When Theron DesRosier met Margo Tamez in the fall of 2006, she was under a heavy weight; an agent from Department of Homeland Security had recently told her mother, Eloisa Garcia Tamez, that her land would be “taken either by signed waiver or by force”, she had 30 days to decide. Eloisa lives on El Calaboz Rancheria, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border. These are ancestral lands that were passed down to Eloisa by her Apache foremothers /forefathers. Originally, 22,000 acres were designated for the family but over hundreds of years the land has been snatched bit by bit until now only a few acres remain.

Margo felt isolated from the struggles of her community and detached from her research. She began looking for a way to unite the two. She had no financial resources but she was determined to find a way to help her mother. In desperation she decided to go onto the Internet and share her struggle with the world. She wrote a post entitled URGENT CALL!, before thanksgiving, on a prominent blog and included her cell phone number to contact. As she was traveling home for thanksgiving people from all over the continent began calling. Her voice mail filled up. People told her stories, gave advice and encouragement. She made a point to answer every voice message.

Soon after this experience Margo wrote, “I was getting the sense that my journey home, to El Calaboz, and my ‘research’ journey were joining…suddenly keeping the two in separate spheres wasn’t appropriate anymore,”

The initial success encouraged Margo to develop the strategy further. She describes it as the Web 2.0 version of a basket communication strategy her foremothers used: designs on the baskets they carried communicated important information to the community as they worked. The key elements of this strategy are transparency and utility.

She wrote in Wikipedia and Native Wiki. She nurtured, organized and mobilized a dispersed community using blogs, myspace, facebook, and text msging. She asked members of her group to document the struggle with video cameras, then upload the videos to youtube so they could be broadcast to the world. She calls these tools her “palettes, paints, glitter”

Over the next six months her organization grew to over 300 individuals including NGO leaders, legal experts, tribal Elders, media professionals, environmentalists, artists, activists, policy makers, scholars, and Native American and Indigenous organizations. They have set precedent in two landmark federal and international legal cases and have received official organization status at the UN. And her mother still lives on her homeland.

The ePortfolio that she continues to build chronicles this journey. This experience has dramatically changed the way Margo thinks about teaching, learning, and research. Her course space is now a world accessible blog that acts as a hub for student blogs. Margo’s work has been the focus of many hours of reflection at CTLT. Our understanding of eportfolios, social networking, and distributed learning has been greatly enrich by her example.  Margo’s accomplishment is also encouraging in this time of limited financial resources. With tools free to anyone on this campus, she has created a vibrant global network that joins community, research and action.

“CTLT is a core lab for my writing, thinking and being process as a researcher.”
Margo Tamez