The Texas Band of the Kickapoo and Human Rights Violations

            The part of Megan Austin’s article “A Culture Divided by the United States-Mexico Border: The Tohono O’odham Claim for Border Crossing Rights” about the relationship between the United States and the Texas Band of the Kickapoo emphasizes the societal otherization and subhuman status of American Indians and the concept of human rights in the context of that otherized, subhuman status.  Austin describes the situation of the negotiation of rights and recognition between the Texas Band of the Kickapoo and the United States government.  She identifies the pressures put on them by water shortages, water rights, and conflicts related to water and, at the height of those pressures, their quality of life as a result of those conditions as of the early-mid 1980s when they were forced to live under a bridge sharing a single water fountain.  Once conditions became this severe for this group of people, Congress chose to intervene by passing the Texas Band of Kickapoo Act in 1983 in an attempt to provide explicit recognition and ease the strain put upon them.  The effectiveness of this act may be called into question as it proved to be impractical for the Kickapoo and to do little to improve their quality of life in the following years.  However, even more upsetting than the lack of effectiveness, is the threshold of condition necessary to elicit a governmental response from the United States.  When individuals are repeatedly denied access to something necessary for life to the point that they can no longer sustain a certain quality of life, the enforcing action or lack of action that leads to that state should be classified as a human rights violation.  However, as there is some subjectivity in the concept of quality of life, it has potential to reveal racist ideology through the societal otherization and subhuman status of groups of people.

            In her article, Austin reaches the conclusion that the current state of the United States-Mexico border in relation to the Tohono O’odham is fundamentally a human rights violation.  However, as exemplified by the responses and lack of responses by the United States government in regard to the effects of the border on the O’odham people and the O’odham nation, the current situation is not viewed as being a human rights violation by the United States government.  In the eyes of the U.S. government, the Kickapoo experience represents human rights violations and thus constituted intervention and significant policy change.  This situation begs the question of what quality of life the government is obligated to support and facilitate, therefore beginning to provide some understanding of what qualifies as a human rights violation universally.  It might be a little extreme to call this situation an example of blatant discrimination and oppression based on race and ethnicity, but there does seem to exist in governmental action regarding human rights some degree of difference in the definition of human rights and the quality of life attempting to provide and uphold that falls along racial or ethnic line, reflecting discriminatory ideology that leaves certain groups of people denied of their own personhood.