Promoting Solidarity and Unity among Apache Peoples

Recognition and Respect of Each Other

The Chiricahua Apache Alliance, founded in 2004, is a grassroots social justice interest group rooted in communities throughout the Americas and abroad. Without borders or boundaries, we advance strategies to recover, preserve and protect Chiricahua Apache culture, sacred sites and ancestral homelands. Our vision is one of solidarity and unity. Mem-bership is open to all Chiricahua Apache Na-tions and supporters of all Apache Nations, respectively. We are organized under traditional values from time immemorial.

THE CHIRICAHUA APACHE ALLIANCE

C H I R I C A H U A A P A C H E A L L I A N C E

CH I R ICA HU A AP A CH E AL L IAN CE

“We remember the stories…”

Apache prisoners of war at Ft. Bowie prior to riding buckboards taking them to Holbrook and boarding trains to Ft. Marion in St. Augustine, FLA.

Our Mission… To develop programs or initiatives to rebuild and strengthen Chiricahua Apache relations, promoting self-determination and solidarity in the achievement of common goals for Chiricahua Apache people everywhere. Common goals include historical and cultural reclamation, injustice redress, as well as advancement of strategies to recover, preserve and protect Chiricahua Apache culture, sacred sites and ancestral homelands located in Arizona and New Mexico. A critical goal is the compilation, preservation and dissemination of Chiricahua Apache oral histories to educate emerging generations.

P.O. Box 837 Santa Clara, NM 88026

Phone: (505) 534-1379

Email: info@chiricahuaapache.org

www.chiricahuaapache.org Photographs and images courtesy of Smithsonian, Southwest Museum,

Arizona Historical Society and Audrey Espinoza.

STOLEN HOMELANDS Chiricahua Apaches were among the first and last peoples to resist European and Anglo incursion into their homelands. The response to their resistance was genocide and war. The prolonged war resulted in a massive Diaspora and a movement to go underground and “pass” as the dominant cultures. The removal of innocent Chiricahua Apache women, children and elderly, remaining at San Carlos and declared prisoners of war in 1886, culminated these events. These people were removed first to Florida, then Alabama, and finally to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Of five reservations, established specifically for the Chiricahua people in New Mexico and Arizona in the late 1800s, including numerous older re-serves in Mexico, none remains today. All United States and Mexican reservations were dissolved. This includes the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma, dissolved in 1914 to make way for an artillery base.

The traditional Chiricahua Apache territories extend out in all directions from a center near Silver City, New Mexico, to the East as far as the Rio Grande River, to the South as far as the Yaqui/Bavisque/Papigochic confluence in the Sierra Madre, to the West as far as the San Pedro River, and to the North as far as the Datil Mountains. In the south, since 1848, an international boundary crosses these homelands in two states

Our ancestors lost their

lives for us. As descen-

dants of these strong and

fearless, yet humble

people, it is now our

responsibility to gather

together from all directions

and work for the restora-

tion of our Sacred Native

Lands. These land areas are now under the control of the United States gov-

ernment as public domain land. We, the Chiricahua, believed exterminated and

therefore distinctively unrecognized, must recover our traditions, so that

our posterity will not be permanently jeopardized by acculturation and assimi-

lation. Historically, we have been herded to and fro, taken from lands which

shaped our culture and lifeways, 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

forward and unify our Peoples. We must return to our original ancestral lands,

our sacred religious and ceremonial sites, where many of our ancestors are

buried. We must remember the treaty of 1872 signed by Cochise, the Chirica-

hua Peoples, and the United States government, which guaranteed our exis-

tence in our inherent territory. Lets us gather, in consensus as one people, the

Chiricahua, to revive our ceremonies and restore our lands and traditions. Let

it not be another hundred years before we take this important step toward the

unification of our people. Let us humbly beseech Ussen, the Life Giver, to

guide us on this important path to the restoration of the Chiricahua people on

our entitled and original lands. According to our creation stories, these lands

were set in perfect foundation, specifically for the Chiricahua people.

A Call Home to the Historical Precedence

Chiricahua Apache Nation

Alliance members and supporters gather at Ft. Bayard.

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES Of an estimated population of 200,000 Chiricahua Apaches at contact, there are less than 1,000 prisoner of war descendants living either on the Mescalero reservation, or on land allotments purchased from deceased Comanches in Oklahoma. In contrast, the populations of Chiricahua that left the homelands or went underground in two countries exceed 75,000 globally by some estimates. This population lives on and off several Apache reservations, in rural areas and urban centers all over Mother Earth.

STEWARDSHIP

This combined population represents a powerful constituency that has expressed a sense of loss and longing to return to original ancestral lands to revitalize Chiricahua traditions and ceremony. Ancient ceremonial sites in the Chiricahua homeland area continue to be visited by Chiricahua from everywhere. More compelling, all Apaches and some non-Apaches feel that Apache sacred sites in the Chiricahua homelands are in danger of desecration by pollution from mining and other industrial interests without Chiricahua stewardship. These conservation-minded coalitions implore that preservation actions be pursued immediately. The Alliance is poised to address these concerns and that of unification of the Chiricahua Apache Nation. Chiricahua people believe in the sacredness of the landscape and their God-given right to exist on the land of their ancestors. This land is where the people originated and all the origin stories tell of how the Chiricahua learned their code of ethics from the Mountain Spirits and the White Painted Lady “when the world was new” near a sacred spring in New Mexico. The oral histories tell how the Chiricahua spread out in the four directions from that place.

ALLIANCE GOALS ♦ rebuild and strengthen relations amongst Chiricahua

Apaches and all Apache Nations, descendants, and supporters of the Chiricahua people ♦ promote and defend Chiricahua Apache self-determination, culture and landscapes throughout the ancestral territory in a spirit of respect for other peoples now living within that territory ♦ develop plans for injustice redress, historical and cultural

reclamation ♦ compile, preserve, and disseminate Chiricahua Apache

oral histories, educating emerging generations.