NDÉ ISDZÁNÉ ŁANOHWILE’~~Lipan Apache Women Defense ~~El Calaboz Rancheria, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: 05/21/12

Monday, May 21, 2012

LAW-Defense, UT School of Law Human Rights Clinic, and UBCO Professor Partner on U.N. CERD Submission | Expose Increased U.S. Human Rights Violations along Texas-Mexico Border Wall

(El Calaboz, TX) On May 10, 2012, in another historic move, the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Dr. Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache Band of Texas; Faculty of Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan), and alongside the Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense), submitted a request for consideration under Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Addressed to Ms. Grabiella Habtom, Secretary of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland, the authors submitted a 134-page critical legal analysis of the United States’ human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples, Native Mexican Americans, and severely marginalized Latinos. In extensive detail, the brief exposes and underscores how the border wall and militarization have severely impacted all life along the Texas-Mexico border, and raises the critical perspectives of impacted peoples, several who provided affidavits, who call into question the legitimacy of the U.S. uses of controversial legislation, armed force, coercion, and eminent domain in the hostile dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ traditional lands, territories and resources.

The group plans to host an international telephonic press conference to discuss the key issues and purpose of the legal brief, the recommendations to the U.N.CERD, hoped-for outcomes, and the need to inform and educate the public and the international legal system about the U.S. government's human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples, Native Mexican Americans, and marginalized Latino peoples who live and work along the Texas-Mexico border.

See full text of the submission to U.N. CERD here:

U.N. CERD Texas-Mexico Border Wall Request-UT LAW HR CLINIC-LAWDEFENSE-MTAMEZ
Please stay tuned for details regarding the International Press Teleconference, forthcoming.

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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)