Margo Tamez

From NativeWiki

1 Margo Tamez, Lipan Nde'-Jumano/Suma' Nde' [Apache]--Activist, Poet, Scholar
2 Awards
3 Writing Available Online
4 Books by Margo Tamez
- 4.1 Poetry
- 4.2 Anthologies
5 See Also

Margo Tamez, Lipan Nde'-Jumano/Suma' Nde' [Apache]--Activist, Poet, Scholar

Margo Tamez, Co-Founder of Lipan Apache Women (El Calaboz) Defense/Strength, an Indigenous People's Organization of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous People, was born in Austin, Texas in 1962. Her parents, Eloisa Garcia Tamez (Lipan-Nde'Apache & Basque [Land Grant], El Calaboz, Texas) and Luis Carrasco Tamez, Jr. (Jumano/Suma'-Nde'Apache) were born and raised in the Texas Rio Grande Valley,near the Mexico-U.S. Border married, and moved to urban areas to follow education and jobs.

Raised in San Antonio, Texas during the Civil Rights Movement and growing up during the Vietnam era made lasting impacts on Tamez' awareness of and responses to racism, gender inequity, and social in-justice. Her parents were challenged to find non-hostile community in urban spaces which pressed intolerance, fragmentation and violence upon indigenous groups. At the age of seven, she received advice from her mother to use the education of dominant culture in order to find ways to voice stories of the people's struggles.

She completed two undergraduate degrees: Archaeological Studies (1984) and Art History (1985) at the University of Texas.

She worked in arts organizations in various locations in the southwest and the south (San Antonio Art Institute, South West Crafts Center, Atlanta College of Art). These experiences as a low-paid worker in arts institutions made strong impacts on the shape of her work to come. Influenced by vibrant San Antonio-based grass-roots poets and song-writers such as Jo LeCoeur, Melissa Javors, and Juan Tejeda, led to the assemblage of a chapbook, Alleys & Allies in 1991. This collection was an early experimentation with indigenous oral tradition, the indigenous rancherria 'corrido' from south Texas and Tamaulipas, and social, economic and political in-justice.

In 1997 she completed an M.F.A. in Poetry in the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University, working closely with Norman Dubie, Jeannine Savard, Beckian Fritz-Goldberg, and Alberto Rios.

She is widely known for her grass-roots work among traditional indigenous communities working for autonomy and justice against the combined threats of forced assimilation and genocide under colonialist and capitalist structures. Her writing explores experiences of marginalized indigenous groups which go against the myths and romantic notions of bi-national indigenous peoples of the Mexico-U.S. International Boundary (I.B.). Her poetry and prose examine the effects of colonization on Nde' people as well as diverse indigenous communities of the MX-US International Boundary region. Erosion of social ties among North American bi-national families within their own communities, as a result of colonization and globalization, is a core theme of her activism. Her work critiques oversimplified and stereotypical renderings of indigenous women, children and elders which portray them as invisible or ineffective representatives of their own communities, instead of as politically engaged actors and participants in their present and future problem solving capabilities. She examines autonomy from indigenous women's perspectives in her own communities' histories with multiple empires and settler/squatter societies--and their combined impacts on the suppression of matrilineal forms of social organization, and replacement with patriarchal 'traditionalism' and 'usos y costumbres' of indigenous communities. She places these in current contexts of bi-national indigenous women's autonomous justice movements.

Tamez is sought as an activist who bridges traditional ceremony and cultural expression to social and political sectors of society with historical accuracy in specific contexts of the MX-US I.B. She stresses the importance of the centrality of voices from local bi-national communities and their core participation as representatives in community-based, non-hierarchical governance in their regions and corridors. She speaks to the combined impacts and dangers that threaten her Nde' bi-national communities (Jumano Apache and Lipan Apache) as true and legitimate speakers and actors for indigenous futures in the region.

In 2003, the University of Arizona Press released her first full-length collection of poetry, Naked Wanting. Two books followed in 2006. Raven Eye, a poetry collection, is a testimony of internalized racism within North American bi-national indigenous communities, and the thrust of violence perpetrated upon the most vulnerable. The Daughter of Lightning [published as individual essays] is a collection of essays [in progress] relating bi-national Nde' indigenous oral traditions from her mother's and father's families, who are the descendents of survivors of Mexico and U.S. sponsored, militarized and para-military hunt-downs, systemized indenturing and trafficking of Nde' women, children, elders and men. This collection of essays traces these genocide stories and diasporas of the Nde' through the early 18th century to the present. Tamez makes clear the relationship between current day bi-national indigenous women's lives and their histories under colonization in the region.

Margo co-organized, with Teresa Leal (Opata-Mayo), Joni Adamson, and grass-roots groups the Symposium On Globalism and the Environmental Justice and Toxics Movement. Focusing on environmental justice, urban nature, and more specifically, grassroots activism that raises questions about the effects of globalism, corporate capitalism, and the unequal distribution of toxic sites in the environments of the poor and people of color communities. Seeking to establish the relationship between the writing and literature of environmental racism, place and activism, and the contexts that inspire these writings.

Currently living in Washington state, she educates about community-based Nde' experiences and the importance of recovery, reclamation and reparations for self-determination movements in the Mexico-U.S. binational corridors of indigenous elders, women, children and inter-dependent communities focused on their autonomy from oppressive systems.

Awards

Margo's awards include a Poetry Fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, First Place Literary Award from Frontera Literary Review, Environmental Leadership Fellowship Award, Distinguished Achievement Award, International Exchange Award from the Tucson Pima Arts Council and others. Her book RAVEN EYE (Arizona 2007) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.