Dr. Basaldú is Esto’k Gna, a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, lives in Brownsville, Texas, and volunteers with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. He earned the degree of Arts Baccalaureate from Harvard University in the Study of Religion, the degree of Master of Arts in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona, and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. Dr. Basaldú has lived and worked in Japan and various states in the USA, has worked and lived in the Navajo Nation and several other Native reservations, as well as served on the faculties of Native American Studies at the University of North Dakota and the University of Oklahoma. He has participate in several indigenous movements to resist extractivism, against the oil & gas industries, and against the dehumanizing drive of militarization by the white supremacist governments of the United States of America and the State of Texas.
Christopher Basaldú grew up in Brownsville and Corpus Christi region where the fracking industry is responsible for immense damages. He is fighting against the same projects as Bekah.
“The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas is one of the Original Peoples of the Land that is now colonized at “Texas”. We call ourselves Esto’k Gna in our own language, which means, Human Beings. Today we struggle to protect and restore our sacred homelands which are under threat of ongoing colonization and resource extraction from colonization and white supremacist capitalism through the oil & gas industry and from the destructive space tourism industry. We oppose the vanity project called SpaceX which is damaging sacred lands and restricting our people’s access to Boca Chica Beach, the coastline and the mouth of the sacred river known as the Rio Grande or the Rio Bravo. We are also opposing two fracked gas export terminals proposed for the Port of Brownsville. All of these projects would destroy a sacred area that is also environmentally unique, beautiful, and very delicate. One particular site known as Garcia Pasture was named as a highly threatened cultural site by the World Monument Fund this year. We oppose ongoing border militarization in our lands that harms our human relatives seeking to migrate across the lands of their ancestors which white supremacist colonization has carved up with eurocentric “borders” through violence, walls, and concentration camps. We cannot allow any more of our sacred homelands to be sacrificed. We are the people of the land. We know that we are the land.”