The Lost Ones: Long Journey Home [Lipan Apache Film of Genocide by U.S. Government & Boarding School Imprisonment]

NDE' RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS IN SUPPORT OF NDE' RIGHTS TO SELF-DETERMINATION AND INDIGENOUS AUTONOMY: A CRITICAL INTERROGATION INTO GENOCIDE AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, THE UNITED STATES, TEXAS, AND MEXICO AS SETTLER STATES AND LIPAN APACHE PEOPLES IN ONGOING PROCESS OF DECOLONIZATION WITH LANDS, TERRITORIES, REDRESS, RESTITUTION AND REVENUE SHARING.

Revisit Post: "12 Methods Used to Deny 'Lipan Apache' Genocide in Texas and to Regulate Nde' Struggles to the Normative Discourse of 'the Past' & 'Extinction' "
Posted: Friday, November 28, 2008

North American Indigenous Peoples' Caucus, March 19-20, 2011

A delegation comprised of Lipan Apaches of El Calaboz Rancheria, the Lipan Apache Band of Texas, and San Carlos Apache Tribe formed a working group to attend, learn, share, inform, and make interventions on the issues affecting Nde' and Nnee' ('Apache') peoples' self-determination and sovereignty. Some of these are borders, gender violence, taxation, the right to mobility across traditional territories, livelihoods, Traditional Knowledge, dispossession, expropriation, environmental destruction, militarization, uranium mining and production, oil drilling and extraction, Free Prior Informed Consent, Human Rights violations, self-determination and sovereignty, as well as Indigenous Proprietary Title ('Aboriginal Title').

Human Rights Violations Texas-Mexico Border Wall

As we prepare to submit our intervention, tomorrow, on the issues of Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Militarization and the Texas-Mexico border wall at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,

We warmly invite you, our sisters, brothers, and allies, to review the papers on these issues as they pertain to our case at this site, here.


Ahe'he'e

Margo Tamez

INDIGENOUS POLITICS FROM NATIVE NEW ENGLAND AND BEYOND: INTERVIEW WITH MARGO TAMEZ

The interview is accessible here.

Show #5
Join host J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an interview with Margo Taméz (Lipan Apache and Jumano-Apache) co-founder of the Lipan Apache Women Defense/Strength - an Indigenous People’s Organization of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that was formed to protect sacred sites, burial grounds, archaeological resources, ecological bio-diversity, and way of life of the indigenous people of the Lower Rio Grande, North America. Margo Taméz and her mother, Eloisa G. Taméz, founded the group in response to the US Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to force their surrender of hereditary lands in El Calaboz, Texas for the US/Mexico border wall. The US department of Homeland Security had voided over 35 federal laws, including environmental laws and laws protecting American Indian cultural and burial places. However, South Texas Apache women took the lead, in December 2007 in organizing the most persistent, and to date most successful, constitutional law case against the United States Army, US Customs Border Patrol and the US Department of Homeland Security. On October 22, 2008, Taméz delivered testimony in Washington, DC before the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter American Commission on Human Rights. The Commission examines and monitors compliance by member States of the OAS, including the US, with human rights obligations established in international law. Taméz will explain to us how this crisis came about and how she is working to protect the lands of her people from being divided in a way that result in relocation-a forced Indian removal that would constitute a 21st century genocide. Original air-date: 10-28-08.

THE BORDER WALL, A film by Wayne Ewing Premiering in Brownsville, Texas

Border Fence Documentary to be Shown This Week At Two Locations in the Lower Rio Grande Valley

Details

Date?: Thursday 12/4/8
Where?: Galleria 409 ( 409 E. 13th St. ) in Brownsville
Time?: 6 pm

Date?:Friday 12/5/8
Where?: South Texas College mid- Valley campus in Weslaco, (Auditorium, Bldg G190)
Tiime?: 6pm

Gun Culture--South Texas: Columbus' Legacy of Violence & Indigenous People--October 12, 2008

On the Cavazos-Garcia land in El Calaboz Rancheria, the ground is frequently rifled with bullets and shotgun shells. One need not walk but a few feet from the levee to see the shells and casings in plain site. There are more of these along my mother's land and her portion of the levee than on the lands on either side of her's. She has been the most vocal and publically outspoken against oppression, racism, and violence. The border wall is but one of the numerous 'events' which the people of El Calaboz have endured.

Since the arrival of the Europeans, our families have lived for centuries propelled into conflicts and tension with settler societies. Settler immigrant groups from other continents arrived in several waves since the late 1400's. They have contributed many harsh memories to the indigenous people's oral history of life, and death, along the Lower Rio Grande.

In addition to deprivations and depredations the indigenous suffered under Jose Escandon and Spanish-Basque settler hacendado regimes, Cameron County would continue to be an epi-center for pogroms, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Between 1910-1915 nearly 5,000 indigenous people were lynched, burned alive, dismembered, decapitated, and sexually assaulted by the "South Texas Machine." Many of our ancestors--men, women and children--lost their lives at the hands of para-military forces mechanized and supported by the regions' elites--the white-ethnic ranching families, whose colonizing ancestors had dispossessed earlier generations of Apaches and other indigneous peoples. History repeated itself with a new immigrant-white group of Southern Creed cotton industrial capitalists. In South Texas, the system's prey are our ancestors, and our living and breathing and very much alive families-- the indigneous people of this region.


The unexamined 'customary' privilege of the mainstream culture of South Texas, which glorifies the use of armed violence also sustains the myth of "Texas" masculinity as a celebrated icon of white settler identity. This social construct empowers a system of structural violence, privileging an elite few, and has bloody consequences for Native American people of the Lower Rio Grande. Like our foremothers and forefathers who were victims of white xenophobia and the ranching class systems--we have not 'vanished', nor have we been 'conquered.' However, those of us who have stayed on our lands--under Texas private property laws--have done so with increasing threats to our lives and livelihoods. The border wall is yet one more pogrom, ethnic cleansing and genocidal policy against Native American people on both sides of its proposed perimeter.

Removing the cobwebs and rust off of the so-call buried histories of the genocidal past gives us opportunities to see reflections and understandings of the current situations we face under the threat of tyrannical government. Uncovering the bloody histories upon which the wealthy agriculture and ranching elites in South Texas is founded allows a critical space for Native American survivor communities to speak, be heard and claim political and social spaces.

Tragically, indigenous communities along the Lower Rio Grande have become enmeshed in numerous forms of colonial violence used as tools to keep subordinated groups under the control of colonial systems and in perpetual dependency. De-Colonial history recover is necessary in order to publically confront the ghosts and demons of our collective histories, and to recover public spaces for commitments to truth and healing.

These bullet casings pepper the ground and levee, in El Calaboz all the way up to Redford, Texas, where I filled yet another ziplock bag full.

I fill gallon-size, zip-lock bags of shot-gun shells and bullets all along my grandfathers', great grandmothers', great aunts', and great great grandfathers, and great great great grandfathers...... and on and on and on and on... our home, our lands.

This is the archaeology of contemporary Lipan Apache women, the archaeology that documents and archives the negative impacts and consequences of the gun culture. The current generations confronting these issues sometimes must take on the past terror and its evidences in order to re-fuel and re-mobilize productive work of dismantling structural oppression --for all people in South Texas, where we live, and where we will live on and on.

October 12, 2008
Margo Tamez

Lipan Apache Restore Na'ii'ees Isdzanlashe in 2008

SLIDESHOW

HURRICANE DOLLY--HUMAN RIGHTS AND U.S. FRAUD, WASTE & ABUSE-- FEMA and DHS Cause Further Harm in Lower Rio Grande Against Indigenous Peoples

E-mail: DHSOIGHOTLINE@dhs.gov
Fax: (202) 254-4292
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528
Attn: Office of Inspector General, Hotline
Office of the Inspector General
False Damage Claims: 1 (800) 323-8603

July 30, 2008

Dear Inspector General:

At this time I am submitting a testimony from my community members, the lineal descendent Lebaiye' T'nde' (Lipan Apache) people who are the aboriginal land title holders to territories of South Texas, the Rio Grande River and into northern Mexico. Currently, my family members reside in numerous counties of South Texas which have been horribly and negatively impacted by the ongoing flooding and infrastructural calamities in Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and other affected counties.

Reports from my mother, Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez (Lipan Apache) and other community members, as well as reports from local news reports, compel me to file an official complaint regarding the human rights, civil rights, and indigenous rights abuses occuring at this very moment against colonias, rancherias, unincorporated and incorporated communities all along the Rio Grande.

Many of the communities are undergoing great losses and tragedy, including loss of homes, livelihoods, livestock, crops, and who are currently still without the most fundamental needs to sustain life, i.e. potable water, food, medical supplies and medical attention. Elders, children, the working class poor people of the Rio Grande river front communities are the hardest hit in this ongoing devastation.

My mother and others have reported eye witness accounts of seeing D.H.S. sitting by idly, merely offering electrical fans at the local gas station, as a remedy for folks who do not have electricity, nor food, water, and are wading in a filthy infested stew of both animal and human waste and decomposition.

There are reports that helicopters of the Border Patrol and Army National Guard merely patrol over the border--but do not render aid to those who are in the most isolated and most hard-hit areas. Local news reports that there are countless colonias and rancherias of the poorest of the working classes who have still to be dealt with at all. Their physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual needs are being neglected in this horrendous human disaster. They have yet to see a speck of government, military, NGO, faith-based, or or communitarian aid to alleviate this calamity.

My mother and others are strongly critiquing the LACK of FEMA's presence in rendering immediate and assertive aid to our poorest river front communities. Many of these communities are direct lineal descendents of the aboriginal people of this region--they are the land owners, who have legal title to live and to enjoy their freedoms on their own lands. They also have the civil rights and human rights of all other U.S. citizens in similarly declared disaster areas.

Finally, this testimony is a complaint against the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, President George W. Bush, and the infrastructure which supports their offices due to the fact that local land owners in Hidalgo County reported yesterday that INSPITE of this calamitous disaster which has brought South Texas counties, cities, and the International Water Boundary Commission and Mexico to its knees---that DHS has begun to build the unpopular border wall once again.

This is a sign of a tyrannical, cold and vampire-like government which instead of utilizing public resources towards rendering aid to the local governments and people, it is exploiting the local systems, institutions and populations at their greatest moment of vulnerability and humanitarian need.

I see DHS/Michael Chertoff and President George W. Bush as the primary perpetrators of heinous crimes against humanity, human rights abuse, indigenous rights abuses against my Lipan Apache people, my ancestors, our sacred sites, our ecological and biological resources, our mineral resources, and our water resources with their aggression against us up to the present moment, in regards to their focus on the increased militarization and imprisonment of our people and lands in the border wall project.

Currently, at this dark hour, as my people, our lands, our sacred sites, and all the plant and animal relatives are suffering due to an aggressive, institutionally racist policy of laissez-faire towards Native Americans, Mexican-descent peoples, and border communities, I see DHS/Michael Chertoff and President George W. Bush as perpetrators who are currently committing crimes against humanity and genocide against the Lipan Apache people of South Texas, other indigenous communities in South Texas, and Mexican-descent persons and communities living along the Rio Grande on the U.S. and Mexico side of this calamity. It has not gone unnoticed by the local communities how intensely the nation-states moved to protect their corporate investments--hotels, resorts, oil platforms, airforce jets and planes, and other 'vital' assets of the United States and its companies. At the same time, we have noted how deficiently and minimally the nation-states have responded to the humanitarian needs of the majority of the aboriginal land owners and original title land owners (with Spanish Land Grant and Treaty land ownership claims) in the region.

This is my testimony, from my heart and from the oral testimonies shared with me by my family members undergoing psychological terror due to the fact that they have to witness this further erosion of democracy and justice in the United States under the iron-fist of an unpopular government which clearly demonstrates they rule against citizens and take up hostile policies to further our demise.

Let it be known among you that the Lipan Apache Women's Defense/Strength stands for the indigenous people and all oppressed groups on the Mexico-U.S. international border which violently dissects our natural traditional territories, a border which was aggressed against us without our free and prior informed consent--in the past and continued into the present moment.

Margo Tamez

CyberNet War

Cyber Net War~~Successful Users & Interesting Web-Sites to Analyze...



Zapatista Social Net War

Indigenous Women North America Who Use NetWar

Indigenous Women North America Who Use NetWar

Indigenous Women North America Who Use NetWar

Indigenous Women North American Who Use NetWar

Indigenous Women North America Who Use NetWar

Indigenous Women North American Who Use NetWar

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Nde' hi'ke' Nnee' Shimaa Shinii--Apache Matrilineal Lands

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No World System

NEWS: Carlos Guerra "We'll Hear More and More about Gov's Power to Take Lands"

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA031808.01B.guerra.373969c.html

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In the Rio Grande Valley, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sued dozens of individuals, local governments and agencies for refusing to grant it "access" to their land so it can take it for the border wall.
After refusing access to her 3-acre plot, Eloisa Tamez was sued. She countersued and a federal judge has ordered DHS to negotiate with her in good faith.

Hundreds of miles north, in one of the Hill Country's most pristine ranches, Martha, Mary and Bebe Fenstermaker are girding for their fifth legal battle since 1989 to keep their land.

The city, Bexar County and the San Antonio River Authority want it for a dam to control flooding downstream by flooding the sisters' modest home sites, and much of the rest of their ranch, a federally registered historic district dotted with 19th-century limestone structures.

More Coverage

• Judge plans to rule quickly on border fence brouhaha



Then, there are the thousands who have found all or parts of their farms and ranches under thick lines on Texas Department of Transportation maps. TxDOT wants their land for the Trans-Texas Corridor, which will take as many as 8,000 miles of land in 1,200-foot-wide swathes for privately operated utility easements, multi-lane toll roads and railroad tracks.

These are just a few of the reasons "eminent domain" is appearing more often in Texas news reports. And as we get more Texans — but not more land — expect to hear more about governments using eminent domain to fix earlier mistakes — and for less noble purposes.

Governments' seizure powers predate our nation. Based on the notion that the sovereign owns all its territory and landholders own only an interest in the land's use, Common Law empowered monarchs to take whatever they wanted.

When America's colonies gained independence, they assumed eminent domain powers by proclaiming themselves the new sovereigns. In 1791, the U.S. Constitution was amended and eminent domain was implicitly recognized — but also limited — in the Fifth Amendment, which states, "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

By 1829, however, the U.S. Supreme Court redefined "public good" by allowing states to empower private railroads to seize land. By 1954, this relaxation led the high court to let the District of Columbia take properties that were not blighted along with others nearby that were and hand them all to private parties for profitable redevelopment.

And in 2005, the court allowed New London, Conn., to seize a totally unblighted neighborhood and sell it to a private developer for a project city fathers believe will bring the city greater tax revenues.

Other eminent domain issues that are emerging involve local jurisdictions that, increasingly, are using eminent domain to provide infrastructure improvements — such as new schools, wider roads and drainage projects — that have been made necessary by uncontrolled development and low impact fees.

While the courts have, on the one hand, given governments greater latitude to use eminent domain to help private developers, they have also held that at times, "just compensation" is also due when governments' actions diminish the value of land that has not been seized by, for example, making it less desirable or less accessible.

In 2007, the Texas Legislature addressed this very issue with HB 2006, which allowed landowners to sue for "diminished access" to their property, instead of having to show "material and substantial damages" before seeking compensation. It passed but Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it.

As growing populations make land-use restrictions more necessary, we are going to face more policy questions that will revolve around eminent domain.

It is clearly time for Congress and the Legislature to rewrite laws to assure that eminent domain powers truly serve the public good — and aren't just used to fatten private wallets.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To contact Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545 or e-mail cguerra@express-news.net.

NEWS: "South Texas Landowners Slow Border 'Fence' Progress in Court"

http://www.star-telegram.com/448/story/531512.html

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NEWS: U.N. CERD 2008 Recommendations to U.S.A.

NEWS! United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racism & Racial Discrimination (UN CERD) makes Comments and evaluations on the U.S.A. violations.
UN Faults US on Racism
UN Racism Experts Urge Changes to Eliminate Racial Bias
(New York, March 7, 2008) – The United States should immediately adopt UN recommendations to alleviate the widespread racial bias it found in the criminal justice system, Human Rights Watch said today.

The UN is telling the US that it needs to deal with an ugly aspect of its criminal justice system. Alison Parker, deputy director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch



Related Material
HRW Submission to CERD in its 72nd Session
Report, February 7, 2008

Follow-Up Letter to CERD
Letter, February 26, 2008

Free Email Newsletter


The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination harshly criticized the US record on race after considering oral and written testimony submitted by the US government. In its conclusions issued today, the committee urged the US to rectify the “stark racial disparities” in criminal justice systems throughout the country.

“The UN is telling the US that it needs to deal with an ugly aspect of its criminal justice system,” said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch. “The committee outright rejected the government’s claim that more black kids get life without parole sentences because they commit more crimes.”

The UN committee condemned what it found to be racial disparities in the death penalty and in the sentencing of youth to life without parole for crimes committed when they were under 18, a practice the committee wants stopped. Further, the committee called on authorities to take steps, including a moratorium on the death penalty, to root out racial bias.

The committee also dismissed claims by the US government that it did not have the power to examine the detention of non-citizens at Guantanamo. It urged the US to guarantee “enemy combatants” judicial review of the lawfulness and conditions of their detention.

“Once again, the Bush administration has been told by a major human rights body that it is not above the law when it comes to the war on terrorism,” Parker said. “The US should reverse its decision to deny judicial review to non-citizen enemy combatant detainees.”

The committee criticized US practices in numerous other areas, including:

· The Bush administration’s view that its human rights treaty obligations do not apply to laws or practices that are race-neutral on their face but discriminatory in effect;

· Racial segregation in housing and in public schools;

· Systemic inadequacies in indigent criminal defense, which have a disproportionate impact on racial minorities;

· The disenfranchisement of millions of US citizens because they have been convicted of a felony, even though they have fully served their sentences or have been released on parole.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is the UN body of experts responsible for monitoring countries’ compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, a human rights treaty ratified by the United States in 1994. The committee’s comments and responses to state party reports are authoritative interpretations of states’ obligations under the treaty.

As is its regular practice, the committee considered US compliance with the treaty following the government’s submission of a report, due in November 2003 but finally submitted by the US in April 2007. A US delegation participated in the committee’s meeting to examine the report on February 21 and 22, 2008 in Geneva, and responded to questions.

For more information on the United States and the CERD, please see the following documents:

February 2008 Human Rights Watch submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

February 2008 follow-up letter from Human Rights Watch to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

April 2007 US Report to CERD

03/08 CERD final observations on the US

Border Wall Skips Wealthy Bush Cronies