CUAUHYOTL ABYA YALA
Xinachtli
NAHUACALLI
Educators Association (NEA)
Public Statement of Position
Re: Arizona SB 1611
Date: February 24, 2011
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007, reaffirms the inherent and indomitable right of self-determination of the Indigenous Peoples. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, and to which the US is signatory, proclaims:
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (Article 26)
Furthermore, the time has come for the legal context of the issues brought forward vis-à-vis the Community Indictment against the State of Arizona, in terms of violations of Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Indigenous Rights in the territories of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (US-Mexico 1848) to be redefined in light of the current standards of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Specifically, the policy of racial profiling to the discriminatory benefit of “white” Euro-American males (Manifest Destiny) must be addressed and corrective actions must be implemented to truly live up the dream of Land of the Free and Home of the Braves. And finally, we reaffirm our commitment to the rule of law established by the Plyler v. Doe U.S. Supreme Court ruling which binds all jurisdictions of the United States of America, both collectively and in particular, to protect and uphold the Right to Education as a basic human right of all residents, regardless of status of citizenship or nationality.
Therefore, as an association of indigenous teachers, administrators, and support staff in Arizona, we condemn Arizona Senate Bill 1611 (“Immigration Omnibus”) and support the call to Arizona Educators issued by TONATIERRA which follows:
ARIZONA EDUCATORS
COMPACT OF NON-COMPLIANCE
“We are professional educators, not immigration agents. No act of the legislature will compel us to violate our professional ethics and standards by blurring that line. We cannot, therefore, comply with any law or regulation that asks us to participate in the criminalization of our students or community”.
We also ask all Arizona public school officials within their respective associations as public districts or charter schools, as well as any and all educators associations to adopt the Compact of Non-Compliance.
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The Nahuacalli Educators Association is a consortium
of indigenous teachers and support personnel based in the Nahuacalli, Embassy
of Indigenous Peoples, located in central Phoenix. Its mission is to cultivate and promote the Xinachtli, an indigenous-based educational
curriculum whose global
standards
strive towards peace, dignity, justice, and harmony.
NAHUACALLI
Embassy of Indigenous Peoples
***************
ARIZONA EDUCATORS
COMPACT OF NON-COMPLIANCE
US Civil Rights laws call for culturally competent services in all areas of public institutions, whether it be public health, public safety, or public education. A clarification must be acknowledged that we are all without exception members of the public body, irrespective of our status as citizens, nationals, or subjects of the Republics now enjoying international recognition as sovereign states within the world body of the United Nations system as it is presently configured.
In terms of Public Education, the mandates of the US Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe specifically prohibits any actions by school officials or employees that causes a "chilling effect" on the Right to Education as affirmed in Plyler as a basic Civil Right codified by reference to the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which in turn is the domestic judicial and legislative implementation of Article 6 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which states:
* Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
and, Article 26:
* (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
* (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
In light of the above, and in consideration of both the current machinations occurring in the state legislature of Arizona in regards to the bills mentioned above, and the following statement by Mahatma Gandhi:
"There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts."
May it be known that in affirmation of the fundamental Human Rights of our children and community as a whole, we call upon all public educational institutions to join with us in the Compact of Non-Compliance in regards to the violations of the Right to Education to be perpetrated by AZ SB 1611, et al:
ARIZONA EDUCATORS
COMPACT OF NON-COMPLIANCE
We are professional educators, not immigration agents. No act of the legislature will compel us to violate our professional ethics and standards by blurring that line. We cannot, therefore, comply with any law or regulation that asks us to participate in the criminalization of our students or community.
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The Coming of Time
There comes a time in the development of the human being when the child who gazes upon the parent sees not the visage of an elder relative in the role of protector and provider, but just another human being with all the shortcomings and faults laid bare. This moment is the initiation of the child into the ceremony of adulthood, where full recognition of the humanity of the parent diminishes the need for the parenting process as the child “grows up”.
The child begins emergence into the world of adults as a youth.
We are still all growing up, in the larger sense that we still aspire to achieve Humanity at a global level and although we as Indigenous Peoples have come a long way, collectively as Humanity we have a long way yet to go.
On the other side, the other moment also occurs, but later. It is when the parent gazes upon the child and sees not a child, but an adult, at first a young adult but then as time goes on and fortune makes possible the child grows into full adulthood just like they grew into childhood from infancy. The transition is marked by the exercise of the abilities to respond, to be responsible and accountable to the Spirit, the spiritual and material family of community, community and nation, nations and the confederacies of nations of humanity, and beyond into the constellations of confederacies of the Natural World which extends to the infinities and eternities of the cosmos.
The Confederation of the Eagle and the Condor is the expression and tradition of these human abilities and responsibilities of traditions of accountability at the continental level of Abya Yala. Yet these responsibilities and confederacy of the Kundur Anka are simultaneously borne and reborn by the process of human generation and regeneration, meaning within the hoop of the collective community: the CENYELIZTLI of the kinship systems and traditional cultural societies of the Nican Tlacah, commonly referenced as the family or clan, nest of the threads of the meme of CEMPOHUALLI: genetic and cultural codes of conduct of the Indigenous Peoples.
These achievements along the steps of responsibility mark the growth of the individual decision making process along the roles from childhood to youth, and adult to elder, moving not to making decisions “on my own” but in response to the ecology of organic systems of accountability that derive from relationship with the natural world. Upon the foundation of these responsibilities are built the social instruments, AZTLI, of self-governance and in contemporary terms, self-determination.
And so this Ecology of Natural Community, AZTLAN, begins with a dream, a dual gaze of vision and memory. Over time and generations, these moments provide the loom for the history of the CENYELIZTLI, the story which will be told later and repeated among and within the sacred circle of the generations until it too becomes, legendary.
In the gaze is a question; it is the quest of humanity itself:
What is the nature of
this person?
In Ixlti, In Yollotl
VIDEOS:
Barrio Garfield Mural Project
Columbus is Not a Day
Milpa Nahuacalli
