By Tanya H. Lee | Indian Country Today Media Network
(Editor’s note: Opinion pieces are published for discussions purposes only.)
While Canada moves toward reconciliation with First Nations peoples, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that would break yet one more promise to yet one more American Indian tribe.
Sen. John McCain and Rep. Trent Franks, both Arizona Republicans, have introduced Keep the Promises Act of 2015, that would invalidate the terms of a decades-old federal land agreement with the Tohono O’odham Nation.
The settlement – which was passed by Congress and became law in 1986 – compensated the tribe after the Painted Rock Dam, built by the Army Corps of Engineers on the Gila River, caused flooding in the 1970s and early 1980s, ruining 10,000 acres of the tribe’s agricultural land and forcing residents to relocate to a 40-acre village.
