Indigenous Peoples On

1. Indigenous Peoples On The U.S. – Mexico Border

2. Main Points for Discussion • View the Texas, U.S. and A.P. History Standards from the perspectives of Indigenous peoples • Standard chronological periods have different implications for Native Peoples • Terms such as: citizenship, progress, settler, assimilation, equality, etc. have different meanings for Native Peoples • The “Indian Wars” of the 19th century did not end tribal culture or history • “The West” and “The Border” were/are foreign concepts for Indigenous Peoples

3. Issues to Consider • Cultural Survival and Adaptation • Syncretism • Case Studies as examples of persistence • Critical thinking in history • Preparation for citizenship and/or cultural awareness • Embrace contending views on the past • Historical roots for contemporary debates • Stereotypical Images of Indians and diversity of Indigenous cultures

4. Historiography • Indians as obstacles to progress & expansion • Indians as doomed to disappear or assimilate • Indians as passive victims of whites • Indians as complex actors and agents of historical change • Indigenous histories, cultures, and worldviews • Indigenous Nations as sovereign entities • Native languages & oral history

6. Conquest • “Cycles of Conquest” • Spanish, British, French, American • Biological Imperialism • Plants, food, disease, animals • Distortion of Indigenous institutions • Encapsulation of populations • Divide and conquer • Multiple alliances, allegiances, and complex reactions • “Ethnogenesis”

7. Spanish Borderlands

9. Ethnic Cleansing and Indian Wars • U.S. Indian Removal Act of 1830 relocated tribes west of the Mississippi River and placed them in Indian Territory • Manifest Destiny, post U.S.-Mexico War & nation building • Gold Rush and California Indian Law of 1850 • Texas, New Mexico, Arizona • Treaties as a recognition of independence AND a tool of conquest and land acquisition • Ethnic Cleansing in Texas and Wars against the Apaches and Comanches • Fled into Mexico or chose status as “Mexican” to gain citizenship and hide ethnic identity • Mexico did not legally recognize a distinct race of Native People: all declared citizens. No reservations held in trust by federal government

10. On and Off Reservations • Policy of concentration on reservations • Colonialism: control by the Indian Bureau • Assimilation = cultural genocide • Land, language, religion, children, families • Many people refused to live on reservations • Some had treaties, others did not • Oklahoma had most tribes from Texas • Statehood included the erasure of Native lands

11. Twentieth Century • Fluctuations in degree of control by Bureau of Indian Affairs • 1887-1934; 1934-1942; 1942-1970s; 1975-Present • Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 • Multi-tribal organizations for independence and sovereignty • National Congress of American Indians (1944) • American Indian Movement (1968) • Native American Rights Fund (1970) • Control over natural and cultural resources • Limited sovereignty and independence • Conflicts with states over jurisdiction, casinos, etc. • Contemporary Issues and concerns: • Membership, economic development, health care, education, youth drug use, language retention, sacred sites

12. Cultural Adaptation and Persistence • Culture is not a static structure or entity • Indigenous groups impacted each other and changed each other • The “traditional culture” that non-Indians ascribed to Indigenous peoples was not a baseline or starting point of their culture—it constantly changed—if only slightly • Ongoing change and continuity in cultural characteristics, beliefs, values, etc. • Culture defined by meaning in symbols, actions, performance, and relationships that transcend outward appearance • Land and geography, religion, language, family, economies perpetuate cultural identities

13. Kickapoo • History of movement and profound sense of expansive space • Algonquian Language • Migrations from the Great Lakes • Treaties, relocation and removal • Splinter bands into Texas and Mexico: El Nacimiento and Eagle Pass • Treaties and reservation in Texas • A federally recognized tribe, 1983 • Land held in trust, semi-sovereign • Unique status of tribal lands in Texas

15. Eagle Pass, Kickapoo Reservation

16. Kickapoo, Oklahoma

17. Kickapoo Women

18. Tonkawas • Central Texas • Allied with Texans during Independence, Texas guaranteed them land in 1860s • 1870s revoked the agreement and relocated them to Oklahoma • 1960s and 1970s began campaign to reclaim lands in central Texas • The Tonkawa President, Virginia Combrink, “The state of Texas still owes us,” she said. “We just want our land.” • U.S. District Court Judge ruled against them in 1994, stating that their land had been converted to public land, which the state of Texas sold in the 1870s to pay off debts.

20. Lino Sánchez y Tapia, in Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830 (1969). Texas Collection Library

22. Jumanos • Debatable origins of Jumanos and complex relationship with Apache, Pueblos, Kiowa, Comanche • Possibly Uto-Aztecan language family • Possibly related to Manso, Suma, Concho, Jano • Highly mobile peoples • Incorporated into, and borrowed from, surrounding tribes and ethnic groups • West Texas, Northern Chihuahua, Southern New Mexico • Some were “detribalized” and incorporated into surrounding Mexican ethnic community

23. Jumanos Today • Redford, Texas • Jumano leader Enrique Madrid, recognition would “help us overcome what we’ve had to live with for 150 years as Americans.” • Jumano member Gabriel Carrasco, “want our identity back.” • Ignacio Menchaca de la Vega, who is in charge of their application for recognition: “If you said you were Native American, if you said you were Jumano Apache, you were a dead Jumano Apache. Simple as that.” • De la Vega added that many Indians tried to “blend in with Mexicans for survival.”

25. Isleta del Sur (Tiguas) • Northern Pueblos and Spanish Conquest • El Paso Region and Mission • Spanish Land Grants • U.S. and Juarez • Land theft and encroachment, laws, taxes • Related to Piros in Socorro and Senecu • Federal Recognition • Casino, blood quantum, relations with the state, and Jack Abramoff

26. Land Grant & Reservation

29. Mescalero Apaches • Southeastern New Mexico, Western Texas, and Northeastern Chihuahua • Athapaskan language group • Migratory, horse culture, multiple decentralized bands • Trade relations with Mexicans, Pueblos, Americans • Hunted by American soldiers, corralled onto Reservations • Hundreds in Mexico • Mescalero Reservation has multiple bands • Mescalero, Chiricahua, Lipan • Economic Development • Wendell Chino

31. Old Photographs….

32. New Images

33. The New Cowboys and Indians • Mescalero Rodeo

34. Tarahumara • Sierra Madres & Copper Canyon • Resistance to colonization by Spanish & Mexico • Syncretism • Cultural Tourism • Land Loss and Urbanization • Several 1,000 in Cd Juarez • Migrations into U.S.

36. Tohono O’Odham • Also known as the “Pima” (Papago) • Agriculturalists and canal builders: descendents of Hohokam • Catholicism and Indigenous views • Border cut in half their territory • Mexican and U.S. members struggled for triple citizenship • Presently caught in cross-cutting pressures of a post-9/11 world: immigration, Border Patrol, Homeland Security, Department of Interior

37. Tohono O’Odham Traditional Lands & Reservation

38. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo & Gadsden Purchase

39. Piro-Manso-Tiwa (Tortugas) • Multi-ethnic, multi-tribal group • Spanish colonialism and reduccion, missions, labor systems and 17th & 18th century demographic changes • Piro and Tiwa are descended from Puebloan groups who may have remained in the area after the Pueblo Revolt • Some migrated from Ysleta del Sur in the 19th and 20th century

40. Piro-Manso-Tiwa • Manso are indigenous to the region • Scant linguistic and historical information • Recognized by the Spanish around El Paso and west to Las Cruces region • By the 19th and 20th centuries, the group lived beyond the purview of U.S. federal authorities, lacked treaties or other formal recognition • Today the whole group is filing for federal recognition and are high on the list of the Department of Interior

41. Conclusions and Comments • Contending views on the past • Oral history and traditions • Student engagement with sources • Internet research • Student identification with communities • Problem solving • Cultural awareness and embrace of differences • Borders do not always have to separate us • Indigenous views on the borderlands