On May 22 -23rd, more than 400 participants on zoom and more than 7,000 listeners over Facebook joined the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas in partnership with the Gulf South for Green New Deal Initiative to participate and listen into the historical event: the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribunal for Human Rights. Due to COVID-19 concerns, the event was held virtually in a webinar format on Zoom and Facebook Live over the two days. The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and several staff members and volunteers were active participants in the event, and a statement from interim director Cyrus Reed was included as part of the tribunal (see below).
The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribunal for Human Rights is a critical step in the active resistance of Indigenous Peoples in Texas against the corporate and government encroachment on sacred land, continued pollution of Native territory and violations of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples. This tribunal brough national and global awareness to the violations happening at the U.S. southern border and acted as a call to action to stop the petrochemical buildout in the Gulf South.
The Tribunal archived official testimony documenting the on-going violations of Indigenous sovereignty, violence and environmental degradation, which include the three massive LNG export terminals proposed for the Port of Brownsville - Texas LNG, Annova LNG, and Rio Grande LNG - and all related fossil fuel infrastructure and construction of US border wall on sacred lands, the murder and kidnapping of Indigenous women and girls; the eradication of our Native language, and the colonial disruption of Indigenous lifeways, relationships, and responsibilities to the land. These official findings will be used to develop litigation against the corporate and government entities that have caused this harm and continue to exclude the Esto’k Gna from any due diligence or equal representation.
“We are trying to maintain an identity that is thousands of years old. They, government and corporate interests, have gone to great lengths to erase the tribe and have been knowingly hiding and sequestering all of this information for decades. We are doing this tribunal, so the public understands why we are standing and what this means to us. We want people to see us as more than just protesters and realize we are protectors of our ancestors' connections to these lands, this sacred river, these waters, and our life ways.” Juan Mancias, Carrizo Comecrudo Tribal Chair
As a follow up, the Carrizo-Camecrudo Tribe of Texas are inviting allies to a Tribal Visioning and Strategy Session on June 5th. Information on the Visioning session is available on their facebook page here. In addition, the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy will be working with the Tribe and allies to publish the results of the Tribunal in June.
Co-sponsors included The Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, Earthworks, Sierra Club, Society of Native Nations, Friends of the Earth, Beyond Extreme Energy, Texas Organizing Project, AIM - CentralTexas, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
Statement of Cyrus Reed, Interim Director of the Lone Star Chapter, Sierra Club
Etayaup'le. Buenas Tardes. Good Afternoon.
My name is Cyrus Reed and I am here because I was invited by the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas to make a statement of allyship as part of the present tribunal, on behalf of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. I do so gladly, but also humbly, recognizing the complex history of the land that is today called Texas, or sometimes the Rio Grande Valley, or “el Valle,” or the Borderlands, as well as the complex history of Sierra Club itself. I personally have spent many years traveling along the border both in Texas and Mexico, and along the Rio Grande and I recognize the beauty and uniqueness of the land and the people who call it home.
Sierra Club as an organization is well over a hundred years old, and is the largest and oldest “official” conservation organization that is officially recognized in the US, but is is certainly much younger than the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas or any First Nations whose culture was based on an understanding and conservation of the land, water, wildlife and peoples.
I come recognizing that our founder John Muir, and his original group of explorers, professors, naturalists, and mountaineers were primarily men of European descent, for the most part privileged by their race, class and identity, and who, while fighting to preserve so-called natural areas, did so with no or little understanding of the relationship between indigenous peoples and the very land they were quote-un-quote trying to preserve. These original founders and many future leaders had problematic understandings of the land, and who they were fighting for.
I recognize that Sierra Club today is a large, complex organization made up of staff and volunteers, and is still taking steps to integrate anti-racism principals and the Jemez principles into our work, and break down racial and class privilege within our organization. One of the most powerful things Sierra Club can do is amplify voices from communities of color and support their needs in and outside of this organization.
So I come to say we are allies. We are evolving and learning and becoming a better organization because of our friendship. The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and the national Sierra Club have spent resources, time, effort, lawsuits, sweat and tears fighting the three proposed -- but not yet built - LNG terminals that would devastate Garcia Pasture, the Valley, the Borderlands, Texas, and even the World. Installing pipelines and LNG facilities in Garcia Pasture and in nearby areas opens up more drilling of oil and gas in West Texas, hundreds of miles of pipelines crossing the desert, plains, brushlands, and valleys of Texas, not to mention streams, rivers and springs. It opens up methane emissions and flaring that pollute our air, and cook our climate. It opens up gigantic sea vessels belching emissions to bring liquified natural gas across the Atlantic and beyond to Europe and Asia, where it will be burned and produce more emissions, and further cook our planet.
Principles of environmental justice tell us that marginalized communities which contribute the least to climate change are also impacted first, and the hardest. Cooking our planet means melting our ice, which means Garcia Pasture, and Brownsville itself go underwater. So protecting Garcia Pasture is also a part of a much larger battle about survival.
That is why a few years back, the Lone Star Chapter hired a young woman from the Valley named Rebekah Hinojosa to help build and grow opposition to the LNG facilities. We asked her to not only work with local Sierra Club members, but perhaps more importantly, find other allies in the fight against the LNG facilities and the Border Wall. Bekah would go onto be a community organizer for the Sierra Club, and is today the Gulf Coast Representative for the Dirty Fuels Campaign of the Sierra Club, while continuing to be rooted in the need to build our partnerships throughout the Gulf region.
That is why the Sierra Club and the Lone Star Chapter have been involved in so many lawsuits in the Valley, both over the LNG facilities, but also over the Border Wall, the Permian Highway Pipeline, the Trans-Pecos Pipeline, over the Clean Air Act standards that are supposed to protect our lungs. That is why the Sierra Club and the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club is supporting this Tribunal.
This is also why we are proud to have a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, Christopher Basaldú, working with the Sierra Club, and why Juan Mancías is a valued member of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club as an executive committee member, as well as a member of the executive committee of the Lone Star Chapter.
This time in Sierra Club’s history must be about allyship because there are simply no other options. The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe is and has always been under attack, under every administration and political party.
There is the obsession with building walls, not only continuing to utilize the Patriot Act which Congress does not have the guts to rescind, but also ignoring the budget passed by Congress to steal money to build that wall, to using courts to force landowners to sell their lands. This has been bad for 20 years, but it is much worse under this Administration.
There is the decision to not only try to take away access to health care, but rewrite our tax code in the most inequitable tax policy in modern America, assuring that the very rich and corporations get richer, a decision that appears to be compounded under recent Congressional actions under the COVID crisis, which we know has been disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities across the country, such as Navajo Nation.
There is the attempt to fundamentally rollback nearly every major environmental rule and law -- from the Clean Power Plan, to methane standards, to the Endangered Species Act, to NEPA, to the Clean Car Rule, to consideration of climate change in the granting of pipeline permits, to protections from soot, haze and ozone pollution.
There is the decision to put a coal lobbyist in charge of the EPA, and previously put a congressman against the very idea of public lands in charge of the Department of the Interior.
There are two agencies in Texas -- the Railroad Commission of Texas -- and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality -- that under their current leadership, are more interested in getting out permits for oil and gas wells, pipelines and facilities rather than taking their environmental stewardship and public health missions seriously.
There is the grotesque decision to put kids and families in cages and forcing economic and political refugees to wait endlessly in tent cities across the border in Mexico.
Our only option is to band together, respect our differences, but also recognize that we are all defined in opposition to a political and economic machine that is bent on our collective destruction.
So we, the Sierra Club, come humbly to learn from the wisdom and energy of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, but also to roll up our sleeves and fight together for Garcia Pasture and the world.