STATEMENT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER,

LOWER RIO GRANDE RIVER, EL CALABOZ RANCHERÍA,

TO THE U.S. SOCIAL FORUM (2010) REPRESENTATIVES

Greetings!

The Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense), an Indigenous Peoples Organization

(IPO), established in 2007, and a Texas-Mexico border human rights working group, co-founded by
Eloisa Garcia Tamez and Margo Tamez, is located in the heartland of Nde' shimaa hada'didla ('lands of
the lightning people clans), in El Calaboz Rancheria. We exercise the right to pursue all the venues
available and to create new ones for the application of customary laws of Indigenous peoples, human
rights and international law, and the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

LAW-Defense welcomes and invites partnerships to work productively for Indigenous Peoples‟ pursuit of
“self-determination, land and natural resources, cultural rights and sacred sites protection, subsistence,
Treaty rights, health and social services, non-discrimination, environmental protection, education,
language, and many others which Indigenous Peoples identified as essential to their dignity, survival and
well-being.”1

At this time, LAW-Defense calls upon our sisters and brothers participating in the 2010 U.S. Social
Forum to join us in the sustained interrogation of the human rights violations committed by the United
States of America along the Texas-Mexico border in its construction of an 18 foot tall steel, concrete
reinforced wall across Indigenous Peoples lands.

LAW-Defense calls upon the U.S. Social Forum participants to support the self-determination processes
of the diverse Indigenous communities who are directly impacted and irreparably harmed by the U.S.
border wall construction which unfolded, between 2006-2009 in community-held lands.

We call upon you to work productively and in partnership to articulate this year, at the 2010 U.S. Social
Forum, the multiple ways in which the U.S.-Mexico border militarization and the Texas-Mexico border
wall impacts workers, families, women, children, elders, the sick, rural agrarian societies, subsistence
societies, family-based livelihoods, traditional trade and commerce, biodiversity, traditional stewardship
of sacred sites and natural resources, the dissemination of both traditional and contemporary knowledge
systems, and the human rights of Indigenous peoples with Aboriginal Title across the vast region.
(Articles 20 and 21, UNDRIP)

1
International Indian Treaty Council, Statement, “The United States Reviewing its Position on the Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Background and Points for Input,” June 23, 2010.
We call upon you to join us in a sustained and firm request to the U.S. government for the reversal and
immediate dismantling of the U.S. border wall in Indigenous peoples‟ lands. We are calling for the
removal of all militarized forces and technologies of surveillance and destruction to life in Indigenous
community spaces. We are also calling upon the social justice communities to partner with us in our firm
requests for the immediate return of the seized lands of Indigenous Peoples.

In our sustained investigations into the actions of President George W. Bush and Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (2007-2008), and
the policy of President Barack Obama‟s administration in continuing the Bush policies of discrimination,
criminalization, and peripheralization of Indigenous peoples along the Texas-Mexico border, we call upon
the social justice community of the U.S. Social Forum to deepen its analysis of the U.S.-Mexico border as
a key site of U.S. human rights violations, historically and on-going. In particular, new levels of land
seizures, the implantation of military checkpoints, drones, and increased military-style soldiering on the
ground, are just a few of technologies and methodologies threatening Indigenous Peoples communities
along the U.S. southern border.

LAW-Defense calls upon the U.S. Social Forum participants, delegates, and organizing leadership to join
us in our continuing demands for consultation and Free and Prior Informed Consent (Article 19,
UNDRIP) on the continuing matter of legal and community-led investigations of the U.S. border wall,
and resulting dispossession, displacement and destruction of cultural and sacred sites, destruction to soil,
riparian pathways, farmlands, ranchlands, in addition to permanent destruction to Indigenous Peoples
rights to commerce, trade, freedom of movement, and rights to steward the land, and to flourish.

We are calling upon our sisters and brothers of the U.S. Social Forum to join Indigenous Peoples in
accepting nothing less than President Barack Obama‟s full acceptance and recognition of the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, (UNDRIP), as it provides a framework for
problem-solving and conflict resolution. The UNDRIP will “constitute the minimum standards for the
survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world” (Article 43).

The traditional Lipan Apache Peoples of the Lower Rio Grande and South Texas earnestly call upon the
U.S. Social Forum representatives to join us in our firm requests to President Barack Obama, the State
Department, and the invited U.S. Federally Recognized Tribes and NGOs to steer and re-direct the current
U.S. administrative review of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
beyond the delimiting framework of "Federally Recognized Tribes" and "NGOs."

We firmly assert that the U.S. review of the UNDRIP must break away from historical discriminatory
patterns deployed against a large majority of Indigenous Peoples residing within U.S. geopolitical borders
within normative rights and sovereignty discourse.

We assert that the current U.S. review of the UNDRIP, in order to maintain dignity and legitimacy among
the diversity of the actual U.S. population of Indigenous Peoples, must align itself publically and
meaningfully with:

“Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation, in
accordance with the traditions and customs of the community or nation concerned. No discrimination of
any kind may arise from the exercise of such a right.” (Article 9, UNDRIP)

And
“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 decision-making institutions.” (Article 18)

The above is in recognition of the discursive exclusion of the representatives of more than 230 terminated
"Federally Unrecognized Tribes", their treaties and other constructive arrangements with the State; and
exclusion of Indigenous peoples with historical ties to the U.S. history of violent occupation, war,
annexation, territorialization, and internment who are explicitly not articulated in the U.S. State
Department‟s recent invitation to only “U.S. Federally Recognized Tribes” and “NGOs” as consultants.

This effectively marginalizes Indigenous peoples across current U.S. geopolitical spaces who have
historically remained on the fringes of government-to-government relations, and who are minoritized
normatively as "Unrepresented", "Terminated", "De-enrolled", "Deported", "Detained", “Stateless” and
„Outsiders‟ both within and along U.S. borders.

We are calling upon the social justice community to demand that the U.S. formal review process of the
UNDRIP break the chains of colonial, discriminatory policies against all Indigenous Peoples. We call for
a transparent process which does not privilege any group of Indigenous Peoples, and which fosters
egalitarian and horizontal mechanisms, and works to decolonize U.S. historical erasure towards
Indigenous Peoples broadly and specifically—within the current process of the U.S. review of the
UNDRIP.

Furthermore, we call upon those privileged by the U.S. State Department‟s invitation to the U.S. official
review of UNDRIP to reflect and weigh the multiple peripheries of 'Native American' and U.S.
'citizenship' as markers of Indigenous privilege within U.S. ideological frameworks. We assert that
multitudes of Indigenous Peoples exist violently at the peripheries of U.S. Federal Recognition, and at the
fringes of U.S. Native American heterosexual, conservative, male identity.

We call upon the U.S. Social Forum to articulate how the UNDRIP applies specifically to the
relationships we are to build between the Indigenous peoples of Idszan Shimaa Nde' [Mother Earth] and
the colonized and decolonizing descendents of the U.S. Settler Society in order to strengthen the very
tenets and meanings of “dignified” relations in which to construct a just world. LAW-Defense holds that
this would explicitly begin with the U.S. Social Forum acknowledging and adopting the UNDRIP as a
fundamental charter to infuse a new working relationship between Indigenous Peoples in the U.S. the
U.S.-Mexico border, and the Western Hemisphere. As such, the LAW-Defense calls upon the
participants of the U.S. Social Forum to address the following pertinent articles of the UNDRIP [though
not limited to] as they relate to Indigenous Peoples impacted directly and irreparably harmed by U.S.
economic development operating hand-in-glove with a sustained program of militarization along the U.S.-
Mexico border:

ARTICLE 1: Indigenous peoples have the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of
all human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognized in the Charter of the United Nations, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights laws.

ARTICLE 3: Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely
determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

ARTICLE 7: 1. Indigenous individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and
security of person. 2. Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security
as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including
forcibly removing children of the group to another group.
ARTICLE 22: 1. Particular attention shall be paid to the rights and special needs of indigenous elders,
women, youth, children and persons with disabilities in the implementation of this Declaration. 2. States
shall take measures, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, to ensure that indigenous women and
children enjoy the full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination.

ARTICLE 30: 1. Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples,
unless justified by 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 37: 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of
treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements concluded with States or their successors and to
have States honour and respect such treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements. 2.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as diminishing or eliminating the rights of indigenous
peoples contained in treaties, agreements or other constructive arrangements.

LIPAN APACHE WOMEN DEFENSE INTERVENTION STATEMENT UNPFII 2008,

http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/2008/04/lipan-apache-women-defensestrength-gain.html

LIPAN APACHE WOMEN DEFENSE INTERVENTION STATEMENT UNPFII 2009,

http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/2009/05/lipan-apache-women-defense-intervention.html

HUMAN RIGHTS ANALYSIS, TEXAS BORDER WALL AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/humanrights/borderwall/analysis/briefing-violations-of-indigenous-
rights.pdf

OBSTRUCTING HUMAN RIGHTS, TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER

http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/humanrights/borderwall/analysis/briefing-INTRODUCTION.pdf

EXCERPT:

"Human Rights Impact of the Texas/Mexico Border Wall”

The planned wall along the Texas/Mexico border not only engenders widespread opposition while remaining
ineffective in fulfilling the government‟s immigration control and anti-terrorism objectives, but also violates
international human rights law. The Working Group has analyzed and documented, in separate briefing papers
accompanying this document, a series of human rights violations taking place as a result of the construction of
segments of border wall along the Texas/Mexico border. These human rights violations constitute breaches of the
United States‟ obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, interpreted in light of
the American Convention on Human Rights and other relevant international human rights norms.64 The briefing
papers address the following issues:
1. Violations of the right to property and equal protection guaranteed under international
human rights law. The United States government, in its implementation of plans to
construct a wall along the Texas/Mexico border, has not acted rationally in attempting to
build a wall that will deprive residents along the border of the right to hold and use their
properties. The government has failed to adopt proportional means of meeting its
governmental goal of controlling the border, and the construction of a border wall,
involving the taking of property, is not the least restrictive means of achieving
governmental goals. In addition, the government has not provided justification for its
differential treatment of properties along the border as it has not explained why certain lucrative properties are not to
be affected by border wall construction. Statistical analysis suggests that the border wall and the necessary taking of
property resulting from its construction will disproportionately impact poor Latino immigrant families.

2. Severe degradation of the environment and violations of the government’s human rights
obligation to evaluate and take into account harm to the environment when undertaking
public projects. In its construction of a border wall, the United States government is
bypassing numerous domestic laws designed to protect the environment and the people
who utilize and enjoy it. The negative impact of the wall on important and scarce natural
resources, including the ocelot and other wildlife populations, plants and birds found
along the Texas/Mexico border will be severe. The environmental degradation will cause
significant harm to the residents of the Texas/Mexico border area who have traditionally
held an important connection to the natural resources prevalent in the border area.

3. Violations of the rights of indigenous communities protected under international human

rights law. The wall will directly impact the lands of the Lipan Apache, Kickapoo and
Tigua (Ysleta del Sur) indigenous communities living along the Texas/Mexico border.
Yet, the United States government has proceeded forward in planning for the taking of
portions of these lands without engaging in meaningful consultations with members of
the affected indigenous communities.67 The Working Group has endeavored to work"

LAW-Defense, June 23, 2010

El Calaboz Rancheria, Texas-Mexico Border