For Star subscribers: The planned transfer of 10 Tucson acres to the Tohono O'odham Nation is a profound move. It also leaves residents' questions about casinos unanswered and cuts them out of planning.
Tim Steller At the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association's monthly meeting, an attendee delicately brought up a question that many people have pondered over the last month.
This is the underlying tension in the city's plan to transfer the historically important acreage to the Tohono O'odham Nation. As conceived, it is part of the"land back" movement — returning lands to indigenous people for them to manage. But that also means that the city government is asking residents to set aside any concerns they may have about the outcome.
Bear and Niki Ballesteros, working outside on the cool, cloudy evening, told me they hope that when the land is transferred, it will stay natural, and they doubted the tribe would try to build a casino there.Sovereign tribal landThe property in question is historically crucial to local history. There are archeological sites dating back 4,500 years, burial sites and the sites of old structures from the mission days in the 1700s and 1800s.
It's a similar process to the one the Tohono O'odham Nation used to put a new casino in Glendale, and the Pascua Yaqui tribe followed to build a casino near West Grant Road and I-10. The Tohono O'odham Nation argued everything they did was legal and that the real conflict was over the different tribes' shares of the lucrative Phoenix market.
"I always felt that in the city of Tucson we don’t honor and revere our indigenous people, the people who made this city possible," Santa Cruz said."This move by the mayor and council to return land back to the Tohono O’odham Nation is honoring Tucson’s indigenous legacy, that we are still here, and that these lands are still sacred."
"In short, gifting the land to the TO has not been a part of the neighborhood plan, or openly considered in formulating the plan." Within the neighborhood, there might be more opposition to the transfer idea if action on this land hadn't been stalled for so long. When voters approved the Rio Nuevo plan in 1998, the idea was that it would become a Tucson Origins Heritage Park.
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