I do not think that the Tohono O’odham have been adequately compensated for their losses. I think the main question you pose of “what is fair” is the key to this question. When you take someone’s land and force them to adapt to a new way of life and take advantage of their struggles as a society, this is not fair. I guess this goes more towards an ethical standpoint because “legally” everything that happened was permitted. I think you have to look at who created these laws though to fully understand how unfair it really is to the Native American people who were on that land long before we came. We created laws that were friendly to expansion and enforced our laws and rules without taking into account their laws and rules. We just always assume ours are right and just.
I do feel that we have tried to make up for some of the mistreatment that has happened by giving back land to them and the formation of reservations. Again someone came in behind and tried to take advantage of water rights and telling them that they have rights but know that they do not have the funds to fully take advantage or use these rights. Now we are acting like we are helping by signing a water right agreement, which says we will help you out, by giving you water but in return you have to waive all future water rights and claims and related damages. Again taking advantage of a situation, in the end, we are the ones who come out ahead in that deal.
I like how you talked about how “we” only view our laws as right and only permit rights based on that. It’s a challenging outlook on who can be considered right between two communities. Obviously most people would agree with this situation that we kind of screwed over the Tohono O’odham, but what about other moments in history were we believed we were right and in an ethical view we weren’t? I never believe it’s safe to assume we are 100% in these situations.
I really liked the way you approached this question. “What is fair” is really the key like you said. I agree that they were not compensated for their losses for a list of reasons. You took it is a different approach than I did and I like what you had to say because in the end it looks like they are getting the upper hand. In reality they are not getting it, they really aren’t getting compensated equally. Great post