Margo Tamez
From NativeWiki
Nde'(Lipan Apache & Jumano-Apache) Scholar, Author, Poet. Indigenous Social Movements in the United States, Mexico. Borders and International Law. Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples
[Margo Tamez] was born in Austin, Texas. Her parents, Eloisa Garcia Tamez (Lipan-Nde'Apache & Basque [Land Grant], El Calaboz, Texas) and Luis Carrasco Tamez, Jr. (Suma/Nde'(Lipan and Jumano-Apache)Apache) were born and raised in the Texas Rio Grande Valley,near the Mexico-U.S. Border.
Tamez is recognized across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and internationally for her work among Indigenous peoples currently bifurcated by the Mexico-U.S. international boundary and border wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. A key spokesperson in her community's legal challenges against dispossession and displacement, Tamez' work spans key domains of Indigenous peoples' local, national, international and hemispheric autonomy struggles.
Her writing has been a force elevating the diverse, centuries-long, social movements of Indigenous peoples from the Texas-Mexico border region--a 1400 mille long geopolitical region. Tamez's contributions continue to bring Indigeous peoples' knowledges and sensibilities to bear upon state and nation-within-nation normative conceptions of 'Native American' experience in militarized zones along the U.S.-Mexico border.
She is noted for sustained critiques of normative renderings of state and Native sovereignty, identifying these as key components of the necropolitics of oligarchic governance patterns in the armed conflict sectors of the Texas-Mexico border where Indigenous politics are both marginalized and at times negatively represented through the systems of the settler state.
Her work critically maps 'dissidence' as a space of forced peripherality of Indigenous women's voices, as well as a site where Indigenous peoples construct resistance through their own mapping of the historical power relations between them and settlers. She interrogates the violent marginalization of Indigenous women, girls, and women-led families as a zone of rupture for Indigenous communities. Tamez writes "Indigenous futures are deeply impacted by on-going repression and oppression of Indigenous women's intellectual, social, economic and cultural advancements, and the multiple zones where Indigenous women are assaulted are sites of crisis. However, Indigenous women leadership--driven underground through violent repression by oligarchical formations across the mainstream and social movements-- are creating new sites where Indigenous futures are being transformed from within sub-cultures which deeply understand the militarized borders that Indigenous peoples are frequently forced to accept in settler states.
Her lens applies firm pressure upon the "open wounds" within Native communities at the household,clan and extended kinship level, asserting that Indigenous women's status within their communities and through local, regional and international spheres must be interrogated through a variety of strategies which do not leave 'Native traditionalism,' corruption, and intimate violence out of the equation.
Since her first book-length publication, Alleys & Allies, in 1990, Tamez' writings and contributions locate her work within the community's experiences--at the intersections of 'Southern Apaches', U.S.-Mexico border peoples', 'stateless peoples', 'land-grant societies', 'treaty-Indians', 'women', 'children', 'elders', 'rights', 'mining', 'militarization', 'international law', 'human rights', 'environmental justice', 'biocolonialism', 'gender violence', 'genocide', 'anti-colonial movements', 'the state' and 'world-systems.'
Indigenous Peoples, Memory, Reconstruction, and the Law
Her writing explores the experiences, memories, and histories of Lipan Apaches, Tlaxcaltecas, and Nahua peoples specific to women's governance, laws, agriculture, textiles, pastoral and agrarian trade systems and ceremonial knowledges in transnational and international customary domains of the Southern Apache, Jumano Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Tlaxcalteca alliances of the Texas-Mexico and Arizona-Sonora border sectors. Her published works interrogate myths, symbols, white/main-stream public memory and road-side military histories, bodies and settler ecologies as seen through Indigenous peoples' lenses.
Tamez' larger body of published work examines Indigenous peoples' autonomy and self-determination struggles examined from the industrial complex of silver mining in northeastern Mexico and South Texas. She has made key contributions to elevating the visibility and status of U.S.-Mexico border Indigenous women and their contemporary social movement practices across four state systems and governmentalities: Spain, Mexico, Texas and the U.S.
International Indigenous Politics
Acknowledged internationally as a social movement analyst and catalyst, Tamez bridges Indigenous research, documentation and public engagement from bordered communities to human rights spheres. She has contributed to theorization of gender, indigeneities, peripheries, militarization, and imperialism as interlocking categories of analysis within a matrix of Indigenous political thought, intellectual traditions, and institutions of the U.S.-Mexico occupied zones. Her international work elevated the transnational and international relevance of U.S.-Mexico border Indigenous peoples from the Lower Rio Grande, Texas; Sonora,Mexico; and Southern Arizona, along the U.S.-Mexico Border and connected these understandings to the circumstances of Indigenous peoples from the bordered regions of Mexico-Guatemala, North and South Korea, North and South Vietnam, Okinawa-Japan, and Palestine-Israel militarized zones.
Indigenous Social Movements
Tamez contributes to social movement political literacy and legibility of Indigenous peoples for Indigenous peoples. She is the Co-Founder of Lipan Apache Women (El Calaboz) Defense/Strength, an Indigenous People's Organization of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous People
Digital Social Movements & Indigenous Pedagogies (Digital Indigenous Humanities)
Tamez is an innovator in Indigenous peoples' digital knowledge documentation. She has consistently worked towards the emphasis on collapsing divides between and across social sectors, as well as increasing community-based access and engagement across sites for democratization of the WWW by Indigenous peoples. Local to global Indigenous legal recovery and reconstruction of archives, burial sites, and sacred places as well as recovery of memory on-line have been key to Tamez' production.
Recognized in a transnational forum for her Web constructions of Indigenous counter-texts, contexts, and counter-sites, making knowledges and processes transparent continues to be a key objective of transnational pedagogical strategies.
EL CALABOZ NDE' BORDER WALL DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
NATIVE WOMEN IN TRADITIONAL & CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES
Awards
Washington State University Woman of Distinction Award, 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.
RAVEN EYE (Arizona 2007) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry by the University of Arizona Press.
RAVEN EYE is the winner of the 2009 Willa Award in Poetry, named for the American author, Willa Cather.
Writing Available Online
Open Letter to Cameron County Commission
Miscellaneous Work By and About
Pinal County, Arizona: Multiplying Damages, in Wild Thoughts
Books
Poetry
2 poems and a review of both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye in La Bloga
- Naked Wanting
- Review of Naked Wanting in the Tucson Weekly
- Review of Naked Wanting in the Albuquerque Alibi
- Alleys and allies, Saddle Tramp Pr.
Work in Edited Volumes
(Selected)
- Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems Inspired by Ken Saro-Wiwa,
- Nii Ayikwei Parkes & Kadija George (Editors), Flipped Eye Publishing.
- Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: A Tejana Anthology of Literature and Art, Inez Hernandez-Avila (Editor), Univ. Texas Pr.
- Storycircle: Women Write Project,
- Sister Nations, Heid Erdrich and Laura Tohe (Editors), New Rivers Press.
- Stories from Where We Live: The Gulf Coast, Sara St. Antoine (Editor), Milkweed Editions.
- Feathers, Fins & Fur: Animal Stories, Outrider Pr.
- Southwestern Women: New Voices, Caitlin L. Gannon (Editor), Javelina Pr.
See Also
Interview with Censored News and Earth Cycles
Interview by Kehaulani Kauanui Indigenous Politics From Native New England]
Interview by Jaggi Singh No One Is Illegal Radio
Faculty page at Washington State University
Environmental Leadership Fellow, 2001-2003
Interview by Lisa Alvarez: "Conspiring with Poet Margo Tamez"
A short biography on the Internet Public Library's Native American Authors Project
Lipan Apache Women (El Calaboz) Defense Nde' Shimaa Hi'taa Shinii'
Lipan Apache Women Land Struggles
Apaches, Concise Historiography
This page is part of the Storytellers: Native American Authors Online project.
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