Reconstructing Sovereignty: Bioregional Politics

From the Land Up: Reconstructing Sovereignty from Esto’k Gna Bioregional Politics A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in Politics. 2022 ________________________ ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Abstract ................................................................................................................................v A Note on Method ...............................................................................................................v List of Images .................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 The Process of Forgetting: Esto’k Gna Erasure by Borders ................................................5 Contextualizing the RGV as a Site of Political (Un)belonging .......................................8 Cutting the Head of the Snake: Mobilizing an Alternative Sovereignty ...........................12 Carrizo/Comecrudo, Incorporated .....................................................................................17 The Process of Remembering: Constructing a “Native sacred geography” ......................21 Restorying Land-Based Sovereignty on Decolonial Terms...........................................26 “We want to make sure they recognize our presence”: How Subjective Politics are Enacted ...............................................................................................................................29 From the Land Up: Cultivating a Legitimate Bioregional Politics ....................................36 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................40 iii Acknowledgements Thank you to the Esto’k Gna Tribe of Texas for making this research and future revolutions possible. It was only thanks to the thorough documentation and outreach conducted by Juan and Christa Mancias, Andy Torres, Isidro Leal, Marissa Muñoz, and other activists of the Tejones-Badger, Garza, Bear, Deer, and Raven Societies that the possibility of a truly meaningful politics revealed itself to me. Thank you to all the other wonderful experts at the College for helping me through this process; the Penrose Librarians, Stan, Özge, Bernard, Lydia, and Charly have all been pivotal in supporting me over the years and recently. I owe an incredible thanks to my parents, Wendy and Nick, for always believing in me even when I didn’t. They have saved me more times than I can count. Thank you to my chosen family—Heather, Dixie, Tony, Owen, and Yasmina—for having my back for nearly twenty years; thank you Teo for making the world a brighter place. To my Whitman family—Peter, Adam, Chase, Luke, Libby, Justin, James, Cole, Tim, Micah, Nick—for making these the most memorable four years of my life. I love you all endlessly. iv Abstract This thesis explores the competing notions of sovereignty in the Rio Grande Borderlands following the 2016 border crisis as applied to an analysis of Esto’k Gna Indigenous-based teachings contained within modes of governance and subjecthood forwarded by the colonial State. It will look at the structures of domination in the region that led to Indigenous erasure and the subsequent characterization of Esto’k Gna activism in particular as strictly local and unanticipated on a larger scale, despite the legitimate multicounty and highly subsidized efforts forward by the Tribe at Yalui Village in San Juan, TX. To illuminate the different conceptions of sovereignty crucial to this project, this thesis will explore that which is enacted by Esto’k Gna activists—what I call a subjective politics based on inherent features—versus that which is maintained by the United States government—a politics and sovereignty based solely on designation from a juridical body. The incredible rift in the Borderlands between Indigenous and non-Indigenous bodies and the equally massive efforts to construct alternative versions of sovereignty suggests the need for such a subjective politics if we are to promote a connected and meaningful border politics that can self-reflexively critique its modes of recognition and implementation of barriers themselves. A Note on Method By far the most daunting task of this entire project, my methodology remains relatively diffuse within the paper itself. However, the process of organizing and coding information was crucial to my understanding of Esto’k Gna Lifeways and Indigenous sovereignty more generally and came with some notable caveats. Firstly, there is no comprehensive recorded history that currently exists for the Esto’k Gna; there are many, many fragments of their history dispersed across social media accounts, official interviews, Tribal government documents, podcasts, and teach-ins. Having committed to a highly historicized understanding of a Tribe I had only recently discovered at the time, I constructed my own recorded history based on the snippets of information I found online; the number of discrepancies I found between sources is too many to list, but it suffices to note here that it was oftentimes necessary to make an executive decision on which historical accounts were the “truest” ones—that being said, I almost always chose to use Esto’k Gna-collected data and stories to inform my historical account. Following my decision to not conduct interviews, I also found it necessary to compile an interview archive of Esto’k Gna accounts from which I drew my primary evidence; a similar coding process took place following the organization of the archive. This project was clearly improvisational in some respects, made more so by the fact that Esto’k Gna activism has gained public attention only recently (about three years ago), and some of my sources were updated throughout the course of the project; I tried to remain true to these additions as I noticed them, and my genuine hope is that the attentiveness and thoughtfulness I tried to capture in my methodology is well-reflected in the content of this paper. v List of Images Section II | Cutting the Head of the Snake: Mobilizing an Alternative Sovereignty Image 1: An old irrigation pump sits idle beside the winding Rio Grande less than a mile from Yalui Village (Greg Harman)........................................................ 12 Image 2: 28 laws being waived to build the border wall (Instagram / @estok_gna_somisek) ........................................................................... 13 Section IV | The Process of Remembering: Constructing a “Native sacred geography” Image 3: Map showing the region of South Texas where Native lands are threatened by Trump’s border wall and the construction of a Liquified Natural Gas pipeline (Dejan Cuturilov) ..................................................................... 21 vi “We have lived with the land, not tried to conquer [or] control it or rob it of its riches. We have not tried to get more and more riches and power, we have not tried to conquer new frontiers, or out do our parents or make sure that every year we are richer than the year before. We have been satisfied to see our wealth as ourselves and the land we live with. It is our greatest wish to be able to pass on this land to succeeding generations in the same condition that our fathers have given it to us. We did not try to improve the land and we did not try to destroy it. That is not our way. I believe your nation might wish to see us, not as a relic from the past, but as a way of life, a system of values by which you may survive in the future. This we are willing to share.” —Phillip Blake, Dene Nation (1975) vii Introduction Upon former President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in 2016 necessitating the construction of a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, there was memorable protest that provoked an ongoing discussion surrounding the viability of border walls as legitimate markers of jurisdiction. Alongside prominent anti-border activists in the Tohono O’odham Nation and many No Border Wall coalitions emerged a distinct movement to challenge both the rhetoric of illegality and the obfuscation of its material effects. Tucked away within this already marginalized sect of the population is an extended arm of the movement that calls into question the relationship between environment and inhabitant, through which federal indigenous policy has repeatedly legitimized itself. Primarily I am referring to the Western construction of sovereignty as inextricably linked to land ownership (what I call sovereignty-by-borders), effectively subordinating any version of an autonomous geography that many indigenous populations have come to hold sacred. This rift manifested first in Laredo County (TX) after Trump began his border wall campaign tour there (in 2015, before his inauguration) and spurred the emergence of an otherwise unheard-of Tribe into the political arena. The Esto’k Gna Tribe of Texas have been fighting the border wall since the first evidence of it during Trump’s campaign, but have gone predominantly unnoticed due to their federally unrecognized status. My initial exposure to the Esto’k Gna was through their social media accounts and multiple visits to Native Land Digital (multiple because when I was first recommended this database, all information on the Esto’k Gna hadn’t been added yet—an approximation of the territory they occupy was added in late November of 2021); without either of those sources I am not sure I would have discovered them at all. Given the nature of federal Indian policy this may not be surprising; the United States government is notorious within indigenous sovereignty literature for exploiting non-Western methods of maintaining borders “according to economy, trade, raiding, hunting, kinship, enmity, and alliance” in favor of a complete possession of formerly indigenous lands; thus Section I follows the construction of legitimate national boundaries necessitating “the redefinition of Indian lands as new spaces of empire”1 (effectively by writing Tribes out of collective memory). Section II outlines the Esto’k Gna’s multi-county response against this “progress through erasure, which is just another tool for genocide”2; motivated by physical protection of the land, they established several encampments along the border wall route—I focus primarily on Yalui Village in San Juan. Section III illuminates how the emergence of such a violently erased group as a salient political body was not something anticipated by lawmakers nor Texans alike due primarily to their tribal non-recognition. Section IV maps out the Esto’k Gna practices that promote the inherent sovereignty of both the land and its people (primarily through tribal tribunals) in the untangling of political authority by designated sovereignty. How this is applied on Esto’k Gna land is the subject of Section V, wherein I draw the connection between alternative sovereignty and Esto’k Gna political mobilization. Section VI makes the argument for an understanding of what it means when a political body exerts authority “within unambiguous borders”3; including, 1 Juliana Barr, “Geographies of Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the ‘Borderlands’ of the Early Southwest,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 4 (2011): 7. 2 Juan Mancias as cited by Jennifer Churchill, “Finding and Voice and Making it Heard: Defending Native Rights on the Border,” First Nations Development Institute, Sept. 13, 2019, 3 Barr, Geographies of Power, 9, emphasis added. 2 fundamentally, the possibility of a sovereignty inclusive of “Indian assertions of power”4 and ignorant of fortified borders entirely (what I call a subjective politics). What the Esto’k Gna in particular highlight is that this is an enormously difficult undertaking, and given their politics’ peripheral orientation to the State remains predominantly in the hands of small, community-based organizations with little to no institutional footprint. This is somewhat ironic provided that Esto’k Gna subjective politics very closely resemble the fluid and connected model forwarded by our conception of the global village. But the political stakes involved in Esto’k Gna presence on Rio Grande Valley (RGV) soil are only revealed productively when both their localized knowledge (specific to RGV land, peoples, and history) and specific political intentions are taken seriously. Can we construct an alternative articulation of sovereignty while realizing the legitimate political mobilizations that are posited by Esto’k Gna in direct response to the State? To be clear, my intention with this question is not to sentimentalize pre-colonial political dispositions (lest I muddy the waters by not only ignoring the pre-colonial antagonisms within native nations but also by prescribing the entirety of Esto’k Gna a specific version of indigeneity which, in its intense admiration, becomes as ignorant of indigenous realities as racist knowledge); I aim to map out how Esto’k Gna mobilizations push against State-constructed notions of borders and sovereignty in such a way that opens up understandings of a deeply subjective politics—in other words, a politics predicated upon sustained cultivation of narratives and alliances that reaffirm the 4 Barr, Geographies of Power, 8. 3 sovereignty of the land and its people without investing directly in official juridical bodies. 4 The Process of Forgetting: Esto’k Gna Erasure by Borders It was no accident that in the founding treaties and declarations of the U.S., the identity of the first peoples was never clearly articulated, much less articulated with the names they gave themselves. If the people are not acknowledged, there is no need to recognize their citizenship, their rights, or their humanity.5 The Esto’k Gna Tribe of Texas have a seemingly dual history; the formulation of both versions illuminates a significant factor of their historical and legal erasure from the RGV landscape. Specifically for the Esto’k Gna, the placement of the border wall renders their historical categorization and movement across the RGV limited at best. These limiting frameworks are on full display once the task of reconstructing an accurate history is achieved; before that, the lack of Esto’k Gna in Texas, the separation of nationstates by borders, and the tight connection between such separations and acquiring sovereignty remain business as usual. The dual history of the Esto’k Gna consists of that passed on by their intergenerational oral traditions and that of the Spanish colonizers. Thus, they have two names: one in Spanish, Carrizo/Comecrudo, and one in Hokan, Esto’k Gna. Similarly, most published historical data on the Esto’k Gna place them in the RGV beginning in the 16th century (also the first recorded contact that Spanish invaders had with the Esto’k Gna); oral histories, on the other hand, “place [them] in Texas prior to any other tribe that has arrived, migrated, or was displaced into Texas, a land we call Somi Sek, thousands of years before outside contact” . These discrepancies are essentially the one consistent feature of all Esto’k Gna historical data. 5 Marissa Muñoz, “River as Lifeblood, River as Border: The Irreconcilable Discrepancies of Colonial Occupation From/With/On/Of the Frontera,” Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, Routledge (2019): 71. 5 Their forced displacement informed a conception of sovereignty which sources its substance from deeply personal relationships with the RGV landscape, “More than indigenous to North America, we are autochthonous of Somi Sek—that means that we are of this land—so we were intimately familiar with every hill, stream, river, mountain, valley, canyon and cave from the San Fernando River in Tampico to the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle to the North” . Esto’k Gna tribe members acquired a vast knowledge of Somi Se’k during regular circulatory migrations across the region. The purpose of this cycle was to echo the seasonal movement of the environment and secure Esto’k Gna livelihood—physical survival of the Tribe was ensured by the tight link between migration routes and sites of ecological abundance (allowing for constant access to water from the Río Bravo, nopal (prickly pear), yucca, and game), and the preservation of Esto’k Gna customs secured by the establishment of tribal villages along the migratory route. Their migration patterns indicate a relatively fluid but cyclical relationship to the RGV landscape and explain the importance of the freedom of movement across the U.S.Mexico border. The frequent dispersal of the Esto’k Gna throughout the regions of “El Capote, with nearby villages of Las Milpas, La Granjero, and Los Indios” necessitated several tribal burial sites, which are still considered highly sacred sites of ancestral preservation. The vastness of Esto’k Gna presence throughout this region is one of the aspects of this Tribe that directly oppose colonial methods of delineation, rendering them politically handicapped, a subject I will return to in-depth later. The gap in Esto’k Gna historical data between the mid-1500s (marked by the invasion of Jamaica-stationed Spanish soldiers) and the beginning of the 1800s (the massacre of Esto’k Gna at the Devil’s River corresponds with the onset of Anglo-Texan 6 occupation in the RGV) can likely be attributed to the frequently alternating nature of settler occupation during those centuries. Thus, oral histories provide the majority of surviving information on Esto’k Gna traditions from this period, and the general trend of tribal misidentification has further contributed to confusion about Esto’k Gna practices. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there were many distinct tribes that occupied the banks of the Río Bravo; while every one of these tribes had different traditions, they were eventually reduced to a singular category based on the sharing of “common languages such as Coahuilteco” . Thus, the Esto’k Gna were referred to as Coahuiltecan broadly and Carrizo/Comecrudo locally upon colonization; these associations have remained unchanged. By the end of the 19th century, several arrangements had been made by Mexican and United States governments that significantly altered the scope of Esto’k Gna authority: the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Purchase shortly after (1853). Both effectively granted ownership of all tribal land in the RGV to Mexico and the United States and wrote out articles protecting indigenous and Mexican families along the border “upon ratification to re-classify the territory unclaimed” . Disregarding existing tribal authority is nothing new; in fact, it is entirely consistent with the politics of displacement advanced by federal Indian Policy “beginning with the Major Crimes Act (1885).” Subsequently, “the establishment of modern state governing narratives and techniques within American Indian communities was widely disputed by Indian peoples who were suspicious of further intervention” . This is reaffirmed by the tone Esto’k Gna activism typically takes—the primary concern appears to be protection through direct management of sacred sites (i.e., 7 physically watching for evidence of desecration). Activist literature is similarly characterized by severe distrust of the government, typically through citing violations incurred on indigenous land; thus by making an extremely invisible facet of the U.S. government visible, the Esto’k Gna simultaneously uplift their knowledge which heretofore was equally invisible as federal treaty violations. Local interactions with colonial power following the establishment of federal Indian policy were repeatedly characterized by the forced shift from indigenous to colonial ontology; through “the amnesiac pressure of cultural and linguistic subtraction constantly placed on the region via schools, standardized testing, and English language testing,” it appeared the goal was a “push…towards ‘forgetting ourselves’ and making us monolingual or predominantly English speakers”. Assimilationist policy similarly echoed the desire “to ‘integrate’ Indians into the capitalist ‘free enterprise’ system without any further economic assistance” ; ultimately this attempt at integration was overshadowed by the RGV’s physical and political positionality, but “the forging of a reactionary Indian policy dubbed ‘termination’” remained consistently authoritative for most of the 20th century. Contextualizing the RGV as a Site of Political (Un)belonging While the establishment of the border assumed certain discrete territories, the RGV maintained an “indeterminate territorial status after the Texas Revolution, US annexation, and through the 20th century”6; its autonomy as a bioregion is thus typically cited as crucial “in order to comprehend the present indifferences of its people towards 6 Raul Garza, et al., “Resistant traditions of the Rio Grande Valley, Aztlán: advancing the decolonizing imperative in critical pedagogies,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 53 (2021): 4. 8 gringos from the North and fuereños from the South”7. The indifference makes obvious the fundamentally disjointed politics that the imposition of colonial (subsequently hegemonic) modes of delineation produce; by this I mean specifically: the categorization of RGV tribes by language (Coahuiltecan)—or quasi-language, as it’s clear that there were regional variations—as opposed to categorization based on belief systems; the placement of a physical border wall as representing a legitimate boundary as opposed to questioning the presence of a border at all when individual and social movements are based on cyclical relationships to the RGV’s environment (regardless of where any border wall is on that land); the assimilationism forwarded via English language requirements in schools and the organization of educational models entirely removed from indigenous influence; and the methods of documentation required by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) which directly oppose methods of preservation based on oral tradition and land acknowledgement. The invisibilization of Esto’k Gna is compounded by the rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric initiated by former President Trump. Not only are “American Indians…the longest standing class of hate victims in the United States,”8 but the racialization that occurs in the Borderlands underpins the logic behind the border itself as a defense against migrants. The Esto’k Gna occupy an awkward position along the border since they cannot identify themselves with a specific Tribe and have historically migrated around the RGV regardless of state boundaries; their status as “legitimately” immigrant or indigenous is constantly put into question based on these boundaries and racially charged 7 Ibid. Southern Poverty and Law Center (1994) as cited by Million, Policing the Rez, 110; for more recent SPLC Intelligence Reports on anti-indigenous hate crime see “For the Record: 2014 Winter Issue”; “For the Record: 2015 Summer Issue.” 8 9 rhetoric on what immigrants look like. Unsurprisingly, the criminalization of indigenous peoples in the Borderlands has continually reappeared in Esto’k Gna literature surrounding border security, “Gringos in the U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the borderlands transgressors, aliens…The only ‘legitimate’ inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those who align themselves with whites”9. Esto’k Gna have faced prosecution on charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing multiple times under Texas jurisdiction; take for recent example Esto’k Gna activism following proposed LNG construction and HB 3557 (anti-protest bill proposed March 2019 and approved in June), wherein “the Tribal Chairman and other members [who attended]…were detained and threatened with criminal trespass.”10 The methods of navigating the relationships of domination at play in this region are naturally entangled in “the discomfort or perpetual unsettling”11 produced by such interactions and augmented by competing conceptions of national belonging with regard to territorial boundaries. It is clear that there are distinct interpretations of what sovereignty is and how it is achieved within the RGV. The material effects of one interpretation usurping another are plainly visible on Somi Se’k land, as this pieced together history is intended to map out. The current Tribal Chairman of the Esto’k Gna, Juan Mancias, has produced countless versions of such quasi-histories (due to the variety of their content; I relied on social media posts, blogs, feature articles, and information from interviews); it is in many ways a way to reclaim all that which has been forgotten. Mancias often references the 9 Million, Policing the Rez, 110. Seánna Howard, et al., “Stakeholder Report to the UN Human Rights Council, Universal Periodic Review Working Group,” Water Protector Legal Collective, University of Arizona Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, Oct. 2, 2019: 5. 11 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 78. 10 10 (imagined) lack of indigenous peoples in Texas as a jab at these techniques of erasure, “After all…There are no Indians in Texas, right?”12 The dual processes of forgetting history and imposing an equally detached model based on land acquisition illustrate how the Esto’k Gna came to be practically nonexistent in their own land. 12 Churchill, Finding and Voice and Making it Heard. 11 Cutting the Head of the Snake: Mobilizing an Alternative Sovereignty This is the head of the snake. Everything is coming this way. If we don’t cut the head of the snake off and just continue to break its back every once in a while, it’ll heal itself.13 Perhaps the most salient technique of preservation for Esto’k Gna today is Yalui Village, part of a broader “network of encampments along the border that seeks to protect sacred indigenous sites threatened by the border wall and various fossil fuel projects in the area”14, as well as the catalyst for many community coalitions. Yalui was founded in late January of 2019 by Juan Mancias and nearly thirty other activists (Esto’k Gna and Texan), and sits within proximity of the Eli Jackson Cemetery (San Juan), “a statedesignated historical marker” and indigenous burial ground15. Yalui was established in response to both the CBP announcement that border wall construction would be continuing and proposals to construct Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) pipelines through the region. Shortly after 13 Juan Mancias as cited by Marisol Cortez and Greg Harman, “The Most Critical Fight Against Trump’s Border Wall You’ve Never Heard Of,” Vice, Vice Media Group, March 12, 2020, 14 Dennis J. Bernstein, “Borderland Resistance,” The Progressive Magazine, The Progressive Inc., April 1, 2019, 15 Aaron Miguel Cantú, “Down in the Valley: How Trump’s Border Wall Perpetuates the Legacy of Colonialism on the Rio Grande,” The Intercept, First Look Institute, March 31, 2019, 12 Trump declared “a national emergency over border security” 16, Mancias appealed to the United Nations, and in March 2019 “attorneys with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice filed a joint lawsuit against Trump and administration officials on behalf of [Eli Jackson Cemetery] and the [Esto’k Gna] tribe…It asks a federal judge to strike down the national emergency declaration and enjoin the president from using emergency funds to build the wall”17. The Tribe’s paramount concern was the protection of sacred lands, but the construction of the border wall in the RGV was typically seen by locals as another manifestation of “the valley as a sacrifice zone”18, directly reflecting the decolonial political stance of the Esto’k Gna. Nearly every effort staged against governmental bodies by the Esto’k Gna involves direct collaboration with local environments, namely individual landowners. This is primarily because the Esto’k Gna have no formal “reservation”; most of their activism efforts thus rely on those with sanctioned property ownership. Mancias initiated contact with Ramiro Ramírez, owner of the Eli Jackson Cemetery, and several other local landowners in January of 2019 to establish a means of resistance along the border wall and its intended construction path. These alliances validate a mutual understanding of “a long tradition of anti-Mexican racism emanating from the valley’s power structure”19, 16 Mike Givens, “Defending the Sacred in South Texas: Christa Mancias,” Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine 45, no. 1 (2021): 17 Cantú, Down in the Valley. Ibid. 19 Ibid. 18 13 and ensure the physical presence of those directly involved in the cause “to monitor the excavation and make sure nothing is being dug up that are remains or artifacts’”20. Rendering the Esto’k Gna more politically visible is its general function, considering that “people don’t think there [are] Natives in Texas…That it’s only the federally recognized tribes that need to be dealt with”21. Despite their use of exclusively extra-State resources (primarily NGOs, specific farms/public garden owners, environmental organizations, and other Borderlands tribes), the Esto’k Gna’s educational goals within Yalui are poignant: “We’ll teach math, reading, writing…but at the same time, we want to talk about colonization…that we’re on the verge of destroying the only planet that can hold our life forms”22. These educational systems, while diffuse among resistance camps, are physically present in many ways; prior to the establishment of any encampments, the Esto’k Gna enacted a commitment to orate their histories and experiences while applying the knowledge gained from life in Somi Se’k in the political sphere. Mancias continued this practice upon establishing Yalui Village, and “reinforces the opportunity of the villages to bring his people back to their traditional ways”23 by physically marking out space for land considered sacred, providing holistic accounts of the environmental vulnerability and idiosyncrasies of the RGV, and reframing the border wall project as “part of a continuing genocide [Mancias]”24 of the Esto’k Gna people. 20 Juan Mancias as cited by Bernstein, Borderland Resistance. Juan Mancias as cited by Cortez, Critical Fight Against Trump’s Border Wall. 22 Ibid. 23 Symone Saul, “Decolonizing at Yalui Village,” NewPeople Newspaper 50, no. 1 (2020): 21 24 Bernstein, Borderland Resistance. 14 In conjunction with border encampments, the Esto’k Gna have centered their resistance efforts around the Tribal Tribunal for Human Rights, hosted in May of 2020 with “the Gulf Center for Law and Poverty [GCLP] and Gulf South for a Green New Deal [GSGND]”25. Deeply tied to the Tribe’s commitment to preserving and clarifying their history (or existence at all), the Tribunal focused on iterating “the violations of Indigenous sovereignty happening at sacred sites for the Tribe,” making explicit what has historically been delegitimized; in documenting “a public account of the harms Texas LNG continues to inflict on the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe,”26 the Esto’k Gna engage across the RGV while amplifying otherwise strictly local interpretations of sovereignty. In collaboration with the Ponca Nation, Sierra Club, and GSGND leaders, Esto’k Gna activists organized several Impact Reviews and fundraisers which provided the bulk of hands-on collaborative activism; crucially, by locating a “connection from the original history of this land with the people that were from this land, who know this land, and are created from this land”27. Fundamental to this relationship to resistance—the collaborative acts of connecting to your environment and the individuals that co-inhabit it—is the effective use of subjective interpretation always, including politically. This in and of itself constitutes resistance frequently among Esto’k Gna activist circles: Listening is an act of decolonization. Colonizers refuse to listen. They bring their facts, their language, and beliefs wherever they go and impose 25 Tom Valtin, “Tribal Tribunal for Human Rights in the Borderlands,” Sierra Club, July 8, 2020, 26 Ana Maria de la Rosa, “On Sacred Land: Protecting the Garcia Pasture from Fracked Gas,” Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, June 11, 2020, 27 Christa Mancias as cited by Jose Arredondo, “Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe Fights to Preserve Indigenous History,” Spectrum News, Charter Communications, July 5, 2020, 15 it in one direction…Donald Longsoldier of the Oglala Lakota Nation will patiently describe the difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’ with your heart and mind in tandem, if you can make out his soft mantras over the crackling of logs in the sacred fire.28 Esto’k Gna resistance efforts heavily prioritize this intimate knowledge of the environment and the historical context required to fully understand it. Decolonization through education also appears in thorough investigations of policy changes, such as reports done on former Secretary of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who “waived 25 laws under the 2005 Real ID Act, including protections for endangered species and migratory birds, to expedite the wall’s construction”29, among many other similar Impact Reviews. Perhaps more importantly for the Esto’k Gna than specific policy knowledge— though they are necessarily informed nonetheless—are the environmental effects of border wall construction, which play a large role in their relationship to Somi Se’k and the species therein. Border wall encampments act as hubs for the dissemination of this knowledge, with broader political implications in mind upon collaboration. In this way the Esto’k Gna “intentionally [honor] land as knowledge”30 by linking their localized knowledge and political intentions. 28 Saul, Decolonizing at Yalui Village. Garet Bleir, “Resisting the Border Wall: In Defense of Indigenous History and an Underground Railroad Outpost,” Intercontinental Cry, Center for World Indigenous Studies, June 5, 2019, 29 30 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 64. 16 Carrizo/Comecrudo, Incorporated The United States as a legal creation is always inhabited by a murdered presence, the Natives who were ‘disappeared’ by historical genocide. The state must also deal with a now, what Avery Gordon calls ‘something that must be done.’ The murdered have returned talking, claiming the land, running casinos, and negotiating directly with Washington, D.C. Beyond the three legal jurisdictions created by the U.S.A.—tribal, state, and federal—there are real Native land and real Native peoples.31 Removed almost entirely from the process of subjectively relating to the RGV is the strikingly objective process of acquiring federal recognition. The Esto’k Gna’s nonrecognition is primarily owing to the fact that acquiring “federal acknowledgment”32 involves a process of qualification, which is determined following “anthropological, genealogical, and historical research”33. This, of course, does not work for Tribes who have never recorded this data or lost it to systemic erasure. The specifics of attaining subsidized benefits are thus problematic in and of themselves, and illustrate the attitude of the federal government toward indigenous groups’ sovereignty “by only officially recognizing tribes that meet certain criteria for community participation and historical membership and involvement”34. The problematics are evident not only in the myriad treaty amendments made by the United States government, but also in the extremely charged response from Esto’k Gna peoples concerning the cultural spaces they occupy (and have occupied historically). When we analyze this situation through the lens of attainable sovereignty, it becomes 31 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 104-105. United States Department of the Interior: Indian Affairs, “Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA),” DOI, last updated March 7, 2022, 33 Ibid. 34 Sara Daly, “Bordering On Discrimination: Effects of Immigration Policies/Legislation on Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Mexico,” American Indian Law Review 38, no. 1 (2013-2014): 183. 32 17 clear that there are two different perceptions occurring—one rooted in effective authority (I have previously signaled as based on land ownership) and the other in place-based knowledge and memory. This is crucial in understanding the nature of domination in the RGV as well as the unique relationship that the Esto’k Gna have maintained with the federal government: Taking Native lands and the wealth they generated required a systemic extension of racialized property concepts and the military might to back up notions that prioritized property ownership for whites…Establishing jurisdiction over Native lands and lives was, and is, the most important and negotiated issue between Native peoples and the U.S. government. Sovereignty, for Western law, continuously returns to the question of jurisdiction.35 In tandem with restrictions placed on Esto’k Gna sovereignty through the exclusivity of territorial delineations are the material effects of occupying the Borderlands as a resident without such a delineation; federally unrecognized tribe members cannot “be issued ETCs [Enhanced Tribal Identification Cards]…Citizens of tribes without federal recognition need a valid passport to cross the border. And for those without proper documentation, such as a birth certificate, access is barred”36. This makes it very difficult if not impossible for many Esto’k Gna citizens to “claim cross-border connections”37 and fulfill any tribal responsibilities requiring migration. Furthermore, many feel that (regardless of recognition status) the prerequisite of documentation “is a deprivation of their access to tribal lands”38 and denies their “inherent sovereignty”39. 35 Million, Policing the Rez, 104, emphasis added. Daly, Bordering On Discrimination, 181. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Million, Policing the Rez, 114. 36 18 The legitimacy of Borderlands groups in general was already a problem for colonizers when they arrived in the 16th century since the validity of any official statistical delineation came not from documentation akin to that of the Spanish’s Council of Castile (or any given governmental body), but from a prolonged relationship with the physical environment. The reversal of legitimacy that occurs in the transfer from Esto’k Gna tradition to federal jurisdiction once again highlights the apparent inability of the Esto’k Gna specifically to fit into federal categories of acknowledgement and provides a foundation for exploring extra-State activism that is effective and legitimate regardless of affiliation with Western law. The alternative routes taken by the Esto’k Gna to acquire funding dovetail with their efforts to reconstruct sovereignty; since relying on government subsidies is out of the question, the Tribe is “registered as a nonprofit to collect and administer funds…a GoFundMe page overseen by Mancias brought in more than $20,000 over the last two years—the result of tenacious social media boosting”40. This illustrates how, without a category to “belong” to, the Esto’k Gna remain in the space reserved for uncategorized citizens (or non-citizens) and thus must carve out their own extra-State support. The sovereignty-to-citizen pipeline is directly linked to understandings of sovereignty as primarily juridical; the enforcement of such criteria, analogous to that of borders, remains nominal for Esto’k Gna and is oftentimes seen as an imposition: “Mancias says that lacking official recognition can be liberating. Without any blood quantum requirements to limit tribal membership, for example, the tent for the Carrizo/Comecrudo can be as wide as the tribe wants it to be”41. 40 41 Cantú, Down in the Valley. Ibid. 19 Grasping the Esto’k Gna’s commitment to extra-State resources requires an intentional distinction between the conflicting notions of sovereignty muddying the (political) waters—what is it that Esto’k Gna immediately identify as sovereign which seems to have escaped non-indigenous settlers? The construction of Yalui Village as a communal site of education and visibility which inverses the problematics embedded within the RGV parallels the inherent sovereignty of both land and indigenous peoples forwarded not only by the rejection of designated sovereignty (that which must be granted by a juridical body) but also the organization of infrastructural support from strictly community-based donors which would otherwise be provided by the State. 20 The Process of Remembering: Constructing a “Native sacred geography” Listen! Do you hear it? The gunshots ringing out like fireworks from Reynosa, across the Rio Grande to where you lie awake, nestled in scratchy blankets, mere inches of soft dirt separating yours from the bones of the ancestors. Do you hear the unpredictable pattering of wind against nylon or the all-too-predictable whirring of helicopters and Border Patrol trucks creeping past the village? Quietly focus on the sound of coyotes fervently yelping at the other dogs, or the bird calls of the human coyotes whistling their location to the migrants they’re escorting through cover of night under a glaringly open sky.42 The limitations of sovereignty-by-borders are on full display in the creation of alternative political routes that are representative of Esto’k Gna beliefs. The primary cases I have cited as critical in contextualizing constructions of sovereignty are tribal 42 Symone Saul, “Decolonizing at Yalui Village,” NewPeople Newspaper 50, no. 1 (2020): 21 tribunals, border encampments, and indigenous-constructed histories based on landknowledge. Tribunals “have emerged as an autonomous alternative to state-based legal authorities in response to…violations of human and Indigenous rights around the world”43; it is worth noting that the Esto’k Gna are not the first Tribe to host something like this, but their position as a federally unrecognized Tribe renders the reach of this project particularly impressive. Border encampments “[form] a protective barrier as well as [monitor] and [record] the transportation of heavy machinery”44 and similarly source their legitimacy from community-based interpretations coupled with a familiarity of State creation which necessitates the physical presence of Esto’k Gna. Communal histories informed by the environment solidify the Esto’k Gna’s political project by linking it to “Indigenous land- and river-based ways of knowing and being within a borderland context”45. Alongside the establishment of alliances with state- or federally-sanctioned landholders (namely at the Eli Jackson Cemetery and Garcia Pasture), the Esto’k Gna effectively set up a widespread network of extra-State resources deeply invested in the articulation of their history and beliefs—most accurately captured by the construction of Esto’k Gna sovereignty within a “Native sacred geography”46 which properly attends to the inherent sovereignty of the land as a basis for their broader articulations of sovereignty. In honoring that “perspective is everything”47, the strict delineations of sovereignty and belonging maintained by the physical border and federal policy begin to 43 Valtin, Tribal Tribunal for Human Rights in the Borderlands. Churchill, Finding and Voice and Making it Heard. 45 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 63. 46 Ibid., 70. 47 Ibid. 44 22 fall apart; they are replaced by a more fluid understanding of the identities that have existed since pre-colonization. Clearly the Esto’k Gna’s commitment to land-based political knowledge complicates the idea of sovereignty under traditional Western law; however, it also opens up new understandings of the concept as informed by the sacred geography of the RGV. Survival of the Esto’k Gna perspective is primarily the result of intergenerational storytelling, suggesting a certain sovereignty acquired from the sustained interrelatedness of the Tribe and RGV soil. More specifically in opposition to federal narratives of national belonging, “stories serve as decolonizing approaches that bear witness, revitalize, and remember the pre-border relationships between the river, the land, and the people”. This interpretation requires an intentional shift in relation to environment and is what the Esto’k Gna have embodied politically; much of the direct action they have taken encourages “unsettling everyone by intentionally honoring land as knowledge”48. How this is mapped on Esto’k Gna land is inextricably linked to this shift in perception, which is oftentimes not as much a shift as a reckoning. It is a relatively consistent teaching “to begin with the ancestral language so that the land understands when we call it by name”49. The political authority that this gives the land itself is legitimized by the distinct knowledge base it is founded upon: the Esto’k Gna’s “deep time-land knowledge and extensive networks of relatives across the territory”50. This is not unique to the Esto’k Gna—indigenous tribes have practiced land-based epistemology since time immemorial; however, the specific mechanisms involved in the Esto’k Gna’s 48 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 64, emphasis added. Ibid. 50 Ibid., 67. 49 23 identification of the RGV as a sacred geography illuminate how sovereignty is constructed for a group to whom it has been continually denied. The land-knowledge cultivated through bioregional interactions uses the environment itself as a framing device. Specifically within the RGV, a familiarity with the Río Bravo is of great importance for the Esto’k Gna, “…as children, they were fluent in the river’s language of temperature, color, current, and surface turbulence…They could read the Rio Grande”51. The “reading” of the RGV gains legitimacy through time in a “living archive”52, reflecting the history embedded within the land and subsequently the customs enacted on it. The practices initiated in the name of environmental protection become markers of a more subjective interpretation of sovereignty through “traces of Indigenous culture and knowledges embedded in social history, the language, ceremonial observances, burial practices, storied sites, sacred medicines, and knowledge of natural springs”53. Said interpretations are another salient theme found in indigenous sovereignty literature which represent an important mode of autonomy. At a certain point in time, “the river used to bring relatives from all directions together at/in/of/on/through/across/with the water. Today, the border creates a semi-permeable boundary, tightly controlling the flow of bodies and ideas”54. Putting this into conversation with how the Esto’k Gna have chosen to conduct themselves politically is not only revealing in its alterity to federal categories (thus putting into question the legitimacy of such categories at all) but also in how it remains a consistent source of 51 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 66. Ibid., 67. 53 Ibid., 70. 54 Ibid., 68. 52 24 political authority for the Esto’k Gna. Collaboration reemerges as a crucial component to the preservation of culture and land in their historical articulations; it is only through these articulations that Indigenous traditions “survive in the collective memory of the people”55. The Esto’k Gna identify these methods of survival as Lifeways because that’s the most accurate term—the alternative enactments of sovereignty proposed here in opposition to a hegemonic code are an everyday reality for this Tribe and many others (even aside from recognition status). Navigating the Borderlands specifically as a Native sacred geography is simply inherent for the Esto’k Gna: “For us it was a Life Way…To the native person, whatever you were doing every day was a prayer. You don’t have to set it aside”56. The land-based knowledge from which Esto’k Gna sovereignty is articulated thus informs every sphere of lived experience, including the political. Ultimately these peripheral assertions of sovereignty remain just that within the State, evidenced by the Esto’k Gna’s continual struggle to establish affiliation with the federal government. But they also reveal certain fractures in the hegemonic logic of sovereignty, beginning with the annihilation of indigenous groups who did not belong (or were not categorically legible) to any imposed juridical category. The issue of Esto’k Gna sovereignty is only part of a much larger discussion on the necessity of political and historical recognition. 55 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 70. Juan Mancias as cited by Callie Shanafelt Wong, “Garcia Pasture: United States,” Sacred Land Film Project, March 2, 2018, 56 25 Restorying Land-Based Sovereignty on Decolonial Terms The particular version of sovereignty articulated by the Esto’k Gna is similarly part of a broader vision of decolonial politics within indigenous activism communities in the Borderlands. Mancias has continually worked to reframe indigenous sovereignty through the Esto’k Gna lens in order to bridge the gap between designated and inherent sovereignty (as discussed in Section III); much of his writing illustrates the dual activismstorytelling common across oral histories of disenfranchised Tribes who have little official record of their existence: Our Life Ways are ancient though they are not primitive in the sense that modern society misunderstands ‘primitive,’ as being ignorant heathens with low-level thinking and understanding. Our Life Ways are simple and at the same time highly intelligent and sophisticated in everyday practical ways with deep and grounded insights and understanding of living with a real respect for the Earth (who we know as Kamla’ Kayka or Grandmother Earth) and every being that makes up our habitat—we are only a part of it.57 Infused within this narrative is the parallel mission of decolonization, of course; for the Esto’k Gna this appears as an ideological reversal from border-based sovereignty to land-based sovereignty, as the construction of a Native sacred geography illustrates. This requires the simultaneous transformation of the land itself as a sovereign body (echoing Esto’k Gna interactions with the Río Bravo); as is perhaps evident at this point, a familiarity with the RGV environment provides the foundation of this conception of sovereignty. In “the process of storying and restorying”58 narratives of indigenous sovereignty based on land-knowledge and who is (ideologically, physically) admitted 57 Juan Mancias and Andy Torres, “The Biggest Tribe You Never Learned About in Your Texas History Books,” Free Press Houston, Jul. 23, 2015, 58 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 78. 26 into the national body, the Esto’k Gna reify the “resistant traditions”59 present in much of the literature on sovereignty in the RGV. These traditions appear similar to (if not the same as) the inherent sovereignty of land and indigenous peoples forwarded by Esto’k Gna activism at Yalui Village, for they operate in the same way. Both articulate narratives and inspire mobilization based on “established, bioregionally-based, often ideologically inconsistent ways of knowing and doing”60. As specific Tribal relations and political maneuvers are misinterpreted (either miscategorized, conflated with other unaffiliated groups, or perceived as criminal activity), where the Esto’k Gna “belong” territorially is bound up in the misidentification of what legitimately constitutes belonging to a national body. The ways in which Esto’k Gna activism is understood as “alien transgression” (such as that discussed in Section I) misconstrues the “highly intelligent and sophisticated” methods of interacting with the environment enacted by the Esto’k Gna every day for centuries. A “necessary bioregional situatedness”61 becomes more relevant from this indigenous Borderlands perspective; the version of sovereignty forwarded by the Esto’k Gna, in other words, requires a reversal of our conception of national boundaries through acknowledging the land as an inherently sovereign body. Without these framings, we remain distanced from the ways in which the RGV is historically and contemporarily entangled not only in competing versions of sovereignty but also in a deep-rooted relationship to the environment and risk misreading the productive orientation in which this region is settled. Take for example Christa 59 Raul Garza, et al., “Resistant traditions of the Rio Grande Valley, Aztlán: advancing the decolonizing imperative in critical pedagogies,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 53 (2021): 2. 60 Ibid. 61 Garza, Resistant Traditions of the RGV, 11. 27 Mancias’s (Esto’k Gna) response to invasive border wall construction and LNG terminal installation: “They’re not doing their due diligence of the land”62. 62 Christa Mancias as cited by Valtin, Tribal Tribunal for Human Rights in the Borderlands. 28 “We want to make sure they recognize our presence”: How Subjective Politics are Enacted Given the critical lens required to sustain alternative versions of sovereignty and nationhood in the RGV it may come as little surprise that Esto’k Gna political mobilization is exclusively community-based. As Mancias has alluded to many times, the most common misunderstanding with regard to Esto’k Gna activism is that their Lifeways “are ancient though they are not primitive”63—the political maneuvers forwarded by the Esto’k Gna are actually extremely legitimate forms of conducting subjective and global politics. As ever this requires personal ties to both the physical land and people within it, through formal and informal alliances and funding. All donations acquired by the Esto’k Gna following their nonprofit status have come from volunteers, activists, and other independent donors64; similarly, all educational initiatives effectively shift attention away from any question of political viability by sustaining a deeply subjective perspective: I know the DNA of my ancestors are in this soil. Generations are made visible when bulldozers bore holes into the land, scooping pottery shards and bits of bone into big mounds, making way for the cement and steel of a border wall. To a trained eye, each hole is a potential archeological site, full of evidence of thousands of years of continuous habitation in the area. For the willfully uninformed, it’s just dirt.65 Not only is the land a sovereign body but it is also, literally, Esto’k Gna “DNA.” The importance of environmental protection is apparent given this interpretation; without it, the RGV and its inhabitants are just foreign obstacles that need to be dealt with. Take 63 Mancias and Torres, The Biggest Tribe You Never Learned About. See also GreatNonProfit, “CCNT Inc. Nonprofit Overview.” 65 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 71-72. 64 29 for example the consequences of border construction in the region, which is not only varied in geography but also contains many residential homes along its border: “The Rio Grande has a set of challenges nowhere else has in that the wall is not on the border, and there’s some homes we [Border Patrol] have to accommodate access to.”66 This relationship to environment necessitates an interdependent dialogue between knowledge given by the land and the recipient; it highlights an alternative standard of political interaction, by always (yes, always) starting with the land and the knowledge it can give us before engaging in collaborative action (still motivated by the desire to forge deeper connections within RGV). This emphasizes not only marginalized experiences but also new standards of education, by deemphasizing knowledge of “the willfully uninformed” (i.e., seeing the RGV as “just dirt”). The impetus to incorporate local and historically marginalized voices into common conceptions of the global perspective is a standard decolonial maneuver; but by looking at its political implications for the Esto’k Gna, the importance of this incorporation is clarified: “The goal of integrating (i.e., centring) Indigenous knowledges…is to affirm this collaborative dimension of knowledge and, at the same time, to address the emerging call for academic knowledge to speak to the diversity of histories, events, experiences and ideas that have shaped human growth and development”67. This echoes earlier calls for localization within the RGV specifically as a site of colonial occupation, and further legitimizes the subjective approach to environmental protection adopted by the Esto’k Gna. It also signals the 66 Loren Flossman (Dir. of BP: Air and Marine Program Management) as cited by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “The great test for Trump’s border wall: Texas’ Rio Grande Valley,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2018, 67 George J. Sefa Dei, “Rethinking the Role of Indigenous Knowledges in the Academy,” Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (2002): 5. 30 parallel project of producing more meaningful political knowledge by including these localized experiences in our conception of nationhood and within a broader vision of a connected global politics. The implications of such knowledge production are best illuminated in community-based contexts which focus on specific, accumulated interactions, as seen above. These interactions develop in several prominent ways, which further complicate conceptions of institutionalized political participation (as seen, for example, in BP expectations of documentation which many Esto’k Gna do not possess). Most of these initiatives have already appeared as prominent aspects of Esto’k Gna activism—namely the dissemination of place-based knowledge through storytelling (especially within organized communal villages such as Yalui) to grapple with the cultural and political invisibilization of the Tribe. Inextricably linked to this process of educational activism is another form of political participation which appears to be the opposite, “The word silence, in association with colonization, implies an imposed silence, as in when we are/were silenced…However, I’d like to suggest that silence is also an intentional response, an act of defiance, a refusal to engage, and an action of resistance”68. While there is no arguing that the Esto’k Gna have not been silenced by acts of linguistic and legal erasure, viewing intentional acts of silence as politically legitimate not only acknowledges marginalized experiences being silenced (the silence imposed upon the Esto’k Gna, for example, memorializes in a certain sense the promise of excavation while rendering their role in that project hyper-visible) but also expands the current understanding of what is 68 Dei, Rethinking the Role of Indigenous Knowledges in the Academy, 77. 31 politically effectual. Aside from the foreignness of grassroots organizations as viable political actors, our conception of activism is continually shaped by that which amplifies, often literally. The Esto’k Gna outline an intermediary stage in which place-based storytelling becomes a critical step before seeking any outwardly-oriented political mobilization. In a previous section the colonial habit to act without context was highlighted as an opposing ontology to that of the Esto’k Gna. Furthering this antihegemonic perspective through political silence not only carves out alternate meanings of civic engagement but also encourages community as a prerequisite for meaningfully conveying a political stance; specifically through silence (as a method of connection or protest), the Esto’k Gna “[shift] our attention from verbal and thinking ways of knowing toward multisensory, embodied ways of being and knowing on the land”69. Political silence is thus transformed from a neutral position to one with extremely charged implications, in that it “[prioritizes] holistic ways of knowing and being that includes physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual knowledges”70. Furthermore, I draw a distinct connection between the political practices of silence and community. Both emerge from a place of political marginalization and, for the Esto’k Gna, both illuminate the healing that is required on a communal level, Interestingly, the response from the community is the same as it has been through the centuries, similar to the response in the event of a natural disaster… Hurricanes can blow away all their trees, floods can wash away their houses, apartheid barriers are built through their front yards, but fronterizxs always come back to their land and rebuild board by board, brick by brick. It is in our nature.71 69 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 77. Ibid. 71 Ibid., 72. 70 32 This is crucial not only as a form of intergenerational healing but also as a form of community development. Local communities as politically salient bodies is not a novel concept, of course, but the concept of local communities as political bodies in and of themselves, capable of making decisions based not on authoritative knowledge but on regionally-informed sources, is something that has been challenged since the colonization of indigenous groups especially. The Esto’k Gna articulate a version of community that has real political legitimacy in that it includes the RGV landscape and its constitutive elements; similarly, their focus on forming alliances with exclusively local landowners (especially as related to environmental protection; public alliances made following the establishment of Yalui Village included Ramírez of Eli Jackson and Marianna TreviñoWright and Max Muñoz of the National Butterfly Center) creates a grassroots network which connects them in myriad ways to the State without directly associating with it. While the non-status of the Esto’k Gna tribe greatly limits their ability to utilize federal funds, the link to said resources provided by politically recognized groups is instrumental in the effective influence of Esto’k Gna activists. GCCLP has legal networks across the U.S. and with internationally-reaching institutions such as the United Nations and Green New Deal affiliates72. Continued funding from many other subsidized organizations73 give the Sierra Club a political advantage not only by proxy but also practically. While the Esto’k Gna do not directly benefit from these funds, they do directly benefit from the pool of resources acquired upon allying with multistate 72 Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, “GCCLP Reports,” GCCLP, last updated Feb. 2022, 73 InfluenceWatch, “Sierra Club,” InfluenceWatch, last updated April 2017, ; see also Sierra Club Foundation, “SCF: Annual Reports,” Sierra Club, 2015, 2016, 33 organizations. This most visibly manifests in large donations to the Tribe (anything over $1000 is likely considered a major gift given their size); there have been at least ten different fundraising opportunities involving the Esto’k Gna since 2016 that I could locate, the most notable being a $3000 donation from the Rainforest Action Network (San Francisco, CA)74 during the Tribal Tribunal and an ongoing fundraiser that has raised over $8000 from 241 donors,75 many of whom were elicited by statements of solidarity from Sierra Club members and the GCCLP during the Tribunal. These are just several examples of the expansion of (what we typically conceive of as a local) community into an ally of international political institutions with relatively stable sources of funding; this highlights an important shift in our conception of political participation, once again, as it requires a reorganization of the institutions we consider politically apt. As previously reviewed, the Esto’k Gna have a strictly grassroots approach but have maintained a network that is multistate in its reach. Thus a broader (or at least more accurate) view of community-based activism is crucial in developing “a real alternative to weak nation-states”76; reversing the logic of illegality by highlighting that perhaps it is the nation-state that is “weak” because it has failed to consider a significant portion of its indigenous population (even aside from the Esto’k Gna) is foundational to decolonial politics. Importantly, this hinges on a reconstruction of community-based activism as politically legitimate; in other words, “a ‘grassroots’ that would be not local, communal, and authentic, but worldly, well connected, and opportunistic?”77 74 RAN, “Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas,” Rainforest Action Network, 2019, 75 Juan Mancias, “Continuing on to Tribal Lifeways,” GoFundMe, Feb. 2, 2021, 76 James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 107. 77 Ibid. 34 This novel arrangement of political participation and sovereignty only tells one portion of the story, of course. Ultimately, the Esto’k Gna derive their need for political intervention from a place of subjective, engaged, and meaningful relationship to sacred sites and traditions. This is directly reflected in their partnership with predominantly environmentalist organizations, but is also the necessary contextualization that must occur in order to reshape our understanding of community participation in the political sphere which is in reality operating on a level we would consider tangential to statemaking. While their politics are built primarily “on storytelling, collective memory, and land-based knowledge [as] a means of healing ourselves and our communities”78, the Esto’k Gna also reorient the very political delineations they utilize to achieve a multistate and community-oriented form of political mobilization. 78 Muñoz, River as Lifeblood, 78. 35 From the Land Up: Cultivating a Legitimate Bioregional Politics On October 8, 2021, the Department of Homeland Security announced its termination of “the remaining border barrier contracts located within U.S. Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector and all border barrier contracts located in the Rio Grande Valley Sector”79. Two months later, Governor Abbott announced the continued construction of the border wall (“...a replication of the border wall that President Trump put up”80) in Starr County, Texas (about 100 miles south of Laredo), made possible by “over $54 million from private donors, of which 98% came from one donor”81. While the governor made no comment about the expansion of the wall beyond Starr County during this announcement, he has previously made it a priority to “secure the border, make criminal arrests, protect landowners, rid our communities of dangerous drugs, and provide Texans with the support they need”82. This is not an uncommon sentiment; last February, the National Butterfly Center—less than 30 minutes outside the heart of Yalui Village—was closed indefinitely following accusations of “human smuggling, sex trafficking and the 79 DHS, “DHS to Terminate Border Barrier Contracts in Laredo and Rio Grande Valley,” Department of Homeland Security: Press Releases, Oct. 8, 2021, 80 Governor Greg Abbott as cited by Carolina Cuellar, “Governor Greg Abbott unveils border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley,” Texas Public Radio, Dec. 19, 2021, 81 Ibid. Office of the Texas Governor, “Border Crisis Update,” Office of the Texas Governor, last updated Feb. 11, 2022, 82 36 exploitation of children”83 within the property from right-wing conspiracy platforms (namely QAnon84). But the Esto’k Gna remain. Alternative articulations of political mobilization are illuminated because of their presence as environmental and human rights activists on the border—in other words, by making themselves hyper-visible. The legitimacy of “the border” and “illegality” is only questioned once the concrete political measure meets Esto’k Gna land—prior to that it is a natural byproduct of modern state-making. By deemphasizing the potency of community-based Esto’k Gna practices of situated political and social landscapes, we reproduce a border politics which is deeply fractured at best. For the Esto’k Gna, this has oftentimes meant literally piecing together their history, despite however they may fit into the larger picture of sovereignty-by-borders. Thus their project enacts a spirit not only of resistance but also education: “We seek to protect our lifeways and share with all people our story and humanity”85; and the separation of indigenous from normative ideologies never strays far behind: “The land belongs to us but the border belongs to them”86. Once we rework our understandings of sovereignty into a more fluid model which comprehends land-based knowledge as legitimate, we can begin to understand how the federally unrecognized Esto’k Gna Tribe of Texas produces an established set of political beliefs based on a deeply personal relationship to their environment; furthermore, our very conception of what it means to be a sovereign body 83 J. David Goodman, “How a Butterfly Refuge at the Texas Border Became the Target of Far-Right Lies,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 2022, 84 BBC News, “Texas butterfly centre closes after QAnon threats,” BBC, Feb. 3, 2022, 85 Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, “Home: About,” Facebook, Jan. 23, 2013, 86 Andrea Carmen as cited by Dennis J. Bernstein, “Borderland Resistance,” The Progressive Magazine, The Progressive Inc., April 1, 2019, 37 and whether or not this is viable criteria for belonging to the “nation” is challenged by the extremely persistent acts of resistance by Esto’k Gna and affiliate Tribes since the 16th century. The political importance of interrogating the criteria for both sovereignty and national belonging is perhaps self-evident as an act of redress but also represents an important political shift that acknowledges the land and people as interactive, and that both have their own sovereign implications. Such a shift is only possible by interrogating what we consider to be “properly” politically engaged—especially as we continue to see instances of exploitation in this region; see recent proposals of SpaceX operations in Brownsville which, according to Elon Musk, is just “a lot of land with nobody around, and so if [a rocket] blows up, it’s cool”87. State-adjacent modes of political participation have proven to be ineffective at accounting for alternative forms, namely communitybased initiatives supported by local alliances. The Esto’k Gna actively reshape understandings of sovereignty by enacting such modes in conjunction with a constant dialogue with hegemonic political systems; in this way they remain highly visible in the political sphere without continuing the cycle of invisibilizing themselves. Upon announcement of continued border wall construction in 2019, owners of the National Butterfly Center and residents at Yalui Village were informed that access to all land in the path of the border wall was barred, in that “it’s all government land now”88. The Esto’k Gna have directly challenged this assertion and generated a version of 87 Abe Asher, “On His Way to Theoretically Colonize Mars, Elon Musk is Actually Colonizing South Texas,” Jacobin Magazine, Feb. 27, 2022, 88 Janie Stein, “In the Path of the Border Wall: Reflections on Our Time with the Esto’k Gna and the National Butterfly Center,” The Esperanza Project, Feb. 5, 2019, 38 political participation equally (if not more) productive in encouraging the historicallyand politically-contextualized narratives on sovereignty which a truly global politics necessitates. 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