and communal land claims along the Texas-Mexico border. Success is measured in Chertoff's failures to wall in the resisting communities. Their firm resistances--based in living their daily lives and developing new strategies borrowed from older generations, from coalitions with like-minded grass roots Indigneous persons and groups; and working with allied media, law, grassroots, NGO's, nonprofits, faith-based communities, immigrant rights communities has enlarged the capacity of the prayer. Resistance and ceremony take on new meanings as the struggle continues.

Faith v. Greed...The new layer of corruption, beyond 'holes in the wall', is 'rigged jury system' and 'corrupt appraiser racket', whereby the U.S. and local industry leaders have attempted to shut out any possibility of a fair jury trial for litigants. 'Not on my shift', is fundamentally the message issued from Judge Hanen, in a ruling yesterday. Empaneled jurors will prevail, at least, as long as the resistance to oppressive government and industries continues.

Some of the land claims, such as Eloisa Garcia Tamez’, pre-date the United States as a sovereign nation, and are directly connected to Lipan Apache (Nde') peoples' struggles against forced colonization and dispossession by Spain, Texas, Mexico and the U.S. The Indigenous Peoples rights to exist as self-determining communities is gaining traction, in a region with a history of slavery, Jim Crow, hacendado culture, and harsh repression. In the face of increasing public criticism of the border wall, and claims of human rights violations before the Inter-American Commission/OAS, Indigenous Peoples are reframing and redefining the border wall conflict. We are organizing our networks around a framework of ‘Indigenous Peoples & Principles.’
(Part I)
Stay tuned...

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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)