Community ORGANIZING

Beginning in 2020, with the blessing of my elders from the Miakan-Garza Band of Coahuiltecans, I began leading a multi-million dollar initiative to establish an Indigenous Cultures Center in Hays County, TX. The first #LandBack initiative in Central Texas, this center would also be the first of its kind in the state of Texas. Returning land to our community would conserve our lands, protect our waters, and provide a permanent educational and ceremonial space for local Indigenous communities and future generations. With the collaboration of many, we created a formal proposal for county bond funding to be presented in front of the Hays County Parks and Open Spaces Advisory Commission. As of today, we have secured $5 million dollars from Hays County toward construction, and negotiated a land return from Texas State University to bring the project to life (#LandBack). This project is now being stewarded by the Indigenous Cultures Institute. You may read about our initiative to establish an Indigenous Cultures Center in the press.

To learn more about the Indigenous Cultures Institute, visit: indigenouscultures.org and Indigenous Cultures Center.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) databases list more than 7 million Culturally Unidentifiable Inventoried (CUI) Native American remains of our ancestors that have been unearthed over the years and are kept in “collections” by universities, museums, and federal and state departments.  This has happened in a country where it is against the law to disturb a human grave. As of 2015, the remains of 3,454 ancestors were removed from our Texas sacred grounds.  Over 2,400 of those ancestors are at the University of Texas at Austin. The Miakan-Garza tribe is seeking three of those remains for reburial. “Our obligation, as Native people, as Texas Indians, is to obtain possession of these ancestral remains and rebury them as close as possible to where they were unearthed.” — Dr. Mario Garza 

Public Campaign
With the permission of leaders of the Miakan-Garza Band of Coahuiltecans, I have been leading and organizing the fight against the University of Texas at Austin seeking the return of three ancestors that were unearthed from our ceremonial grounds. Formally, I serve as a member of the Repatriation Committee for the Miakan-Garza Band of Coahuiltecans.

On June 3, 2020, UT denied the tribe’s request to rebury our ancestors.  The Miakan-Garza Band appealed to President Jay Harzell to overturn this decision and gave him until August 17th to respond. No response was received. On August 20th the tribe issued a press release targeting the university’s unwillingness to turn over the ancestors for reburial. By this time, my elders gave me permission to lead an intergenerational, intertribal, and intersectional public campaign to pressure UT Austin to return our ancestors’ remains. September 7th, 2020 the community gathered and united with students at UT to launch a campaign for the ancestors’ release. We continue this fight and organize on the ground each year to maintain public pressure against a university with the largest endowment in the state. I also launched the Instagram account @ReturntheRemains, to align messaging and organize our allies. A huge component of this work is narrative disruption: educating the public about the law, and organizing counter-narratives to disrupt the misinformation spread through the press by UT. By confusing the public by providing the non-Native press with inaccurate information about the NAGPRA process, UT continues to work to counteract our grassroots organizing work. In November 2021, we presented on this issue at the 7th Annual Repatriation Conference for the Association on American Indian Affairs. You can find the conference draft agenda HERE.

Black Lives Matter, Disability Justice, and additional coalition-building:

In addition to narrative change work to support Native self-determination, I have been an organizer supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in Austin since 2013. In the summer of 2017, while living in the midwest, I organized the March Against White Supremacy in Maumee, Ohio, the hometown of Charlottesville white supremacist James Field, Jr. As a community-based educator and organizer, I have worked to lead programs and build coalitions across allied communities. A non-exhaustive list of organizations I have worked for include: MindPOP, the Indigenous Cultures Institute, the Performing Justice Project, Camp Mosaic for Isma’ili Muslim youth, Con Mi Madre, ZACH Theatre, Teatro Vivo, Travis County Juvenile Probation Department, Hays County Juvenile Detention Center, Niagara University, HowlRound, and Voices Against Violence. Most recently, I developed a national curriculum that is free and accessible to educators across the country, rooted in principles of disability justice, racial justice, and Indigenous sovereignty. You can access this free curriculum through HowlRound HERE.