"Texas State Board of Education renews American Indian/Native Studies course," by Riddhi Bora in Shift/Press, July 4, 2025

After months of delays and over 40 public testimonies, the Texas State Board of Education voted to renew the American Indian/Native Studies course, allowing districts to continue offering it as an elective. The course provides students with a deeper understanding of Indigenous history, culture, and political identity—perspectives often erased or filtered through Eurocentric narratives. Advocates emphasized that Native identity is not simply racial or ethnic, but a legal and sovereign designation, which distinguishes it from content targeted under SB 12. As such, the course does not violate the state’s DEI ban and is fully legal to teach. 

Dr. Maria Unda's words were incisive. “Indigenous is neither a race or ethnicity…they predate the concept of race.”

Of course, it shouldn't matter either way as race and ethnicity are historical social constructs worthy of study.

Students and families testified that without such courses, Native peoples risk being forgotten "as if they never existed." Despite political resistance and bureaucratic hurdles, the course's renewal affirms that Indigenous histories matter—and must be taught.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas State Board of Education renews American Indian/Native Studies course

By Riddhi Bora

 

Jul 4, 2025

After a year-and-a-half-long deliberation process, several delays and over 40 total testimonies, Texas school districts are re-allowed to offer Native American Studies course as an elective.

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) renewed a American Indian/Native Studies course on Friday, Jun. 27. The 9-4 vote followed more than four hours of discussion on Thursday and Friday, during which testifiers explained the course’s importance and board members debated the course’s legality given implementation of a state law (Senate Bill 12) that bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for schools serving K-12 students.

First introduced in 2020 as an elective course for 10th-12th graders in Grand Prairie ISD, the course allows students to understand Native American history, issues, and perspectives. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) designated this as an innovative studies course, which allows students to gain knowledge and skills outside of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. However, because of SB 12, such courses face elimination.

Orlando Lara, a scholar and longtime advocate for the course’s renewal, said that while the Texas Education Agency labels the course as Ethnic Studies, there’s a difference between ethnic studies and the category of ethnicity and race. Lara said that tribal identity is a particular legal and political category that can’t be equated with race and ethnicity.

Maria Unda, a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts, said that the board members did not seem to understand the meanings of race and ethnicity.

“Race is a social construct used in history. For example, I can be racially Hispanic, but my ethnicity is Mexican American or Chicana. They asked me, ‘So what is Indigenous Studies?’ I was like, Indigenous Studies is cultural studies,” said Unda, whose work focuses on race and ethnic studies, educational policy making, and critical policy analysis. “Indigenous is neither a race or ethnicity…they predate the concept of race.”

Lauren, Tom, Walter, and Henry Daughtery, a family from Houston also testified at the meeting. Tom said it’s very clear that when learning about Native Americans, their history is told through a European colonization perspective and that’s why there’s not a strong understanding of their identity. Henry, who is 12 years old, said in his social studies course that he spent about a week during the year learning about Native Americans.

“[American Indian/Native Studies] is important because you can see how [Indigenous folks] have contributed to Texas and how they’ve helped us become who we are,” said Henry Daughtery. “If [American Indian/Native Studies] are not taught enough, they can be forgotten about, as if they never existed.”

The course renewal process began in January 2024, and the SBOE was supposed to decide on a vote in April 2025. However, in April, Lara said for the first time in the SBOE’s history, the SBOE instructed TEA staff to review the recommended resources for an innovative course. The Grand Prairie Social Studies Council put together the resources, and Lara said this TEA review of recommended resources was not mentioned as part of the application process.

“It’s sort of like if you apply for a fellowship and then they call you and say, ‘Actually, we need this other document, but the deadline that applies (has) already passed’,” Lara said. “The SBOE gives themself the leeway to change the process in the middle.”

He said that since 2019, when community members first fought for the course to be taught in schools, they had to compromise a lot, and the entire process involved lots of labor. For an entire year, advocates for the course’s renewal testified in every single general meeting because it wasn’t on the SBOE’s agenda and the course underwent several reviews because the renewal process kept changing, Lara said. 

“We got here. We’ve lost some limbs, (but) everyone is super relieved and happy that we got this far… Even though this is technically just a renewal, it’s a renewal from the SBOE, which is super significant, because in the past, it was just approved by the commissioner,” Lara said. “My message to districts is if they are worried that, ‘Oh, maybe this is illegal to teach’, they now have confirmation it’s legal.”

SBOE member Julie Pickeren threatened another delay by calling a point of order by stating TEA did not give the members the course’s packet and resources for review in time for a Friday vote. SBOE chairman Aaaron Kinsey clarified that the “deadline rule” Pickeren referred to states that if materials are not received on Friday, board members can delay their vote but are not required to.

While the SBOE renewed the course for this fall, Lara said damage has already been done because school districts set their calendars in December or January, so the course won’t be available to districts until the 2026-2027 academic year. 

Unda said she thinks people in power and policymakers frequently forget the importance of centering what students want. From her experience studying educational policymaking and listening to students, Unda said she learned students want ethnic studies courses.

“I wish we supported education (and) funded it correctly… instead of it being this space of oppression and power grabbing,” Unda said. “Whether or not it’s established with TEA… Everyone’s always gonna be teaching critical histories, so the work continues.”

Riddhi Bora

  Riddhi Bora is a journalist passionate about multimedia storytelling and uplifting underrepresented voices. Outside of reporting she enjoys dancing, film photography, watching movies and trying new restaurants.

When the Waters Rose, So Did Mexico. Where Is Our Humanity? by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

When the Waters Rose, So Did Mexico. Where Is Our Humanity?

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 7, 2025

Source: https://www.facebook.com/protcivilacuna

As floodwaters swallowed parts of the Texas Hill Country over the Fourth of July weekend—ripping through tents, cabins, and homes with terrifying force—a rare and radiant kind of help arrived from across the border.

Nine brave volunteer firefighters from Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico, along with four members of Fundación 911 México, answered the call for help—not with questions, conditions, or fanfare, but with quiet courage and unflinching resolve. Early Sunday morning, they crossed into Texas and headed straight for Kerrville, where more than 80 people have already been confirmed dead and dozens remain missing in one of the deadliest floods in recent U.S. history.

They didn’t come for headlines. They came for humanity.

Search and rescue response in Texas has become an international effort as volunteer firefighters from Mexico are lending a hand to their neighbors to the north.(Dirección de Protección Civil y Bomberos de Acuña, Coahuila. News Source: Worley, 2025)

Arriving with boats, gear, and rigorous training—but most of all, heart—this elite Mexican rescue team worked alongside Texans in scenes of devastation that blurred flags and erased borders.

They searched with Texas volunteers and grieving families, knowing full well the risks. And they did so in a country where anti-Mexican vitriol has become policy, where border walls and razor wire have replaced bridges of solidarity, and where leaders like Donald Trump and Greg Abbott use cruelty toward immigrants not only as a political strategy but as spectacle and sport.

It is impossible to miss the moral contrast.

While Trump mocks migrants—once suggesting we electrify the border wall and fill trenches with alligators (Valenzuela, 2025)—Mexican first responders are here saving lives in the treacherous Guadalupe River.

Trump’s cruelty toward migrants—like the grotesque ‘Alligator Alcatraz’—didn’t begin last month, but dates back to his prior presidency:

Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him. (Shear & Hirschfeld, 2019).

While Trump dreams of alligator-filled moats—now a grotesque reality in the Florida Everglades (Valenzuela, 2025)—Mexican rescuers are wading through floodwaters to save the victims of this unspeakable catastrophe. This isn’t merely a policy divide—it’s a gaping rupture in our values between nations.

Not long ago, Governor Greg Abbott made a chilling remark during a radio interview with host Dana Loesch:

“The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder” (García, 2024).

While Abbott criminalizes desperate asylum seekers and installs drowning traps in the weaponized and border-scarred Rio Grande, Mexico sends its bravest to help Texans recover the bodies of adults and children swept away by a different—yet kindred—river: the sorrowful and tragic Guadalupe. A river named for La Virgen de Guadalupe, who stands for love, mercy, and protection. One side chooses cruelty; the other, compassion.

Though these two rivers do not meet, they are bound by shared grief and the stories they carry: one polluted by politics, the other by tragedy. And in this moment, Mexico chooses compassion. Texas, through Abbott’s policies, chooses cruelty—even as we’re wrongfully told that Mexico is the enemy.

We’re told to fear the "invasion" of immigrants while witnessing a border-born miracle of selflessness, solidarity, and sorrowful grace.

Source: Protección Civil Acuña

Make no mistake: this isn’t the first time Mexico has come to our aid. After Hurricane Katrina, Mexican troops and aid workers traveled to Louisiana to help with recovery. After 9/11, Mexican officials offered forensic support to identify victims. When the pandemic struck, Mexican doctors crossed into El Paso to ease hospital shortages.

So, when will we stop pretending that compassion has a passport?

When will the likes of Trump and Abbott look into the eyes of these rescuers—heroes in every sense of the word—and reckon with the cruelty of their exclusionary policies, the machinery of fear they’ve built, and their shameful attempts to dehumanize the very people who, in our hour of need, showed up to save us?

This weekend, we saw the best of Mexico, no doubt.

Let us not forget the names of those who walked into our disaster with open arms (Protección Civil Acuña, 2025).

Protección Civil y Bomberos de Acuña:

Javier Alvarado Lumbreras

Cristopher Abraham Herrera

Roel Delgado Martínez

José Omar Llanas Hernández

Aldo Ortiz Rodríguez

Mario Alberto Linares

Guillermo Samuel Quiroz

Javier Isaac Alvarado

Jesús Eduardo Salas Ibarra

Fundación 911 México:

Ismael Aldaba Flores

Miguel Ángel González

Jesús Gómez Arizpe

Jorge Fuentes

Their bravery echoes a long tradition of Mexico showing up for the U.S. in our darkest moments—whether after Katrina, 9/11, or COVID-19. They also helped rebuild Georgia in the devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew.

Similarly, they arrived last Saturday in the early morning hours—not as invaders, but as lifelines. Not to take, but to give—of their time, their skill, and their courage. They came not as strangers, but as hermanos—brothers carrying grief in one hand, and justice, unspoken but evident, in the other.

In a world parched of empathy, with "scorched Earth" policies to match, these  are the waters that should rise. In a moment like this, may the words of the prophet Amos echo with urgency: "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24). May we remember that justice does not flow from border walls, but from hands reaching across them.

To the leaders who build walls and stoke hate: let this moment be your mirror.  As for the rest of us, we must ask ourselves—not just today but every day—what kind of people we want to be. 

The waters rose. Mexico showed up. Now it’s our turn—to rise not just in gratitude, but in solidarity.

References

García, U. J. (2024, January 11). Abbott’s immigration rhetoric criticized again after interview response about shooting migrants. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/11/texas-border-migrants-greg-abbott-interview-shoot/ 

Protección Civil Acuña. (2025, July 6 at 6:11 AM). Water rescue team stands in flooding in USA [Facebook post]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/protcivilacuna

Shear, M. D., & Davis, J. H. (2019, October 1). Shoot migrants’ legs, build alligator moat: Behind Trump’s ideas for border. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/politics/trump-border-wars.html

Valenzuela, A. (2025, July 2). Alligator Alcatraz: A monument to cruelty in the heart of the Everglades [Blog post]. Texas Ed Equity. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/07/alligator-alcatraz-monument-to-cruelty_2.html

Worley, D. (2025, July 7). Firefighters from Mexico join response efforts to catastrophic Texas floods. KBTX. https://www.kbtx.com/2025/07/07/firefighters-mexico-join-response-efforts-catastrophic-texas-floods/

Farce of July - "One Big Beautiful Bill" Is a Big Betrayal of Students and Families," by Enrique Murillo, Ph.D.

 Friends,

A must-read. Since we the playing field is not level, Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill"—that I term, "Trump’s Monstrous Disaster Bill," will make things worse.

Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks need to be prepared as the worst is yet to come, beginning with the implementation of this bill. 

What do you think? I'm super concerned.

-Angela

Farce of July - "One Big Beautiful Bill" Is a Big Betrayal of Students and Families

by 

Enrique Murillo, Ph.D.

As millions prepare to celebrate USA's 249th birthday this Fourth of July, families across the country are asking: What are we celebrating when our children’s futures are being stolen in plain sight?

With the narrow passage of H.R. 1 — misleadingly named the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — Congress has launched the most aggressive assault on education, economic mobility, and family well-being in modern U.S. history. The president is expected to sign it on Independence Day.

But for millions of Latino families, this holiday will not be a celebration. It will be a mourning — for the opportunities denied, the futures jeopardized, and the values betrayed.

A Direct Attack on Latino Students and Their Futures

H.R. 1 is not education reform — it’s education sabotage. It dismantles the very policies and programs that have helped Latino students and first-generation families succeed. Among its most damaging provisions:

Slashing Higher Education Support

• Eliminates income-driven student loan repayment plans, forcing Latino students — many of whom are the first in their families to attend college — into higher monthly payments and longer debt timelines.
• Cuts federal loans for graduate students and caps borrowing, making advanced degrees out of reach for thousands.
• Guts funding for first-generation college access programs, including TRIO and GEAR UP, which are essential for students navigating college without family experience or financial support.

Undermining K–12 Public Education

• Creates a massive federal voucher scheme that takes billions from public schools and sends them to private schools — often out of reach for Latino families and free from accountability.
• Cuts billions from the U.S. Department of Education, threatening after-school programs, bilingual education, and special education services that serve millions of Latino students.

Devaluing Early Childhood Education

• Bans federal student loans for early childhood educators — a field where Latinas make up a large percentage of the workforce — under the false claim that low wages equal low value.
• Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP will drive many early educators — 43% of whom rely on food assistance — out of the field, reducing quality and access for Latino children.

Crippling Latino Family Support

• Caps the Child Tax Credit at $2,200, and excludes 2.6 million U.S. citizen Latino children because their parents are undocumented.
• Slashes SNAP and school meal programs, affecting over 13 million children, many in Latino-majority school districts.
• Cuts over $1 trillion from health programs, threatening insurance coverage for more than 4 million Latinos — the largest coverage loss in the community’s history.

Not Just a Policy — A Message

This bill doesn’t just take away resources. It sends a message: that Latino children don’t matter. That their education, their dreams, and their families are expendable.

“This is the Great American Heist,” said Denise Forte, CEO of The Education Trust. “It robs students and families of financial aid, healthcare, food, and the promise of a better life. It puts the American Dream out of reach for those working hardest to achieve it.”

“The House has chosen cruelty over compassion,” added Janet Murguía, President of UnidosUS. “They have turned their backs on Latino families who trusted them to lead with integrity.”

But Here’s What They Can’t Take

They cannot take the truth that Latino families have always fought for liberty — and continue to fight for it every day.

We fight for our kids to go further than we did.

We fight to keep them healthy, fed, and educated — even when the system works against us.

We know that our labor, our love, and our hope have built this country — and we will continue to build a better one.

This Fourth of July, We Remember What We’re Fighting For

• Liberty that includes indigenous and immigrant families, not just the privileged.
• Education that uplifts every child, not just the wealthy.
• A future where our children can dream without fear — and thrive with dignity.

Stay safe, comunidad. Stay strong. Stay vocal.

We will not forget this betrayal. And we will not stop fighting.

¡La lucha sigue!

Devastation in the Texas Hill Country: 66 Confirmed Dead, Dozens Missing, 850 Rescued, and a Call by Some to Abolish FEMA?

Devastation in the Texas Hill Country: 66 Confirmed Dead, Dozens Missing, 850 Rescued, and a Call by Some to Abolish FEMA?

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Like many of you, I spent yesterday—and now this morning—glued to the devastating news of the terrible tragedy that struck Fourth-of-July campers and communities along the Guadalupe River in the Central Texas Hill Country. 

This morning’s CBS news report is up-to-date, and it is heartbreaking. For context, Kerrville is located just 103 miles west of Austin—about a two-hour drive—which, by Texas standards, is very close to home. Plus, Austin is located in Travis County that also witnessed destruction where at least four deaths have been reported. This is, of course, an evolving situation.

As of this writing, the confirmed death toll stands at 66, including at least 15 children. At least two dozen more children from the lower-lying region of Camp Mystic are still missing. Aerial footage shows how the camp was divided into two parts: one higher up the bank, the other perilously close to the river's edge.

Here are two eyewitness accounts from camp supervisors, María Paula and Silvana Garza Valdez, who were tending to the younger children. Just a week earlier, they had been stationed in the lower portion of the camp. Thankfully, they had recently been reassigned to higher ground, where they comforted children crying—some because they didn’t want camp to end, others because they were terrified by the unrelenting rains. 

I’ve posted the full video below, which is in Spanish, as I found it to be one of the most informative accounts of how events unfolded at Camp Mystic—from the perspective of these young caretakers themselves. Despite describing their own trauma, they speak with remarkable clarity, maturity, and composure about what they experienced. If you don't understand Spanish, turn on the closed captioning on your website or TV so that you can capture the entire interview in English.

While multiple counties across Central and West Texas were affected by the storm—including my hometown of San Angelo and Travis County where I live—Kerr County, home to Kerrville and the upriver towns of Hunt (where Camp Mystic is located) and Ingram, suffered the most catastrophic loss of life where folks flocked from around the state on a national holiday.

Source: NY Times

Several interconnected factors contributed to the storm’s deadly impact, not the least of which is climate change that has resulted in more intense and more frequent water events, as expressed this morning by Congressman Joaquin Castro on CNN News. 

It began with the remnants of Hurricane Barry—a Category 1 storm that made landfall near the eastern Mexican state of Tampico on Sunday, June 29—merging with a stalled weather system over West Texas, creating an unusually powerful and volatile storm. As Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice explained in a press conference yesterday, what made the impact especially devastating for towns like Hunt, Ingram, and Comfort was the simultaneous rainfall along both forks of the Guadalupe River. These tributaries converged at Hunt, dramatically accelerating the river’s rise—causing water levels to surge by 30 feet in just two hours and overwhelming the communities downstream.

According to CBS News Texas, Governor Greg Abbott announced in a July 5 press briefing that “at least 850 people have been rescued from rising floodwaters in Central Texas over the past 36 hours,” underscoring the scale and urgency of the disaster response. The report states that 850 of these were uninjured and eight were injured.

In this moment of collective grief, it is essential to name not only the resilience of our communities, but also the critical importance of public infrastructure—especially FEMA, the National Weather Service (NWS), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These agencies play vital roles in emergency response, weather forecasting, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have publicly called for the abolition of FEMA is not only reckless—it is dangerous. 

This tragedy makes painfully clear what’s at stake when political rhetoric turns against the very institutions tasked with safeguarding human life during natural disasters (Valenzuela, 2025).

We grieve for the lives lost. We pray for the children still missing and the families shattered by this storm. And we recommit ourselves to demanding leadership that values preparedness, community, and the right of all people—especially the most vulnerable—to survive and thrive.

References

CBS News. (2025, July 5). Central Texas flash flooding leaves dozens dead, hundreds rescued. Link

FEMA. (n.d.). About FEMA. https://www.fema.gov/about

Mazzone, C., & Reader, G. (2025, July 6). 4 dead in Travis County, 13 missing in devastating flooding. KXAN. https://www.kxan.com/news/local/2-dead-in-travis-county-at-least-10-missing-in-devastating-flooding/

NOAA. (n.d.). Our mission and vision. https://www.noaa.gov/our-mission-and-vision

Reuters. (2024, May 20). Kristi Noem calls for end to FEMA. https://www.reuters.com

Tabachnick, C., Czachor, E. M., & M., Breen.  (2025, July 6). At least 70 dead in devastating Central Texas flash floods, over 2 dozen remain missing. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-hill-country-severe-floods/

The Hill. (2024, March 3). Trump says he would abolish FEMA. https://thehill.com

Valenzuela, A. (2025, July 7, 2025). When the Waters Rose, So Did Mexico. Where is Our Humanity? [Blog] Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/07/when-waters-rose-so-did-mexico-where-is.html

Lakota Code Camp: Native American Tech Leaders Bringing Native Youth Into AI Innovation

Friends,

What a deeply inspiring and urgent call to action. As someone working at the intersection of education, equity, and decolonial praxis, I’m moved by the work that Mason Grimshaw and the Lakota AI Code Camp are doing—not only to train the next generation of Native American technologists, but to affirm Indigenous sovereignty, knowledge systems, and community-rooted leadership in one of the most consequential arenas of our time: AI and machine learning.

The framing here—“AI should speak every human language”—is not only technically visionary but epistemically just. It demands that we shift from extractive, one-size-fits-all models toward technologies that honor the relational, place-based, and linguistic diversity of the world’s peoples. Too often, Indigenous youth are marginalized by tech sectors that see them only through the lens of “access” gaps, while ignoring the rich epistemologies they bring to the table. The Lakota AI Code Camp shows us what’s possible when young people are given tools and trusted to lead.

Grimshaw’s words resonate: the future of AI depends on whether we are brave enough to center the communities long pushed to the margins. It is not just a matter of inclusion; it’s a matter of survival, innovation, and justice.

I’m grateful to learn about this initiative—and I look forward to supporting and amplifying this movement wherever possible.

-Angela Valenzuela

Lakota Code Camp: Native American Tech Leaders Bringing Native Youth Into AI Innovation

ByJohn Werner, Forbes | Dec 01, 2023

Contributor. I am an MIT Senior Fellow & Lecturer, 5x-founder & VC investing in AI

How do we address issues with diversity in AI technical leadership?

A group of Native American technical leaders are amongst those who are deeply thinking about how this works, as existing models unfortunately often show how human discrimination bleeds over into AI systems.

Solving this problem must include casting a wider net in leadership and teams – the human intelligence that builds the systems that we will use.

With that in mind, Mason Grimshaw and his colleagues are taking action and welcome the tech world as a whole to join.

Grimshaw has a Master’s degree in business analytics, and works for Ode Partners, a data and design agency for the environment. He’s also a dad, as revealed by his LinkedIn bio:

“By day, I’m a data scientist for the Ode Partners, and by night, I change lots of diapers. I love all aspects of data science, but mostly I want to improve people’s lives and processes. I play guitar, 3D print stuff, chase my 4 year old and 2 year old around, and cuddle with our 1 year old. Additionally, I’m increasingly interested in preserving language for indigenous populations.”

And Grimshaw has been doing some thinking about how to make the future better for his kids, and everyone else’s. In talking about his past experience in the tech sector, he says working in tech as a Native American is hard and lonely.

Addressing questions around data inclusion as well as data sovereignty, he also notes the morphological differences in language, and how AI might master English, but have problems with other world languages.

“AI should speak every human language,” he says.

He also notes the problem of data model bias, and says that companies and engineering teams in the past have often interacted with tribes in non-respectful and non-reciprocal ways. He wants to change that.

“I've been very fortunate in the people that I've been able to meet, and the opportunities that I've had,” he says, showing his desire to provide these kinds of experiences for others.

There are some efforts, he says, underway to get young Native American people closer to the coding world, a welcoming coding world where they can lead.

Grimshaw mentions a Lakota AI code camp that he co-created and helps lead, where high school students in Black Hills took a three-week course learning about AI applications and much more.

Noting that the program was a smashing success, he first sets the stage for why these kinds of opportunities are so important for Native American youth. He says many members of Native American communities are all too familiar with tech deserts, where there are many innovations but little access to tech, and notes that the “abysmal” Internet access on many reservations can be a real stumbling block to their further education and community.

Through the coding camp program, equipped with modern laptops, young Native Americans were able to do big things with technology, Grimshaw says.

“Our students blew us away,” he says, noting that the curriculum included building random forest models, mastering image recognition, and feeding augmented reality apps.

Students built models, he says, to understand the medicinal purposes of plants, and to build Lakota dictionaries.

Now, some of the students are moving toward computer science undergraduate programs, and they’re coming away with better understandings of modern technologies and their uses.

“We've built a community that supports each other,” he says. ‘We are confident that our students are going to be leaders and experts in AI/ML, and within their communities, as they continue to wrestle with the questions around data sovereignty and local applications of AI/ML… They’re all learning … an understanding of the power of these methods, and the value of their community’s data.”

Too often, he says, Native American youth are “overlooked and under-valued” in tech spaces.

“When we put them in our indigenous technical space, they excelled. I know that’s possible for all (of their peers), join us in making that a reality, because frankly, the future of our communities, and of AI for each and every one of us, depends on it.”

Those who are interested can find more information at Services 4 — LAKOTA AI CODE CAMP.

Can Economic Populism Win Back the Rio Grande Valley? A Vermont U.S. senator and an Austin congressman make the case in McAllen. by Michael Gonzalez June 23, 2025, 2:00 PM, CDT

Thanks to Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar for going to the South Texas Rio Grande Valley as part of Sanders' "Fighting Oligarchy Tour." I had family attend the event and they were very much inspired and the turnout was fantastic in the McAllen Convention Center.

The Texas Democratic Party really needs to build on this momentum and have a good ground game, meaning getting people registered to vote, engaging voters and prospective voters in elections, and getting them out to the polls. And not for the party but for democracy.

-Angela Valenzuela

Can Economic Populism Win Back the Rio Grande Valley? 

A Vermont U.S. senator and an Austin congressman make the case in McAllen.  

by Michael Gonzalez  June 23, 2025, Texas Observer

As a rainstorm rolled in last Friday evening, hundreds of people eagerly filed through metal detectors at an 1,800-seat performing arts center in McAllen—the urban hub of Hidalgo County in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley—ahead of Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ 13th stop on his nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

Normally a stage for orchestra concerts and comedy shows, the venue, located about five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, filled up now for a different reason: People from every age group, worried about the country’s future under Donald Trump’s control, crowded in to hear Sanders and Austin Democratic Congressman Greg Casar rally up the working class.

“McAllen, Texas, can be the birthplace of a new Democratic Party that puts working people first, kicks out the corrupt politicians regardless of party, and saves our country for everyday people,” Casar said, as he spoke ahead of introducing Sanders. 

The Valley, the four-county region of around 1.4 million mostly Latino residents at Texas’ southern tip, is no stranger to the controversial influence of billionaires like Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX has taken over what used to be Boca Chica Village and turned it into Texas’ newest city, Starbase, now mainly inhabited by SpaceX employees. Destroyed rocket parts litter Texan and Mexican beaches, and a recent SpaceX test ship exploded late at night startling nearby Brownsville residents and littering debris.

“Elon Musk does not own the Valley,” Casar—a second-term U.S. House member representing a district stretching from the capital city to San Antonio who was recently minted chair of the body’s progressive caucus—declared to the crowd.

Attendees at the McAllen event (Michael Gonzalez)

Sanders’ nationwide tour to mobilize individuals especially in conservative regions comes amid increased uncertainty about further impacts of Trump’s policies on the working class. During a time of restructuring in the Democratic Party, following last year’s presidential election defeat, Sanders pushed a populist message urging unity and action against oligarchic control and highlighted the profound impact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have had in communities like the Valley.

“Right now in McAllen and other parts of this country we’re seeing what authoritarianism is about in its ugliest way,” the senator said. We’re seeing people being stopped on the street being picked up at their workplace, thrown into vans and taken God knows where without due process.”

Sanders continued: “What Trump is doing is not just waging an attack against the working class of this country. He is moving America very rapidly and dangerously into an authoritarian form of society.”

Since 2016, support for Donald Trump has increased steadily throughout previously deep-blue far South Texas. In that year’s presidential election, Hillary Clinton won all Rio Grande Valley counties in a landslide. In Hidalgo County, Clinton prevailed over Trump by 40 points. But, in 2020, Biden carried the county by only 17, and in 2024 Trump won it by three—part of a stunning sweep of all four Valley counties.

Jon Taylor, chair of the University of Texas at San Antonio’s political science and geography department, believes that despite Trump’s electoral performance in last year’s election, the Democratic Party still has ample opportunity to seize the narrative and use populism to appeal to voters’ frustrations and anger. 

“Trump had this appeal to South Texas voters apparently because he’s strong, or he’s forceful,” Taylor told the Texas Observer. “I think Bernie might be really good at being able to just drive home that point about: What has it meant to you by voting for this guy? [Trump] cares about billionaires; he cares about megacorporations. He cares about giving all of them tax cuts and benefits.”

Despite increased support for Republicans in the region for almost ten years, Sanders was extremely popular during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, in which he won every populous border county in Texas.

Hidalgo County Democratic Party Chair Richard Gonzales describes himself as a moderate Democrat and personally views the region’s makeup as conservative and family-based. The area’s long-time Democratic elected officials at all levels tend to be conservatives on issues ranging from fossil fuels to guns to abortion. No local elected officials spoke at the Sanders rally.

But Gonzales sees the appeal of progressive policies, saying he thinks they may be part of the recipe for turning his county blue again. “When we look at what Senator Sanders stands for, I think it’s starting to become more okay to kind of buy into that idea, because we’re seeing what the opposite can do to us down here,” he told the Observer. 

Life in the Valley is largely a quiet existence, but near-daily ICE raids on local communities and workplaces have changed that. These raids have targeted businesses and construction sites from Brownsville to South Padre Island to McAllen. Notably, a bakery in Los Fresnos was targeted by ICE and HSI agents around mid-February, leading to multiple arrests including the owners. Pulgas once packed with people buying and selling goods including produce, antiques, and second-hand items are now oftentimes empty due to the fear of arrests by ICE agents. The Republican mayor of McAllen, Javier Villalobos, recently posted on Facebook that immigration enforcement is “negatively impacting all sectors of our economy” and called for the Trump administration to relax enforcement on all industries in need of labor.

Some locals at the Friday rally, like Michael Dutcher, expressed deep concern that their way of life is being threatened under Trump’s second administration. “Being a part of something to counter that is important to me,” Dutcher said. He had only heard of Sanders’ event hours before the start time and immediately made plans to attend.

Congressman Greg Casar (right) with Senator Bernie Sanders (Michael Gonzalez)

Sergio Salinas, a business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1015 in McAllen, showed up to the rally with several union members who sat on the stage behind the lectern. He referenced how Donald Trump threw around the word “union” on the campaign trail during last year’s election, yet he doesn’t believe that Republicans truly have the backs of unions. “The Republicans say that the unions are good, but where are they at?” Salinas said.

Standing beside vendors selling Bernie merch, attendee Danny Diaz, a local Democratic precinct chair and longtime political organizer, said he hopes that change in the Valley’s political scene is soon to come. 

“I don’t think Latinos in South Texas are married to the Republican Party,” he said. “I think people respond well to Bernie Sanders down here. … I am willing to bet that if we really absorb the energy like the energy that we saw tonight, that we could bounce back and sweep these counties back to the Dem side.”

Michael Gonzalez is a freelance photographer and reporter based in the Rio Grande Valley.

Tags:

 

• Bernie Sanders
 
• Greg Casar
 
• Rio Grande Valley

"Alligator Alcatraz: A Monument to Cruelty in the Heart of the Everglades," by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

 Alligator Alcatraz: A Monument to Cruelty in the Heart of the Everglades

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

It's time to resurrect the term necropolitics, meaning the politics of death wielded by the state to determine who lives and who dies, who is allowed dignity, and who is cast into suffering or oblivion.

The last time I used this term was in reference to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s inhumane river buoys near Eagle Pass, a lethal barrier meant to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. I wrote then, in a blog titled "First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande"—based on a published piece by that same title (Chesky & Lozano, 2024)—where I ask how we can be proud of our country and allow this to happen?

Source: Al Jazeera

Today, necropolitics rears its head once more—this time in the Florida Everglades, where Donald Trump has unveiled a new migrant detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” (Louallen, 2025). Surrounded by swampland and wildlife, the site is a literal and symbolic enclosure, built to house around 5,000 migrants in trailers and tents, in isolation and obscurity.

During a recent visit to the site, Trump joked:

“Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, gesturing in a zigzag motion.
“And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.” (Gomez Licon, 2025)

This is not humor. This is the normalization of dehumanization, delivered with a smirk. When a former president laughs about migrants being hunted by alligators, he is not merely mocking human suffering—he is sending a message: that cruelty is permissible, and even entertaining.

To joke about people—many of them children—fleeing war, violence, and poverty, and to reduce their desperate bid for safety to a punchline, is not just disturbing. It is authoritarian pageantry. It is a theater of the macabre. It is racist. It is white supremacy on steroids.

We’ve seen where this logic leads in history. First, the jokes. Then the walls. Then the cages. What comes next—camps? Ovens?

We cannot become numb.

There is nothing funny about people risking their lives to survive. There is nothing lighthearted about building prison compounds in ecologically sensitive swamps. And there is nothing acceptable about a political leader mocking the very people whose rights and humanity he systematically undermines.

This isn’t immigration policy.

This is punishment by design.

The location—less than 1,000 feet from Miccosukee tribal villages—is not incidental. It is another instance of Indigenous sovereignty being trampled, as tribal leaders have made clear. Miccosukee Business Council Chairman Talbert Cypress warned of the grave environmental and cultural impacts: no meaningful environmental study has been conducted, and the facility sits in the heart of the Big Cypress National Preserve, where tribal families have lived for generations (Louallen, 2025).

To make matters worse, Trump has announced plans to replicate this model in Louisiana and Alabama (Louallen, 2025), expanding a blueprint of cruelty while bypassing legal due process and basic humanitarian norms.

Let this be the moment we refuse complicity through silence.

Let this be the moment we stand—unapologetically—with migrants, with Indigenous nations, with environmental defenders, and with all who resist this dystopian vision of America.

References

Chesky, M., & Lozano, A. V. (2024, Feb. 25). First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande, 

Gomez Licon, A. (2025, July 2). Trump jokes about immigrants being attacked by alligators during ‘Florida Alcatraz’ tour: "Don't run in a straight line. Run like this’ Mr Trump said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion, The Independent. 

Louallen, D. (2025, July 1). Florida tribe fights new 'Alligator Alcatraz' migrant facility near Everglades homes: Tribal chairman says the facility threatens tribal camps and local ecosystem. ABC News

Against Cruelty, For Community: Freedom Fest 2025, Texas State Capitol, July 5, 2025 5 PM

Friends,

If you're in Austin this weekend, consider attending Freedom Fest: No Kings at the Texas State Capitol. Sounds like a fun evening for a free concert on the South lawn of the Texas Capitol.

Organized with heart and purpose by Hands Off Texas, Freedom Fest brings together an intergenerational crowd, with a special focus on young people, Gen Z organizers, and families. It's not just a concert—it's a vibrant space to connect with local grassroots groups, artists, and changemakers who are defending our democracy and imagining something better.

No better time in the wake of the U.S. Senate passing Trump's "Colossally Cruel" bill. It goes next to the U.S. House of Representatives and we need to count ourselves as among the pushback.

Whether you come for the music or stay for the movement, Freedom Fest is a celebration of our collective refusal to bow to authoritarianism—No Kings means rejecting concentrated power and embracing people-powered democracy. Expect a joyful, welcoming atmosphere—the kind only Austin knows how to bring.

-Angela Valenzuela