Karankawas

Official Karankawa Reconnection Statement

Saturday, January 28, 2023

On behalf of the Karankawa Kadla peoples, our Five Rivers Council met to discuss a recent increase in questions about potentially reconnecting with additional relatives.  Plah bewwus (Thank you) for taking the time to receive our below message:

We have recently received many requests from multiple people wishing to find out more about their Indigeneity and, specifically, wondering about whether they are of Karankawa descent.  Most of the inquiries come to the www.karankawas.com website; however, others reach us through other social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok), emails, and in-person requests.  Please know we see you and we hear you.  We greatly empathize with the longing to learn more about your ancestry.  Some of us have always known about our Karankawa ancestry through official records dating back centuries and others through oral history generationally passed down through our family.  Each method reconnected us to the Karankawa Kadla relatives we are today.  

We highly encourage everyone to start your individual searches by conducting a family genealogy trace to better understand where your families can trace your ancestors.  While we most definitely do not subscribe to any sort of quantum blood theory, we have found that DNA testing helps to at least identify regions and timeframes of your ancestry, so we encourage you to consider making that investment especially if your oral history sources are in the spirit world.  While we are very much interested in helping to reconnect all Indigenous relatives, we are simply unable to provide you answers that only your family can provide.  We are, though, always happy to connect with you after you’ve completed the initial stage of your search.  Once it becomes more likely that you are a Karankawa relative, we will invite you to a Reconnecting Zoom Call.  We’ve only scheduled two so far; however, plan to schedule additional ones in the future. 

Please feel free to visit www.karankawas.com for additional information about our peoples and our

Calls to Action.  Additionally, please feel free to follow Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend (Corpus Christi, Tx) on Facebook; @indigenous_peoples_361 and @karankawachicharra on Instagram; @jrvllarreal54 on TikTok.

We thank you, again, for taking time to read our statement and for understanding that we’d love to reconnect as many relatives as possible; however, we first need you to have an understanding of your family’s journey.

In peace, love, and unity,

-The Karankawa Kadla Five Rivers Council

The Karankawa Kadla Language & Cultural Conservancy LLC (KKLCC) is seeking your help in building a living cultural museum and nature preserve in Livingston TX for the purpose of education about Texas’ Indigenous people’s and Texas’ native history.

This nature preserve and living museum will include different types of living structures of several Native American tribes and will hosts events open to the public. You’ll learn life skills and belief systems by descendants of those whose ancestors once thrived here before contact with Europeans. You’ll be invited to participate in learning Texas native languages and music and lectures with both Native and non native speakers.

Future plans will be to host plays, story telling and music events open to the public. Won’t you join us in the making of THIS Texas history… today?

If you’re interested, visit our Go Fund Me page.

We need you to make public comments regarding NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act)!

Several good things will come with the revisions of NAGPRA. 

That is if they happen and with your support, they can! Ultimately, our group wants to protect the land and water through NAGPRA. 

The following statement is our Indigenous group’s statement.

http://bit.ly/IndigenousStatement

If you would like to sign on to support this letter, please fill out this Google form and your group or name will be added on. It will then be sent as a public comment.

http://bit.ly/ToSignOnForm

For individual comments.

Please refer to the link below.:

https://www.regulations.gov/document/NPS-2022-0004-0001

Please note there is a listening session on January 13, 2023, to learn more about what’s happening currently with NAGPRA. To register to listen in please click the link. 

https://linktr.ee/IndigenousPeoples361

THE DEADLINE FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS IS JANUARY 17 2023!

The Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend (IPCB) is an intertribal community group in Corpus  Christi, Nueces County, Texas. The tribes that are in this group include Karankawa Kadla, Lipan  Apache, Mexica, Comanche, and Coahuiltecan. We applaud the proposed changes to the  NAGPRA regulations that give greater weight to geography and traditional Indigenous knowledge when determining affiliation, and we believe that these and other changes will facilitate repatriation in many cases. However, we recognize that U.S. institutions hold tens of thousands of ancestral remains that will remain unaffiliated even after these new criteria are applied. Like many others who have posted comments on these proposed changes, we believe that consultation with non-federally recognized tribes is absolutely necessary for the return of these remains. We, therefore, urge the Department of the Interior to create an open path within  NAGPRA regulations for consulting with non-federally recognized Indigenous peoples who can establish cultural and/or geographic affiliation with their ancestors’ remains.  

Continue reading “Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend’s Comment on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act” →

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 9, 2022

Contact: Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, (Social Media and Communication) IndigenousPeopleCoastalBend@gmail.com, 361-420-0407

Enbridge Construction Halted on Karankawa Settlement 

Update on Lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — On May 6th, Enbridge announced a delay in their terminal expansion planned to be constructed on the ancestral settlement and land of the Karankawa Kadla, where thousands of sacred Karankawa artifacts have been found, a place sacred to the coastal tribe where ceremony and prayer have continued for the last 2,000 years. Under the proposed briefing schedule, it was agreed that briefings will be pushed back in order for evidence to be properly cross-examined. The Karakawa Kadla and Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, was notified by the court that construction is now halted to after October 24, 2022, which allows the tribe, Indigenous groups, and their legal team to construct a stronger argument in order to protect the sacred site. 

On October 19, 2021, under the schedule for request to halt construction on the Karankawa settlement, filed by the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, Karankawa Kadla Tribe of the Texas Gulf Coast, and Ingleside on the Bay Coastal Watch Association, dredging and construction on a new pier at the Enbridge Ingleside oil terminal will be halted and not take place before August 29th, 2022. If the expansion of the Enbridge terminal on Karankawa land and water continues, the Karankawa Kadla will lose direct access to their land and ancestral artifacts, in addition to the pollution of sacred natural waters within the region, violating several U.S. water protection laws. 

“As scientists in the latest IPCC report ring the alarm that our window to limit warming is closing, we will stand for Mother Earth and our youth, just as our ancestors did.” said Sanchez. “ We will protect what’s sacred. 

Indigenous People of the Coastal Bend is an intertribal grassroots organization from Corpus Christi, Texas. Our mission is to preserve and conserve our culture and environment. 

Website: www.stopenbridge.com

 Instagram: @indigenous_peoples_361

IndigenousPeopleCoastalBend@gmail.com

Redfish was sacred to our ancestors! The REDFISH, no matter the destruction happening around them, SURVIVED!

The redfish only survived because people protected the area where they breed and live.

The bay contains 32,000 acres of fish habitat. Redfish can be caught on the flats through out the year near the area where ENBRIDGE sits at.

Petroleum has been found at the bottom of the bay because on December 1983, three people were injured near the bay, following an explosion of five oil tanks at Redfish Bay Terminal. We can not allow ENBRIDGE to expand near Redfish Bay.

StopEnbridge.com

Join us!

April 23, 2022
2-5pm
Waters Edge, 602 S. Shoreline Blvd
Corpus Christi Texas.