FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Indigenous leaders and faculty of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin and Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan will give public statements and discuss the international and Indigenous law analysis of the Texas-Mexico Border Wall

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(en Ingles y Espanol)

Media Advisory

May 29, 2012

Indigenous leaders and faculty of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin and  Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan will give public statements and discuss the international and Indigenous law analysis of the Texas-Mexico Border Wall under the Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (80^th Session).

Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada— UBC Okanagan Indigenous Studies professor, Dr. Margo Tamez will host an international telephonic press conference and will be joined by Indigenous leaders from the Texas-Mexico border region and Professor Ariel Dulitzky, Director of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10:00 PST.  The group will discuss the 9-month long collaborative study of the Texas-Mexico border wall from the international human rights and Indigenous rights principles and the submission of the legal brief to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (80^th Session).  On May 10, 2012, Tamez and Dulitzky submitted their 134-page legal analysis of the Texas-Mexico border wall to the UN CERD, calling for international intervention due to the border wall’s severe discriminatory impacts upon Native Americans, Native Mexican Americans, Indigenous Peoples and poor Latinos.  

What:  Indigenous leaders and law and Indigenous Studies faculty to speak about UN CERD submission on Texas-Mexico Border Wall

When:  May 30, 2012, 10:00 a.m.-11:45 a.m. PST

Where:  Telephonic

                 Dial in #: 1-877-807-8664, x 78664

                 Participant Code: 0155788

·   Only 26 phone lines will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis. 

·   Members of the press are strongly advised to dial in promptly at 10:00 PST. for the 15-minute, pre-press conference instructions and introductions.

·   The press-conference service will conclude promptly at 12:00 noon PST.

Why:  To inform and educate the public about the human rights, international law and Indigenous legal principles relative to the Texas-Mexico border wall.  To invite open discussion about the severe harms suffered by Indigenous and poor Latino peoples as a direct consequence of the United States’ border wall policy and its negative human, cultural, ecological, and economic impacts.  To illuminate the myriad ways that harms are dominantly shouldered by Indigenous and poor Latino peoples without redress, remedy or restitution and contradicts the principles of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and international law.

For more information contact (in English) Dr. Margo Tamez at 250-807-9837 or margo.tamez@ubc.ca  or

(en Español) Ms. Laura Rivas at lrivas@nnirr.org 510-465-1984, Ext 304, or 510-282-2500.

 

PARA DIFUSIÓN INMEDIATA      

ALERTA DE PRENSA 

29 de Mayo de 2012

Líderes Indígenas y profesores de Derechos humanos y estudios indígenas harán declaraciones púbicas y discutirán el análisis desde el derecho internacional y de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas del muro entre Texas y México que recientemente presentaron al Comité  para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de las Naciones Unidas.

Kelowna, British Columbia, Canadá— La profesora, Dra. Margo Tamez UBC Okanagan Indigenous Studies realizará una conferencia de prensa telefónica internacional con la participación de líderes indígenas de la región fronteriza entre Texas y México y el Profesor Ariel Dulitzky, Director de la Clínica de Derechos Humanos Human Rights de la University of Texas at Austin el Miércoles 30 de Mayo de 2010 a las 10:00 PST.  El grupo discutirá el estudio que por 9 meses realizaron de manera colaborativa sobre el muro entre Texas y México desde la perspectiva de los Derechos humanos y los Derechos indígenas. El 10 de Mayo de 2012, Tamez y Dulitzky presentaron sus 134-páginas de análisis legal sobre el muro y su severo impacto discriminatorio sobre los pueblos indígenas, pueblos indígenas Americanos-Mexicanos y sobre Latinos pobres al Comité  para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de las Naciones Unidas (UN CERD).

Qué: Líderes Indígenas y profesores de Derecho y de Estudios Indígenas discutirán sobre la presentación al Comité  para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de las Naciones Unidas  sobre el muro entre Texas-México

Cuándo: 30 de Mayo de 2012, 10:00 a.m.-11:45 a.m. PST

Dónde: Telefónica

                        Marcar #: 1-877-807-8664, x 78664

                        Código de Participante: 0155788

·         Solo 26 líneas telefónicas estarán disponibles de acuerdo al orden de llamada.

·        Miembros de la prensa: se recomienda especialmente marcar a las 10:00 PST. En punto para  15-minutos de instrucciones y presentaciones previas a la conferencia de prensa.

·        Los servicios de la conferencia de prensa terminarán puntualmente a las 12:00 PST.

Por qué: Para informar y educar al público sobre los principios de Derechos humanos, Derecho internacional y Derechos indígenas relativos al muro entre Texas y México. Invitar a una discusión abierta sobre los severos daños que los indígenas y latinos pobres sufren como consecuencia directa de la negativa de Estados Unidos de considerar las consecuencias negativas del impacto humano, cultural, ecológico y económico del muro. Exponer las múltiples formas en que estos daños son sufridos principalmente por indígenas y latinos sin ningún tipo de reparación, remedio o restitución en violación de la Declaración de Naciones unidas sobre Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas y del derecho internacional.

Para mayor información contactar (en ingles) a la Dra. Margo Tamez al 250-807-9837 o margo.tamez@ubc.ca  or

(en Español) Ms. Laura Rivas at lrivas@nnirr.org 510-465-1984, Ext 304, o 510-282-2500.

See also, NNIRR post

INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY: 'Early Warning/Urgent Action' Sought Against US Human Rights Violations at Border Wall

By Gale Courey Toensing (May 24, 2012), INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY

A group representing human, indigenous and women’s rights accuses the United States of violating international human rights laws and private property rights in constructing the security wall along the Mexican border and has asked the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for help to stop the violations.

Ariel Dulizky, director of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache) on the faculty of the University of British Columbia Okanagan teaching Indigenous Studies, and the Lipan Apache Women Defense, an Indigenous Peoples organization, submitted a request May 10 asking CERD to intervene to stop the continuing “negative impact” of the border wall. “The construction of the wall occurred in a discriminatory manner, and continues to have discriminatory effects. The intervention of the CERD, utilizing its Early Warning and Urgent Action procedures, is necessary to stop the harm that the border wall is continuing to inflict on indigenous communities and poor Latinos,” Tamez and Dulitzky write.

Read more, Indian Country Today

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.

Texas "Strategic Military Assessment" --A Violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

 Source:  Homeland Security Digital Library, Center for Homeland Defense & Security,

https://www.hsdl.org/hslog/?q=node/6375, accessed April 13, 2012.


(El Calaboz Rancheria, Nde' Traditional Territory, April 13, 2012)
See Related article

BACKGROUND and PROBLEMATIC

Indigenous Peoples of El Calaboz Rancheria, whose traditional lands and territories are bifurcated by the Texas-Mexico border and by the U.S.-Mexico border wall, call upon Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations member states, President Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress, the international human rights and international law community, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, the U.S. National Congress of American Indians, Indigenous Nations, NGOs, human rights organizations, as well as Indigenous social organizations, and human rights defenders everywhere to join us in our call for the immediate cease of any further implementation and planning related to the "Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment."  We call for immediate protective measures for affected Indigenous Peoples by a global community, and call for the urgent attention by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights to support the immediate structuring of dialogues between respective Texas State representatives, the U.S. State Department, and the impacted Indigenous Peoples and their respective traditional authorities and legal representatives from both sides of the Texas-Mexico international boundary region.

The assessment report, which cost the tax paying public approximately $80,000, and commissioned by Texas State Agriculture Commissioner, Todd Staples and the South Texas Property Rights Association, and given administrative approval by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was driven by a contract made with General Barry McCaffrey and General Robert Scales to develop the rationale and architecture, providing a scope and implementation plan for fast-tracking "a military-style strategy and operational and tactical requirements to secure the Texas portion of the U.S.-Mexico border."   

The lack of meaningful participation, consultation, Free Prior and Informed Consent, and the exclusion of directly affected Indigenous Peoples in the knowledge of and decision-making in such a serious matter is a major concern.  This issue directly affects Indigenous Peoples' safety, health, futures, and the well-being of Indigenous Peoples' lands, territories, and resources.  The "Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment", stands as a serious threat to all life in the region, and poses a blatant disregard and disrespect for the Aboriginal rights of Nde' peoples, which is a serious violation of international law and the traditional authority of Indigenous Peoples. 

The plan and implementation of military procedures, actions in Indigenous Peoples' traditional lands and territories, by the State of Texas and by any of its agencies, and the planning and implementation of increased militarization of the Texas-Mexico border without addressing the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples is a violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

Specifically, the assessment and planning report, commissioned by Todd Staples, enacted by General Barry McCaffrey and General Robert Scales,  developed with the participation and decision-making of the South Texas Property Rights Association, and using Texas public funds, violates the following UNDRIP articles:

Article 30
1. Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories
of indigenous peoples, unless justified by a relevant public interest or
otherwise freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous peoples
concerned.
2. States shall undertake effective consultations with the indigenous
peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in
particular through their representative institutions, prior to using
their lands or territories for military activities.

Article 36
1. Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international
borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations
and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political,
economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as
other peoples across borders.
2. States, in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples,
shall take effective measures to facilitate the exercise and ensure
the implementation of this right.

Article 18
Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making
in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives
chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures,
as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decisionmaking
institutions.

Article 19
States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous
peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in
order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting
and implementing legislative or administrative measures that
may affect them.

Article 24
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines
and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of
their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals. Indigenous individuals
also have the right to access, without any discrimination, to
all social and health services.
2. Indigenous individuals have an equal right to the enjoyment of
the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. States
shall take the necessary steps with a view to achieving progressively
the full realization of this right.

Article 26
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and
resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise
used or acquired.
2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and
control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason
of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use,
as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.
3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands,
territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with
due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the
indigenous peoples concerned.

Article 27
States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with indigenous
peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and
transparent process, giving due recognition to indigenous peoples’
laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems, to recognize and
adjudicate the rights of indigenous peoples pertaining to their lands,
territories and resources, including those which were traditionally
owned or otherwise occupied or used. Indigenous peoples shall have
the right to participate in this process.

Article 32
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop
priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or
territories and other resources.
2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous
peoples concerned through their own representative institutions
in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the
approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other
resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization
or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress
for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to
mitigate adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual
impact.

PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT ENDORSE THE UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

The United States endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

 on December 17, 2010.  However, the UNDRIP has had nominal affect on U.S. and U.S. states' policies of the use of armed force in the traditional territories and lands of Indigenous peoples.  Indigenous peoples who experience the heavy impacts of militarization within the U.S. have been vocal and critical.  Since 1994, the continued and controversial use of military forces against Indigenous peoples within the U.S. borders has had violent consequences in the Texas border Jumano Apache community of Redford, where Ezequiel Hernandez was executed by a U.S. marine, and in the Nde' ('Lipan Apache') community of El Calaboz, where a staunch anti-border wall movement holds to the position of Aboriginal title underlying U.S. and Mexican national sovereignty claims to the land and resources.

On May 2002, in a United Nations communique entitled, "Militarization of Indigenous Areas a Growing threat, Permanent Forum Told," the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples relayed crucial information relative to the relationship between militarization and economic development of elite social classes, who themselves benefit from a history of the dispossession wars against local Indigenous Peoples.  The intimate weaving between militarization, the economy, and special interest groups contributes to militarization as "a root cause of many forms of human rights violations."  
The ongoing use of militarization to uphold the economic well-being of powerful interest groups is a growing trend viewed by Indigenous Peoples to be deeply enmeshed in the settler state and settler nation which have long histories in legitimizing dispossession, displacement, and systemic violence in Indigenous lands by and through the use of the military.  
Since 2002, the U.N. Permanent Forum delegates have consistently submitted interventions calling upon the U.N. to "consult affected indigenous peoples' request United Nations agencies to ensure that funds allocated for development are not used for military activities; and recommend the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on militarization in indigenous areas" (HR/4601, May 2002).

MILITARIZATION

Militarization as a structure both engenders and spatializes racist-sexualized and sexist-racialized violence, and thereby works hand-in-glove with the settler economic and political occupation of Indigenous place. 
Cynthia Enloe argues militarization is never gender neutral and is “a step-by-step process by which a person or a thing gradually comes to be controlled by the military or comes to depend for its well-being on militaristic ideas...and involves cultural as well as institutional, ideological, and economic transformations” (Enloe 2000:3).  
Catherine Lutz argues militarization is connected to “militant nationalisms and fundamentalisms... to the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping of national histories in ways that glorify and legitimate military action” (Lutz 2002:723).  Ndé memory and Oral Tradition today narrate heretofore negated aspects of militarism and militarization on the repression of Indigeneity and Knowledge.  
During Lipan Apache Women Defense's ongoing work alongside Nde' peoples, we have listened and engaged in crucial dialogues with Elders, women, youth, men, families and Chiefly peoples who have raised critical questions about the serious relationship between historical and contemporary uses of force against Ndé and related Indigenous Peoples of the Texas-Mexico border region.  
A working group of Nde' leaders are researching how current-day militarization of the Nde' traditional lands and territories is part of a larger social, historical, economic and political process to colonize, dispossess and assimilate Indigenous Peoples through use of force, coercion, and domination.  Currently, Nde' peoples are examining how current-day dispossession is tied to historical legal constructs rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery.  This line of inquiry is a concern to Indigenous legal scholars as well (Frichner 2010; Miller 2005). 

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' STRUGGLES AGAINST SYSTEMATIZED MILITARY VIOLENCE

On September 12, 2003, the international representatives of Indigenous Peoples convened in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico, articulated the intricate relationships between powerful interest groups in local arenas of power, transnational economic development, and militarization.  The International Cancun Declaration of Indigenous Peoples stated, "the militarization of Indigenous Peoples' lands and territories, and the many cases of assassination and arbitrary arrests and detention of Indigenous activists and leaders and people who are supporting them, as well as the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples' resistance, all significantly increased..." It is important to note these processes unfold within the nexus of a powerful matrix of domination dominantly exercised by and through complex relationships forged between powerful local interest groups, politicians, local authorities, national elected leadership, transnational organizations and institutions, and transnational corporations--across international boundaries.

LIPAN APACHE WOMEN DEFENSE AT THE UNITED NATIONS STAND AGAINST MILITARIZATION OF NDE' TRADITIONAL TERRITORIES AND LANDS

In May 2009, at the  U.N. Permanent Forum, Eight Session, the Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense) submitted an intervention to Agenda Item 4, entitled "Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Militarization and the Texas-Mexico Border Wall."  In this statement delivered to the United Nations, Nde' Peoples' concerns and perspectives, related to the increasing scales of militarization on and in the Nde' traditional lands and territories, were put before UNPFII Indigenous delegates, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and U.N. member states. 
At that time, the Lipan Apache Women Defense provided details of the destructive effects on Indigenous Peoples social organization, traditional knowledge, families, lands, water, and cultural resources.  At that time, LAW-Defense provided evidence of the level of impunity in which local, regional, state, and national actors, organizations, and systems were dismantling Indigenous land-based social and economic forms of inherent belonging with Nde' traditional lands and territories.

TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER--THE 'NEW' 'INDIAN WAR'

The settler society in South Texas and on the Texas-Mexico border has historically and persistently used racial, religious, economic, and cultural assimilation as tools of colonization and domination.  This fact is made explicit in traditional Texas historical narratives, in Texas road-side 'history', in Texas popular culture, and in the Texas Creation Myth ('TCM').  Brian DeLay has analyzed the TCM as comprised of the following components:

"This story, which we can call the Texas Creation Myth, was retold and refined in books, articles, and pamphlets published in cities across the U.S. Texan ambassadors to the United States chanted the Creation Myth like a mantra, and sympathetic U.S. politicians soon knew it by heart.³⁵ The myth contained three basic components: First, Texas had been a wasteland before Anglo-American colonists arrived, because the Mexicans, "either through a want of personal prowess or military skill ... were unable to repel the frequent incursions of their savage neighbors." Second, officials in Mexico invited American colonists into Texas both to redeem the wilderness from the Indians and to protect northeastern Mexico from Indian attack. Third, the Americans quickly accomplished these twin tasks. As one author put it, "the untiring perseverance of the colonists triumphed over all natural obstacles, expelled the savages by whom the country was infested, reduced the forest to cultivation, and made the desert smile." (Delay, "Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexico War," para. 25, The American Historical Review.)

Since the construction of the Texas-Mexico border wall in Nde' traditional territories and lands, the increasing force of dispossession, displacement, environmental harm, threats to Indigenous knowledge--coupled with high levels of harassment, surveillance, abuse, psychological warfare, low intensity conflict measures, and impunity in the Lower Rio Grande Valley communities along the path of the border, have been well documented as being directly related to the militarization of Indigenous places.  The increasing scales of repression exercised against Indigenous governance systems, and those who defend them, has direct correlations to deepened erosion of safety and security of Indigenous Elders, children, youth, women, men, workers, and family social structures--on the traditional territories and lands.  For Nde' human rights defenders--aggression, surveillance, and violence has spilled over into other places where they lead their lives defending Indigenous Peoples' human rights in El Calaboz and Nde' traditional places. 

Assimilating the Masses? Tejano History Without Indigenous Peoples

RESPONSE TO "Tejano Monument Supporters Faced Questions," Austin American Statesman, March 28, 2012.

While it is important to challenge the Texas Creation Myth (Pioneer version) and its erasure of the historical, documented, and inherent relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land in Texas, (and the Tejano monument movement is a welcome interruption to the dominant project), it is also important that we challenge the rhetoric and discourses of "conquering history" (Antonia Castaneda) within the dominant construction of Tejano history.  A rigorous engagement with multi-plural realities, multiple interest groups, the pattern of violent assimilation and the rise of a highly stratified (classed) society among Tejanos on the land needs close attention.  The current-day memorialization of  the Tejano experience offers an opportunity to re-think and re-examine South Texas' and the Texas-Mexico border peoples' histories with current-day lenses and tools.  From an Indigenous lense, I wonder... in what ways did Indigenous peoples of mixed ancestry find it useful to build a coalitional land-based identity in resistance against Anglo-American cultivator-settlers?  From an Indigenous view, the Tejano identity is an umbrella in which many Indigenous peoples with mixed ancestry have come underneath out from storms, and then left at different times in history.

Tejano identity has been fluid, not fixed, for Indigenous peoples undergoing violent displacements and being incorporated into labor pools for the elites.

It is important to look closely at the forces of assimilation among a very diverse Indigenous world along the Lower Rio Grande in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, experiencing the crushing force of assimilation and criminalization by settlers--the most powerful interest group.

At different times, Tejano elites have worked alongside Indigenous resisters against Anglo-American settlement, and at other times Tejano elites built their identity and culture in competition to Anglo-American cultivators by the adoption of the oppressors' tools.  Tejano elites are implicated in establishing their foothold on the land through the coerced and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples. 

We should ask: who gets to construct Tejano history today?  Who specifically does the current version serve?  Why is the Anglo-dominant political interest group offering concession to Tejanos now?  What does this have to do with land development and partnerships related to oil, water, and uranium development in South Texas?  And, most importantly, who does this model of public history leave out? 

The Tejano monument is not really progressive or radical. Rather, it mimicks that which it purports to be challenging

True, the Tejano monument is a change that opens up a space in a very uniform field of historical interpretation which has, in Texas, been overly dominated (and thus, censored) by the White Anglo-Christian pioneer narrative.

On the other hand, the current construction of Tejano public history could take on more layers with a social justice lens that includes and educates about the realities of colonialism, genocide, gender violence, racism and a racially stratified society.  This is the version that Indigenous peoples and peoples of mixed ancestry could recognize and see themselves within.  This is the one which persists in Texas.  At the center of a Tejano history with a social justice lense would be the central issue of land, dispossession, capitalism, and that peoples who identify as Tejanos --past and present-- have had a role in the dispossession and violent impoverishment of Indigenous peoples.  

A critical human geography and critical race approach to public history could help to curb the trimmed down perspective of Tejano history that the more patriarchal, linear, and overly romantic (read: 'positive') versions tend to perpetuate.  Not denying the reality of multiple Tejano histories, raced, classed, gendered, stratified:  a Tejano-Tejana-Indigenous-European complex ancestry--that was and is a story of genocide denial--would be a truely valuable and humane contribution to contemporary Texas societies. 

Further, a narrative that reflects the processes of Tejano history making--with a realistic representation of their role in colonization, and one contested by Indigenous peoples, past and present--would be a valued, cutting edge model of public history in a contemporary world.

Unfortunately, the Tejano monument the public is receiving, and the media discourses surrounding its birth, is not cutting edge.  It is more of the same, in a multicultural model that is practicing covert racism and genocide against current-day Indigenous peoples who are the land owners muted in this neoliberal Tejano Creation Myth--without Indigenous peoples. 

When powerful interest groups within the settler society continue to negate the existence and presence of Indigenous peoples, upon whose lands their success is made possible, then public history becomes an issue of human rights, the right of Indigenous peoples to challenge racist public education poliices, and an issue of the mental health of the Indigenous child, woman, man, family, and community.  Ongoing denial of Indigenous presence and realities in Texas public history is a collective health crisis for Indigenous peoples.

It is important to re-think what 'Tejano' meant in the 18th and 19th, and 20th centuries, and what this identity has evolved into in the 21st century-- as more and more Indigenous peoples in Texas act out their oppression by negating their Indigenous culture and to assimilate to 'Hispanic' or 'Tejano' identity.  This problem of denying Indigeneity is a reflection of past and contemporary economics, politics, and authoritarian governance, and the legacy of criminalizing Indigenous cultures in Texas.  Internalizing public denial and negation of Indigeneity is a public health crisis for Texas Indigenous communities.  Challenging this covert and overt form of racism against the idea and reality of Indigeneity is deeply woven into the process of identity formation in Texas.  Idenity and culture are key mental health issues for Indigenous peoples in Texas, and public history should reflect, respect and meaningfully engage with our Indigenous experiences and world views.

Undoubtedly, the Tejano monument deserves a far more complex public debate with more Indigenous peoples voicing their perspectives. 

One thing is certain, in the case of South Texas, few peoples can truly claim a so-called 'pure' Spanish ancestry.  In actuality, as a result of the mission, military, mining, ranching, cultivating, and land dispossession approaches to Indigenous resistances to colonization, there was a great deal of segregating and within sites of crisis (prisons, mines, missions, presidios, ranches, agricultural fields...) the oppressed did align and rebel together.  From anti-oppression resistances, and as a result of violent coercion, Indigenous peoples offered an alternative world view and experience of life to peoples undergoing violent colonization and assimilation.  Indigenous peoples offered a different physical and spiritual reality, and thus, due to alliances across oppressed groups in South Texas and the Texas-Mexico border states, there was extensive inter-mixing between poor Basques, other Spanish speaking Europeans, African slaves, and a majority Indigenous population.  What many Mexican-Americans, Hispanics, and yes, even Tejanos have come to believe are 'Spanish' cultural world-views, are in fact deeply owing to Lipan Apache, Jumano, Nahua, Tlaxcalteca, Coahuiltec, Comanche, and Mescalero world views and knowledege systems.  Layered myths, transferred as a technology of negating Indigenous knowledge, doesn't add up for Lipan Apache hereditary leader, Steven Fernandez Falcon.  Falcon challenges naming traditions among colonizers in Texas which displaces Indigenous knowledge, languages, place-names, and systems.  Falcon argues, "The biggest myth is how Texas got it's name; I've seen it said it was Spanish, others [say] it was Caddo [word], or just an Indian word. Most do not realize it is a name of a Wichita band called the TEYAS who roamed in Central Texas, and their name literally translated into "ally" not "friend." So calling one self a "Tejano" is identifying yourself as a member of the Wichita and not as a Texan or Texas descendant."

Indigenous views contradict and puncture the romantic.  Indigenous knowledge keepers, those like Falcon, who carry forth knowledge disseminated intergenerationally, across the majority of the counties of the lands where current-day Tejanos claim place, underscores the reality that we didn't disappear, we persisted, we are recovering, and that our memory and knowledge systems are resilient.  Then, memory is political as well, and has legal ramifications for Indigenous peoples seeking redress, restitution, and reparation.

Recognition to Indigenous peoples, for the all-important social survival exchanges offered to non-Indigenuos peoples in their daily interactions on our lands, in addition to the central role of economic trade, which infused Indigenous and non-Indigenous trans-cultural paths of thinking and being--is key to recovery and repair.  

Indigeneity has been deeply stitched into the non-Indigenous peoples consciousness in their every day existences.  At the same time, violence and conflict-ridden exchanges between colonists and the colony's oppressed peoples has continued to divide current-day Tejanos and Indigenous peoples--in the shadows of old and new monuments laying claims to pioneering histories.

Without doubt, Indigenous peoples, our lands, and our planned-for assimilation (into disappearance!) has always been at the foundation of all South Texas and Texas-Mexico border lands colonizing cultures.  Indigenous peoples give shape, influence, and dynamically form alternative world views which challenge the normative version of Tejano culture.

The silence about this core social, economic, and political reality, is a censorship about the base formation of power, domination, and subordination in the intimate relationships forged on the land in South Texas and in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.  

Silence on this issue, in public memory and public debates, serves to obscure and negate the current-day reality of Indigenous peoples' struggles for self-determination, Federal Recognition, autonomy, redress, restitution, and Truth Commissions on a variety of issues related to land and resources. 

It is important to not reject--as does the pioneer linear narrative--the central place and role of Indigenous peoples of Texas and northeastern Mexico--especially South Texas and the Texas-Mexico border region.  Of course, we did not vanish, did not disappear, or fully assimilate.  Rather, we adapted to radical changes.  As evidenced in the many Indigenous organizations working on issues of social justice and human rights, resilience and advocacy, not conquest, is the apt framework that puts pressure upon Tejano identity.   In other words, there can be no 'settler', 'pioneer', or 'Tejano' history, memory, or memorializing without Indigenous peoples.  They can't logically or rationally make a claim to their own complex history without recognizing the reality and complex history of those they invaded and occupied, who resisted them. The descendents of the pioneer colonizers can't exist without the living, direct, lineal descendants of the colonized.  

To put it another way, the living, surviving, resilient Tejanos and White-Texas Pioneers cannot make a claim to exist today without the living, surviving, and resilient Indigenous peoples-- upon whose blood-soaked, stolen lands the colonists built empires, communities, and economic wealth.  Where's the benefits sharing? 

For further consideration...

Tejanos, across the centuries, also adapted to violent invasions since the infamous 19th century violent 'Texan' and 'Texian' land grabs.  Many elite Tejanos adopted the world-views of Anglo-Americans, Liberals, and assimilationist policies of powerful interest groups.  Tejanos actively articipated in colonizing, dispossessing, and marginalizing (structurally and institutionally) the landowners--Indigenous peoples.

Let's not miss the underlying point of the important intervention offered by Dr. de la Tejas, that Texas has been “made up of a variety of people, not just the small segment that usually gets all the credit for settling Texas and for developing Texas.”

'Made up' is accurate, as it hints that we need to think more critically about the processes, often violent, which have shaped the popular and mythical inventions that have stood in as official Texas public memory and 'history', but in fact, are only distortions, and often just slivers of a much more complex and complicated past. 

In that complicated past, the Indigenous reality and experience--past, present, and future--continues to get paved over within the dominant and traditional modes of telling history.

In the traditional version of Tejano history, there is much left to the margins, such as the very significant inter-mixing between Indigenous peoples, such as Lipan Apaches, Mescalero Apaches, Coahuiltecos, Tlaxcaltecas, Nahuas, Comanches... in South Texas and the Texas-Mexico border lands, with the minority groups: Europeans.

To deny and, or, to neglect this important and dominant story and memory within South Texas and north-eastern Mexico's experiences of 'being made up' into a republic, and the violent forces underlying the making of 'Texas', is to deny the public a truly just history.

The colonization of Indigenous peoples--past and present-- in Texas, is an important part of the Tejano history and ongoing recovery process.  Tejano identity is complex and diverse, not the same, and is a story that is deeply connected to the land, resources, and often, from the view of Indigenous peoples, the violent, masculine, disruption that Spanish European militarists and developers, and their Tlaxcalteca cohorts, played in the extermination wars against non-assimilating and non-conforming, non-Christianizing Indigenous peoples all across Texas. 

To be truly just, it was my hope that the Tejano history memorial would not assimilate traditional, normative, and linear ways of

portraying colonization, imperialism, and genocide.

However, the discourses and rhetoric surrounding this important moment, sadly, seems to be mimicking that which it purports to be challenging.

Indigenous peoples in Texas are a dynamic interest group, and are on the path towards full self-determination, self-governance, autonomy, and recovery of our full sovereignty.

Texas Indigenous peoples, not those who were removed to these lands after the U.S. constitution, but, rather, those whose presence here pre-dated the Spanish colonization, never ceded our lands, nor signed away our rights, nor relinquished our Aboriginal Title. 

Underlying all settler historical narratives is the reality of Indigenous Proprietary Title.

And, in the Indigenous perspective of the Tejano history, there is still much lacking in recognition, respect, and memory about the inter-weaving of Indigeneity and colonization as a core story being muffled beneath this public history.

A key question is: Where's the Justice? in contemporary Tejano memory and public monument making?

Ahe'he'e (thank you)

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.