In Far West Texas, a Sacred Burial Site is Reclaimed Through Partnership and Perseverance

The cemetery, a mound partly surrounded by houses, is a sacred site for the Lipan Apache Tribe. But Hernandez and her family would often arrive to find the site littered with trash—bottles, cans, paper, and other garbage—and covered in dirt bike tracks. The sacred, or “sentinel,” rocks that are placed on graves to provide spiritual and physical protection were sometimes stolen, taken to be used in landscaping. 

“My dad and I were taking a big lawn bag of trash every other week,” says Hernandez, a member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. “From an outside view, the land is dotted with piles of rocks. I don’t think anyone understood what it was.” 

Presidio lies in a region historically known as La Junta de los Ríos, for the joining of the Río Conchos and the Río Grande. The Lipan Apache began settling there in the 1790s, under a peace agreement when the area was under Spanish colonial rule. Tribal elders and decedents’ accounts recall that the original burial site for their ancestors was eight to ten times bigger, and it remained undisturbed until the 1970s. Then, urban development and parcelization divided it into narrow lots and houses that were built on top of remains. The plot was also turned over to the city and Presidio County. 

Despite their historical connection to the site, without a deed to the land the Lipan Apache Tribe was limited in what it could do to protect it. Elders and others organized for decades to preserve what they could of the site and to advocate for its return to Indigenous ownership.  

Building on these efforts, in 2021 the Big Bend Conservation Alliance (BBCA) helped to negotiate the formal transfer of ownership back to the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. This reclamation or landback was the first in the state of Texas and “a significant political act,” remembers Oscar Rodriguez, descendent and BBCA board member. 

“The burial site pre-dated the arrival of the Lipans in the late-1700s. Indeed, there are Lipans buried there, including my ancestors, but there are also non-Lipans buried there who are also my ancestors,” Rodriguez says. “The land being donated to the Lipan Apache Tribe is a reflection—not a driver—of local Indigenous identity re-awakening.” 

With the transfer complete, protection of the site could be considered in earnest and led by Indigenous stewards.   

Honoring the site’s importance to many people, the Lipan Apache Tribe convened a cemetery committee that was made up of a broad coalition of Native people from the region, as well as family decedents of those who rest in the cemetery. The committee, with BBCA, and the MASS Design Group, a mission-driven design and architecture organization with a design lab and team in Santa Fe, New Mexico, set out to create a culturally informed approach to how the cemetery might be protected. 

The result: a protected Cementerio Del Barrio de los Lipanes, or the Cemetery of the Lipan Neighborhood, was recently completed and opened to the public in March 2024 

“The ultimate goal of the project was to say we’re still here. Not so much focusing on the remains of the cemetery, but to focus on life,” says Hernandez. “This is our history. These are our ancestors. We’re still here and we still care.”  

Cementerio Del Barrio de los Lipanes is an open site, an outcome informed by many voices. 

Early designs to fence it in to protect the mounds were scrapped—for historical, cultural, and other reasons. Beyond the mounds recognized by Lipan Apache descendants, Hernandez says there are other Indigenous burial sites in and around the area. Exclusion of graves outside the lines of the site was inconsistent with how Native people consider their ancestors moving through the afterlife.  

Further, a barrier that closed off the site would inhibit public understanding that Native people live in the region today. A closed site, while protected, would be a lost opportunity to educate about the humanity of the people connected to the space.     

“The people who were in that mound were viewed as archaic people, detached from today,” Rodriguez said in a 2023 discussion. “What would keep people from desecrating the area was not going to be a fence; it was going to be the recognition that the Lipan Apache community existed in the first place.” 

MASS Design Group and the team from MASS’s Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab led a series of workshops with community members to explore how best to protect the site. Mayrah Udvardi, the project architect and director at MASS Design Group, says the main values that emerged from those visioning sessions were the idea of returning, including returning land, protection, and respect. 

One of the key features of the final design are gabion walls, wire structures that are filled with stones. Because of the landmark designation, construction couldn’t dig on the site, which meant not using fence posts or disturbing the ground. But gabion walls don’t need footings and can be adapted for the mound’s various slopes. The stones also connect back to the idea of the sacred sentinel stone, says Udvardi.  

“What we really wanted to do with the geometry of the cemetery was to suggest that there was something that had existed and still exists beyond this line in the sand. That through this more porous array of gabion walls there was something that could grow and return back to the original extents of the burial mound over time,” she says.  

The protected site also contains interpretation and a Texas State historical marker—the first Indigenous-authored designation in the state. 

As visitors enter, they’re invited to place a sentinel stone on a grave. The cemetery path meanders intentionally, says Udvardi, diverging in multiple places to accommodate the graves. 

The site now also has an area for the repatriation of remains the community is getting back from local museums and universities.

“Repatriating remains takes years and many partners, including the willingness of institutions to return them back to us,” Hernandez says. “Returning remains to the ground is our most important work for our ancestors.” 

The project also included public programming to raise awareness about the site and surrounding area as well as Native culture and history. Though construction is done, the broader programming will continue, including on Indigenous knowledge such as pottery, weaving, and food sovereignty.  

In Rodriguez’s view, the project has now come full circle. The cemetery is an artifact of past, present, and future. 

“After a period of silence and retreat, which led to the loss of most of the old cemetery, things returned where they were when the Lipan settled in the area,” says Rodriguez, who will continue to “play the role of an elder reminding the newer generations of their obligations to defend the site and not let it deteriorate.” 

Hernandez is also expanding on this work through a nonprofit she founded, People of La Junta for Preservation. The Native-led group is working to advance regional cultural knowledge while restoring and conserving sacred lands. They recently received a land donation in El Polvo, a historic town in what’s now known as Redford, along the banks of the Rio Grande.  

“The community is really coming together around Native stewardship, through continued engagement from city, county, and state officials,” says Hernandez.  

She adds that reclaiming the cemetery has changed community sentiment too. 

“We have this sense of dignity that was reestablished for families and the community, but also for the land itself,” Hernandez says. “It’s important for [people] to see that there were these individuals who have lived in this community for millennia and have left their legacy.”