Tribes closer to land repatriation after Valles Caldera ruling

During campaign stops in South Dakota and in the Apsáalooke or Crow Nation in 2008 then-Senator Barack Obama gave Indigenous Americans a ray of hope on the outcome of the centuries-long legal battle over the theft of some 48 million acres of their homeland. During the battle for Bears Ears Republicans nearly trumped the Obama-Biden administration’s efforts.

Jemez Pueblo considers the nearly 140-square-mile Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico a spiritual sanctuary and part of its traditional homeland so the tribe sued in 2012 and appealed in 2014. Lawyers presented oral histories as proof of the tribe's claim to the parcel but a federal district judge dismissed them under the so-called "hearsay rule." 

Indigenous history in the caldera goes back at least 8,000 years and obsidian quarried there for knives and projectile points is found throughout the region. The ancestors of Jemez Pueblo or Walatowa migrated into the area in the late 13th Century after Mesa Verde was laid bare. 

In 2019 the case went to the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals and in 2020 Native Americans overwhelmingly turned out to vote for Joe Biden. Former New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland is Secretary of the Department of Interior with oversight of the National Park Service and land repatriation as part of her wheelhouse. 

Robert Hershey is professor emeritus with the University of Arizona's Indigenous Law and Policy Program.

Hershey said there is a "prejudice" in non-Native society that casts oral histories as less credible than testimony provided by non-Native anthropologists, ethnographers and historians. "You can't divorce these stereotypes from the colonial structures, and by colonial structures I mean, for example, evidentiary rules that prevent the admission of a great amount of oral and traditional history in court," Hershey said.The land in question in the Jemez case was declared "vacant" and sold to a private owner by the federal government in 1860, an event Jemez leaders described as a "a culture shock" in court filings. The federal government re-acquired the land in 2000. [Law Scholars Argue For Admissibility of Indigenous Oral Histories As Land Claim Evidence]

On Wednesday Jemez Pueblo was granted title to a portion of the Preserve after the Court of Appeals issued a split ruling creating a precedent for other tribes seeking to regain rights to their traditional homelands. The National Park Service released a statement saying further litigation is likely.

ip image was captured at Valles Caldera National Preserve where some scenes from the teevee series Longmire were produced.