El Muro: The Wall (2017)

Foregrounds the shaping of the Texas landscape by the resistance of the Lipan Apache/Nde', who have lived, and continue to live, on their traditional land despite colonial, imperial, and postcolonial efforts to dispossess them of it. The focal point is the struggle of Dr. Eloisa G. Tamez against the US Department of Homeland Security that implemented eminent domain to seize a portion of her own Lipan Apache ancestral land in El Calaboz Rancheria. This portion of the San Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant of 1786 was granted by the Spanish Crown, which began with Jose de Escandon's entrance into the area in 1745 with the settling of Nuevo Santander. Colonial records exist, which explicitly acknowledge the existence and deeded ownership of Lipan Nde' land in Texas by both Mexico and Spain, before the United States existed as an entity. The unjust seizure of their land by DHS impacts Lipan Apache cultural traditions and their very way of life, since their lives are intrinsically tied to the land and river to which they no longer have access - a clear breach of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which the United States is a signatory.