HISTORY
The families of TONATIERRA are proactive in developing and implementing decolonization strategies that are coherent to our community cultural identity and responsibilities, allowing us to capture and incorporate the internal and external strength of our collective movement for environmental justice and self-determination as Indigenous Peoples at the local, regional, continental and global levels.
Along the path of more than two decades now of this organizational development trajectory, TONATIERRA has played a key role at many critical points as a bridge organization between Abya Yala North and South [Americas], and as a grassroots community organization simultaneously engaged on a daily basis on the frontlines of the local struggles of Migrant Workers which gave us birth a generation ago. In 2010, TONATIERRA was a plaintiff in the ACLU federal lawsuit against AZ SB1070, our standing in the case being that of Indigenous Peoples as Migrant Workers with families as articulated in the United Nations International Labor Organization Convention 169.
Our base community is the surviving Nations, families, communities, barrios, clans and Pueblos of the Uto-Aztecan family of Indigenous Peoples. Active participation in the organization over the years comes from the marginalized, underserved and unrepresented communities that call the Xicano Mexicano barrios of Phoenix home. We are a family-based organization, meaning our organizing strategies are organic to this natural field of human development, and are implemented within the intergenerational environment of responsibility to the future generations. TONATIERRA also networks with many social justice organizations of both indigenous and non-indigenous character at the local, state, national and international level.
From Civil Rights to Human Rights, Indigenous Rights and the Territorial Integrity of Mother Earth!
To learn more about the history, check out the Nahuacalli archives: