Tribes join in lawsuit against Alamo Trust

Through much of history, Lipan Apaches were enemies of Coahuiltecans, the Native Americans invited into Mission San Antonio de Valero for the purposes of evangelization.

Lipan Apaches killed some of the Coahuiltecans buried at Valero, now known as the Alamo. Lipan Apaches who fell in battle similarly are buried there.

The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas and the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation eventually waged peace and now have become full-fledged allies in an ongoing lawsuit against the Alamo Trust, which manages the Alamo for the Texas General Land Office.

The latter are involved in a beleaguered $450 million publicprivate renovation project to enhance the landmark as a travel destination.

It has undergone one disastrous episode after another, many of the Alamo Trust and GLO’S own making.

In mid-march the Lipan Apaches, represented by Yale Law School’s Free Exercise Clinic, filed an amicus brief in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the Alamo Trust and GLO on several grounds, including infringing on Tap Pilam’s religious freedoms.

The Lipan tribe has had an out-sized interest in First Amendment rights. It famously won a case that challenged federal restrictions on possession of eagle feathers only to federally recognized tribes. Such feathers are used by non-federally recognized tribes, too.

Its brief asks the court to reverse a ruling that gives “the government carte blanche to prohibit Native Americans from performing religious ceremonies at sacred sites, including the Alamo.”

The brief begins with this painstaking truth, “The mistreatment of Native Americans is a persistent stain on the fabric of United States history.”

It echoes across Indian Country.

The Lipan Apaches agree the Alamo Trust denied Tap Pilam access to the Alamo Chapel for an annual remembrance of their ancestors at the Alamo and have been barred from conducting forgiveness and interment ceremonies for their ancestors at the Alamo because they’re not federally recognized.

Like Lipan Apaches, Tap Pilam has chosen not to seek recognition under what it considers antiquated, subservient and racist federal policies governing tribes.

The Lipan tribe asserts Tap Pilam has also been excluded from Alamo committees serving in advisory capacities on issues such as the handling of human remains.

Tap Pilam isn’t alone in other important claims: That the trust and GLO manipulated the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to their advantage to exclude Tap Pilam for not being federally recognized.

Lipan Apaches and Tap Pilam say the Alamo Trust and the GLO have “weaponized” NAGPRA, despicably. The law’s purpose is to protect graves from destruction and theft, not to punish a tribe with which it disagrees.

When Tap Pilam was excluded from the grounds and from committees, the trust and GLO added representatives of federally recognized tribes — as if Native Americans are interchangeable.

Some of those tribes had no ties to the Alamo.

The move was both ignorant and callous.

The federally recognized Mescalero Apaches, for example, have a longstanding aversion to handling human remains, including their own, argued Tap Pilam, which has conducted ceremonies at the Alamo since 1995 and views them as religious obligations.

When human remains are re-interred, for example, Tap Pilam conducts a ceremony in which it asks ancestors for forgiveness for disturbing their after-life journeys and vows to remember them at annual ceremonies.

Tap Pilam held these ceremonies under various Alamo managers, including the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and initially under current Land Commissioner George P. Bush.

The tribe says a shift occurred after it challenged the trust and GLO on the existence of several cemeteries at the Alamo that the tribe says merit legal protection.

The trust and GLO initially argued no cemeteries existed at the Alamo. Tap Pilam had ample historical documentation of about 1,000 graves, or more, on site. The names of those buried are known, and direct descendants continue to live in San Antonio.

This should have been seen as cause for celebration, not exclusion.

Through so many obstacles, the Alamo Trust and the GLO have lacked a command of history no different than that of the state as a whole.

It long failed to acknowledge the role slavery played in the Battle of the Alamo and the fight for independence, until recently; the legitimate agency Mexico had for its own rights; and the role Native Americans played at the Alamo and the four other World Heritage Site missions.

The Alamo and the other San Antonio missions were built for Native Americans and their religious conversion and practices.

For Tap Pilam, the amicus brief is a victory for other reasons. The Lipan Apaches were sworn enemies that made peace by intermarrying.

This offering is another symbol of that peace, and no matter what the court does, it’s being celebrated by both tribes and the rest of Indian Country.