Lipan Apache to Obama: Stop Border Wall Construction

UPDATE: Listen now to press conference at:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Lipan Apache to President-Elect Obama:
Stop the border wall construction
Restoring U.S. Justice Begins with Respecting the Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Principles

WHAT: National Telephonic All Media Conference Briefing
WHEN: Tuesday, December 23, 2008, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time; duration 60 minutes.
WHERE (Call-in Number & Access Code): News media (719) 325-4820; Participant Code: 1118417
WHO:
· Eloisa Garcia Támez, (Lipan Apache), Professor, University of Texas-Brownsville/TSC, Brownsville, TX
· Daniel Castro Romero, Jr., Chair, Lipan Apache Band of Texas, Inc., TX
· Enrique Madrid, Jumano-Apache Council, Redford, TX
· José Matus, (Yaqui), Director, Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras/Indigenous Alliance Without Borders, AZ
· Michael Paul Hill, (Chiricahua Apache/Nnee'), San Carlos Apache Tribe, AZ
· Peter Schey, Founder, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Los Angeles, CA
· Denise Gilman, Clinical Professor, Law, University of Texas—Austin, UT Law Working Group Texas-Mexico Border Wall, TX
· Jeff Wilson, Assistant Professor, Environmental Science, University of Texas—Brownsville, UT Law Working Group Texas-Mexico Border Wall, TX
· Andrea Carmen, Executive Director, International Indian Treaty Council, AK
· Margo Tamez, Co-Founder, Lipan Apache Women Defense, WA
· Moderator: Arnoldo García, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Oakland

WHY: The Lipan Apache Women Defense will announce the delivery of its letter of recommendations to President-Elect Barack Obama, which urges him to halt the construction of the border wall, to stop the illegal seizures of communities' border properties and to uphold and respect the rights of Indigenous people. The letter from this Texas-Mexico border community of El Calaboz Ranchería (Texas) will be delivered to the Co-Chair of President-Elect Obama's Department of Interior Transition Team, Robert Anderson (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Bois Forte Band), Director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington. The Lipan Apache Women Defense's letter, with dozens of signatories and endorsements by close partners and allies, is requesting the administrative review of the Department of Homeland Security's unlawful utilization of Condemnation Proceedings, and the fast-tracking of the Declaration of Taking Act against Indigenous peoples' lands, livelihoods, ecologically-based religions, traditional cultures and way of life. The letter calls for, instead, a community-based partnership with the new Obama-Biden Administration to transform the U.S.'s relationship with Indigenous peoples.

BACKGROUND
Margo Tamez, co-founder of the Lipan Apache Women Defense, declared, "We are invoking the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, U.S. federal laws, and Texas state laws which have been fought for by citizens of the U.S. in order to protect the people and the nation from violent aggressors against sovereignty.
"In our case, Indigenous peoples and persons must use both traditional community law systems and state legal mechanisms in order to disrupt the violent measures that the U.S. government continues to deploy against us in this land grab. It is no secret that Indigenous communities and the natural resources such as water, oil, minerals, medicinal botanicals, wildlife, and game in the Lower Rio Grande Valley will be sectored off through militarization and converted into a 'no mans' land' and kill zone. Our case speaks to Indigenous communities in crisis throughout our region. Our way of life and our culture depend upon the land and the people remaining intact – together – not figuratively but under law systems – both tribal, communal and constitutional. The border wall must not be built and our rights restored and upheld."
El Calaboz, Lower Rio Grande Valley, TX
In December of 2007 the hostile policies of the US DHS/Secure Border Initiative against border communities came to the foreground in landmark struggles on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The construction of the border wall through the middle of ancient, Rio Grande communities, forced Eloisa García Támez, (Lipan Apache), and community elders of El Calaboz Rancheria, as well as numerous poor land owners along the Rio Grande to take actions to stop DHS from taking the community's lands, ancient burials, archaeological resources, botanical and medicinal riparian zones, and thecommunity's pastoral ways of life which are dependent upon subsistence cattle and goat herding, grazing rights, water rights, medicinal and riparian rights—in other words Indigenous Peoples' communal life-ways. The Lipan Apache Women Defense's fight raised complicated constitutional, civil, and human rights in the face of intensified government force to pressure the community to surrender their lands.
One year later approximately 80 landowners continue to litigate their ancestral land claims along the Texas-Mexico border. Some of the land claims, such as Eloisa García Támez', pre-date the United States as a sovereign nation and are directly connected to forced colonization and dispossession inflicted by Spain, Texas, Mexico and the U.S. on the Lipan Apache.
In the face of increasing public criticism of the border wall and serious claims of human rights violations before the Inter-American Commission/OAS, Indigenous peoples all along the U.S.-Mexico bordered lands are reframing and redefining the border wall conflict. They are organizing their networks around a framework of "Indigenous Peoples & Principles."

CONTACT:
Margo Támez, Lipan Apache Women Defense
sumalhepa.nde.defense@gmail.com
Moderator: Arnoldo García, NNIRR, (510) 465-1984 ext. 305; agarcia@nnirr.org
Copy of letter to President-elect Obama with signatures, letter of support and media advisory for Tuesday's telephone conference at:
http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/