All posts by lathamke

Travel Day: Back to Indiana

Snapshots

The Team woke up early and ate a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby before packing up the van to head to the airport in San Antonio. With the added weight of some deer antlers and cow bones, the van felt more crowded than our trip down to Falfurrias.

The team walking through a parking lot with a sunrise in the distance
Sunrise in Falfurrias, TX

We visited the Alamo and the Riverwalk before going to the airport. I like to take the team to the Alamo because it’s a lesson in perspective. As a Texan I learned about the Alamo as a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. It is elevated as a shrine to courage and bravery. In school we learned the names and actions of the American and Tejano defenders who fought and died for Texas independence. This trip is about exploring events from different perspectives and points of view. If we look at the Alamo from the Mexican perspective we see that this Mexican territory was populated mostly by US citizens that were not there legally. The US policy of Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century American belief that the US was divinely ordained to expand its territory and spread democracy, capitalism, and American values) fueled land acquisition across North America. Additionally, Mexico had just abolished slavery and many Texans were slave holders. On one side of the coin the Mexican forces believe strongly that they were stopping undocumented immigrants from a rebellion aimed at taking Mexican land versus the other side of the coin where you have Texan forces who believe strongly they were fighting for liberty and against tyranny.

Students members of the Beyond Borders Team at the Alamo
Beyond Borders Team Members at The Alamo
Students reading about the archaeology projects at the Alamo
Beyond Borders Team Members Reading about Archaeology Projects at The Alamo

Spending a few hours on The San Antonio Riverwalk acts as a way for team members to decompress before heading home. The team is exposed to intense physical work and heavy emotional topics consistently for a week. Many of them have not experienced anything like this before and I like to spend some time talking to them about how they are feeling and what they have learned before they head home.

Beyond Borders Team Members at the San Antonio River Walk
San Antonio Riverwalk
Beyond Borders Team Members at the San Antonio River Walk
Student members of the Beyond Borders Team at the Riverwalk
Beyond Borders Team Members at the San Antonio River Walk
Dr. Latham and Dr. Eriksen at the Riverwalk

The Team made it back to Indiana late last night. Thank you for following our work over the last week. We will continue to add posts over the next week with more information about the trip and reflections about our time there. Thank you!

~KEL

Beyond Borders Team Members at the airport
San Antonio Airport

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

General, Human Rights, Migrant Death, Reflections

As I prepare to return to Brooks County for a 14th year of volunteer humanitarian forensic science in the Texas borderlands I find myself pausing as I write. I’ve never been short on words as this work is deeply meaningful to me both in the practical purpose we serve and in the educational opportunities it provides to students. Our main goal is to assist in identification efforts for individuals who have perished while crossing our southern border. I believe strongly that everyone deserves the dignity in death of a name.  What started as a one year trip has now lasted 14 years demonstrating the extent of the need for forensic specialists at our southern border. In regards to educational experiences, my goal is to provide students with an experience that elicits empathy and understanding in a way that no book could ever do.  I began this work thinking we would quickly be irrelevant in this context because I was hopeful things would change. Whether that be a change in policy, a change in funding or a change in perspective. I fear my loss of words is because I’ve said much of this before and nothing has changed.

Team members search in the brush

My daughter is obsessed with the Wicked movies. My first introduction to them is recent, even though I know the story has been around for a awhile. I grew up with the Wizard of Oz. We would look forward to the time it was played once a year on tv, and it would be an event in our household. We would cheer for Glenda the good witch and for all the bad things that happened to the wicked witches of the east and west. We knew the wizard would end up being a fraud, but Glinda was good and the other witches were not. Wicked really challenged my childhood beliefs and showed me that the popular narrative is not always the truth. The man behind the curtain has more power in controlling the story than I originally thought. The truth is often a much more complicated web of rights, wrongs, goods and evils all woven together to form the fabric of the person or issue at hand. The fibers glisten with meaning based on motivation and perspective. To further complicate things, what is considered right and good by one is considered wrong and evil by another. This is the story of the border. Everyone in the US has thoughts and opinions about the border, but the more time you spend there the more you realize it is not that simple. That is why the issues remain.

Team members searching in the brush

This year the Beyond Borders Team will work with our colleagues from Remote Wildlands Search and Recovery. We will also be joined by South Texas Mounted Search and Rescue and UIndy alum Dr. Reed McKinney, DDS (a dentistry practitioner in Fort Sam Houston, TX). We will be revisiting areas where partial human skeletal remains were recovered with the hopes of locating more of the individuals that can be returned to their families. We will also be searching new areas that have GPS coordinates of missing persons in the hope of locating them. It’s physically demanding and emotionally heavy work. We have a wonderful group of people coming together for the same goal: to find those that have gone missing, provide them with a name and return them to their families.

We invite you to check in each day to follow our work. Thank you for your support!
~KEL

The Helpers

Community, Human Rights, Migrant Death, Reflections

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ― Fred Rogers

This quote is commonly shared after tragic events like natural disasters to emphasize finding the good in every situation.  Helpers are the ones that run into danger, fully aware of the potential risks as well as what needs to be done to provide aid and assistance.  Helpers are the ones who extend kindness, calm fears and treat those in need with empathy and without judgement. Helpers often occupy a space where they witness pain and suffering, but they continue to aid because the heart of a helper is focused on acts of kindness over all else. As I reflect upon our time in the Texas Borderlands this year, I want to focus on the helpers. We have met many people that volunteer their time to aid in various capacities at the border out of a sense of responsibility and not for personal gain. This year we spent our time working with Deputy Don White and Paramedic Ray Gregory of Remote Wildlands Search and Recovery, who volunteer their time and resources year-round for search, rescue and recovery operations in Brooks County.

Deputy White and Paramedic Gregory in the Texas brush
Deputy Don White and Paramedic Ray Gregory talking during one of our breaks in the field

I enjoy our time talking with Don and Ray, learning more about them and hearing the stories of work they have done during the rest of the year. Don told us stories about the crosses he’s placed at recovery sites at the request of grieving families and the people he’s rescued and kept in touch with over the years.  Ray told us he does this work because everyone deserves to be found. He says he does this because he would hope someone would do it for him or his family if they were in a similar situation.  They have invested a lot into this work over the years, both financially and emotionally.  They have stories of time away from paid work, specialized equipment they personally purchased, injuries they suffered in the field, and traumatic stories from survivors and of the things they have witnessed. But they also have stories about saving lives and bringing answers to grieving families. They are the helpers who run into the brush when everyone else is trying to get out of it.

The helpers we’ve met at the border are a diverse group of people that range in age, experiences, educational and technical backgrounds, beliefs and political affiliations but they all come together to provide aide.  It demonstrates how the things we consider to be our differences don’t define us when faced with the harsh realities of the border where people are trafficked, assaulted, robbed, bribed and left for dead. It’s easy to ignore the situation when you haven’t heard the stories, looked in the eyes of parents fearful for the life of their children, translated desperate 911 calls for help, walked the clandestine paths through the brush or searched for the bodies of those that went missing. Once you experience this aspect of the border you never forget it and the helpers return again and again knowing the things they will see and the conditions they will face.

Our trip to Brooks County was successful in that we searched over 15 miles of clandestine wildlands and performed one recovery of an individual that will now begin the process of identification.  We were able to learn new techniques from Don and Ray regarding search and recovery work in this environment as well as strategies for our own personal safety here.  The trip was also successful in student growth. They honed their forensic skills, tried new things, met new people and got to experience a situation that challenged their assumptions and preconceived notions of the border.  Thank you for reading and following our journey. The groups you read about this year are all volunteer. You can support them here if you feel inspired to do so.

Remote Wildlands Search and Recovery

Beyond Borders

The 2025 Beyond Borders Team atthe start of day 2
The 2025 UIndy Beyond Borders Team (with Socks)

~KEL