something I thought I'd never see in this life: a call home for the Chiricahua!!

Holy crap!

I never expected to see this in my lifetime:

A Call Home to The Chiricahua Nation


Our people have been subjugated by the government of the United States for more than 150 years. At that time, we were displaced to many areas within two countries Mexico and the United States, and abroad which has culminated in the extermination process of our culture, language, way of life, native economies, and religious and ceremonial practices on our inherent sacred and historical lands. It is necessary that we, as Chiricahua, come together and return to our Ancestral homelands which encompass areas of southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and Northern Mexico into the Sierra Madres. We have been moved to areas across the United States. We now ask that the Creator gather us from these far away places to help us restore our natural form of social order and leadership recognized as a sovereign government with a governmental relationship with the United States, as our historical governing body pre-dated that of the Spanish, United States and Mexican governments.

Our ancestors loss their lives for us and as descendents of these strong and fearless yet humble people, it is now our responsibility to gather together from all directions and pray for the restoration of our Sacred Native Lands. These land areas are now under the control of United States government as public domain land. We as Chiricahua, who are not recognized distinctively, must return to our way of life so that our posterity will not be jeopardized due to assimilation. Historically, we were herded to and fro taken from lands which held our culture and way of life at gunpoint. Even to this day we seem to be “lost” in this country having no place to call our own. It is now time to come and unify our Peoples, the Chiricahua Peoples back to our original ancestral lands which hold sacred religious and ceremonial sites, at which Chief Cochise is buried. We must remember the treaty that was signed in 1872 by Cochise, the Chiricahua Peoples and the United States government, which guaranteed our existence in our inherent territory. Lets us gather, as a consensus and as one, the Chiricahua, and restore our lands and way of life back to us. Let it not be another hundred years to take this important step toward the unification of our people, but let us humbly beseech Usen, Creator to guide us through this important leap to the restoration of the Chiricahua people to our entitled and original lands that were set in perfect foundation in time immemorial.

www.chiricahuaapache.org...



[edit on 5-2-2009 by apacheman]


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[edit on 5-2-2009 by 12m8keall2c]

and this:

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence of The Chiricahua Apache Nde Nation May 14, 2007,

I. Introduction

When in the course of history it becomes necessary for one people to shuffle off their status as a domestic dependency and to assume among other nations the separate and equal station to which positive laws and the laws of nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

II. Preamble

We the people hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people, Indian and non-Indian, are created equal by the Creator, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, property, and culture. To secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right as well as the duty of the people to alter or to abolish it, or to modify their relationship to it in order to establish a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and to preserve their national identity.

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[edit on 5-2-2009 by 12m8keall2c]

last bit:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the Nde Nation, in Council, appealing to Ussen to make pure our aims and powerful our actions, in the name, and by authority of, the people of the Nde Nation, solemnly publish and declare that the Nde Nation, which consists of a population, a territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into international relations, is and of right ought to be a free, independent, and sovereign nation. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Ussen, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.



STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES: NDE NATION

(1) Indian nations, including the Nde Nation, are fully sovereign, co-equal members of the international legal system that predate the settler-state erected around them. As a consequence they are entitled to exercise sovereignty unbounded by the discretion of the states within which they have been subsumed and unlimited by any power or ideology on earth save for the fundamental norms of international law that restrict the sovereign prerogatives of all states through the operation of human rights regimes and humanitarian legal instruments.

(2) Indian nations, including the Nde Nation, enjoy the natural right to be left in peace to enjoy the freedom with which they had been endowed by nature, and they are impressed with the corresponding universal duty to respect the territorial integrity and political independence of all other law-abiding nations.

This is kind of overwhelming for me.

Wow.



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[edit on 5-2-2009 by 12m8keall2c]

Fair play to them, I just hope it doesn't end up another Isreal / Gaza concept, where the displaced people return and then are set upon by the community already there.
The US government hasn't done a lot to help the indigenous people that where there before being 'discovered' by the 'civilised' world.
I wish them every success in their endeavour to return home and that the majority of their people listen to and heed the call .

reply to post by DataWraith


Trust me, if there were to be a US/Apache rematch, the US would lose swiftly. Apaches aren't military incompetents like the Palestinians, this time round we understand the enemy far better and like always would refuse to fight his fight.

Wouldn't want to go there, though: just return to us our freedom and lnads and everyone's happy.