Heritage Voices · The Archaeology Podcast Network

Esto'k Gna Somi Se'k [The Human Beings of Texas] - Ep 77

·1 hr·3 clips

He says the names Devil’s River and Devil’s Watering Hole were given because the sites were sacred to his people.

1. Heritage Voices Episode 77 focuses on Esto'k Gna Somi Se'k, translated by Juan Mencius as “the human beings of Texas.” 2. Host Jessica Iacuinto introduces Chairman Juan Mencius, and he identifies himself as Juan Benito Mencius, a Texas-born descendant of seven generations in the region. 3. The episode asks what it means to defend sacred sites, oral history, and land in South Texas while industrial projects move forward. 4. Mencius says he has worked for almost 38 years to validate his grandparents’ words and relocate ancestral lands along the Rio Grande, into the Panhandle, and to Carrizo Canyon in Colorado. 5. He says his family history includes his father, a deaf South Texas ranch cowboy, and his mother from a large migrant family of 13 children. 6. He explains that he started recording family questions after high school and later found that the stories he tried to discredit were true. 7. He describes how Carrizo became Zapata in 1920 and links that renaming to Antonio Zapata, the Republic of the Rio Grande, and documented warriors from his people. 8. He argues that Spanish names, settler politics, and colonial law changed the landscape while hiding Native presence in Texas. 9. He says sacred sites were misnamed or destroyed, naming Devil’s River, Devil’s Watering Hole, and places along the Rio Grande as examples. 10. He describes Garcia Pasture as a 32-village site surveyed in the 1920s by A. T. S. Anderson, who he says looted artifacts and sold them to museums. 11. He says one museum at one time held about 120 infant remains, and he connects that history to his anger about the treatment of Native ancestors. 12. He says the battleground has shifted from “the bullets and the guns and the bows and arrows” to courtrooms in the United States and worldwide. 13. He says the real critical infrastructure is “the water, the air, and the land,” not oil wells, LNG terminals, petrochemical plants, or pipelines. 14. He says the no-protest law in Texas, the waiving of environmental laws, and the waiving of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act created a dangerous situation. 15. He describes the teachings of his community as something that cannot be carried by DNA alone, saying that language, stories, and place names are what preserve nationhood. 16. He names the documentary Teaching of the Hands, says he narrated it, and uses it to explain that hands hold a science and a mathematical sequence. 17. He describes the episode’s tone as extended, conversational, and intense, with Jessica Iacuinto letting him keep speaking across two breaks. 18. He also uses repeated refrains such as “change the narrative” and “the land owns us,” which shape the episode’s rhythm and argument. 19. Listeners interested in Indigenous land defense, South Texas history, and sacred-site protection will find this episode useful. 20. Listeners wanting a short, non-argumentative survey of Texas history may skip it.

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