CURRENT COLONIZATION

Our present day is marked by previous and on-going inflictions and future remediations. The Land endures ever-present scarring, with memories of the past evolving into our current realities. Yanawana - spirit water - is under threat. Today, it is increasingly difficult to find refuge in our sacred waters to support ourselves. The scar from the Spanish Missions is marked on the body of this land; marked by the absence of our ancestors; marked by the growing sprawl of the metropolitan and continued militarization. 

After the Missions and Presidios were established, towns were encouraged and eventually secularized. From this point on, the expansion of the towns has not stopped, evolving into the current sprawling metropolises we see today. These places and forces violently vitiate and infect the lands and her ecosystems. Our precious animal relatives are pushed farther and farther out, disrupting their lifeways, just as the earlier phases of colonization imposed on many of our ancestors. 

The growing human population fragments and decimates our wild habitats, making it the main reason for species decline in Texas. The combined metropolitan areas of Austin and San Antonio, which include towns like Round Rock, New Braunfels, and San Marcos, have a population of 5.2 million people. The San Antonio–Austin metroplex is one of the top 10 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States. Our once abundant aquifers and sacred springs run dry, strained by this enormous population and dwindling rainfalls. These massive cities, roads, cars, and gluttonous abundance of commodities are examples of the very sources affecting the earth’s climate so dramatically.

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 

While the settlements became raging cities, the forts and bases festered into a full fledged military industrial complex. The military precedent of 300 years prior has sustained itself in the region throughout the centuries. San Antonio has one of the largest concentrations of military bases in the US, trademarking the nickname ‘Military City, USA’. San Antonio has a ‘tech port’ homing several weapons manufacturing facilities and surveillance operations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and numerous more. San Antonio is home to a Federal Bureau of Investigation office, and the largest cybersecurity hub of the National Security Agency. These are all corporations and facilities that produce the very weapons and resources used by the US to defend its rights to our lands, exploit and extract her resources, and forcefully control people socially, economically, and physically around the globe. Many of these facilities manufacture the very equipment that gets funneled toward the border, to further disrupt and brutalize the bodies of this land. 

The enforcement of the border, on the ground, acts as a surgical incision on the land - severing families, languages, and tribes. The a(e)ffected dehisce from the border wound. Borderlands and Colonial rule are sites of survival and resistance of those under the weight of its occupying forces. The people - migrants and the displaced - have crossed these shadowlands with contraband dreams of continuing their lives and traditions.

And then came the Wall: Steel fences, barbed wire, armed patrols. Electronic surveillance: drones, fiber-optic Linear Ground Detection Systems. High-tech paranoia trying to strangle what's too wild to be caught. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol no longer enforce just the Wall or the border line. Their jurisdiction now spans 100-miles inward from the border. Of all those living within the U.S., 2/3rds of them live within this 100-mile radius from the border. 

Every crossing is an act of resilience, every step a quiet rebellion; proof that the border is a wound that refuses to close. Resistance seeps in like smoke.

STEADFAST

As the colonial empire continues to cause unthinkable societal, ecological, and spiritual crises., we must remember and relearn how to live through our land and in relation to all of our relatives. To collect ourselves and recognize each other in times of trial. Movement and layers in our individual lives and family units that ripple to ultimately turn masses of people into action against the decaying system and into the new lifeways and networks we are building and hold with honor. 

Our ancestors knew how intricately interconnected life all around us has always been. What happens to these waters and hills, happens to all of us. We inherit the rage and trauma of our dwindling waters and poisoned lands. But, the violent nature of the colonial empire is not the only thing that evolves through this snippet of time. We of northern aridoamerica -  the mixed up, bastardized children of this earth - continue to grieve, shed, strengthen and evolve through our histories and relationships to our lands and waters. Our resistance and resilience continues to evolve. But, the lands also carry the wisdom of the ancient shoreline, the ebb and flow of waters pulled by the moon, the stretching and scarring of the earth's crust… all in sacred synchronicity that allows all life to exist in these regions. We hold great reverence for these ancient truths.