In the center of northern New Mexico, the hulk of a huge dormant volcano rises above the Rio Grande Valley. This volcano formed the Jemez Mountains, one of the most sacred and beloved landscapes of the Southwest. The National Park Service manages the center, or caldera, of the old volcano but one of many local Pueblo communities has contested federal ownership for the last eight years. The Jemez Pueblo lawsuit has been hanging over the Preserve for years.
The Valles Caldera National Preserve protects most of the center of the Jemez Volcano in the middle of northern New Mexico. The Preserve is surrounded by nine nearby Pueblos. The Apache and Navajo nations lie to the north and west. One of those Pueblos, Jemez Pueblo, has been in court for 8 years attempting to claim the Valles Caldera as their own property. The Valles Caldera is federal public land.
The Pueblo people were hunting, farming, living and gathering in our region for thousands of years. The Apache and Navajo moved into the area not too long before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s. Native people lived in many villages all over northern New Mexico. Most of those villages are abandoned now. We can only imagine the stories and the interactions among the various groups over hundreds of years.
Just before Congress transferred management of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service in 2014, Jemez Pueblo sued the federal government. They claimed that the land encompassed by the Valles Caldera is their “aboriginal land” and that they never gave up their claim to the land. They asked the court to grant the land to the Pueblo.
The federal court denied their claim in 2013. The Pueblo appealed to the Federal District Court again and were denied again in 2019. Failing to get the entire Valles Caldera National Preserve, Jemez Pueblo appealed and asked to have four areas within the VCNP granted to them as aboriginal property. In late August 2020 the court denied their claim again.
Jemez Pueblo’s first asked the US District Court to grant their “aboriginal claim” to the land. The court dismissed their lawsuit, pointing out that the Pueblos of Santa Ana, Zia, and Jemez had been paid roughly $750,000 compensation for land including what is now the Valles Caldera in 1974. This payment extinguished the Pueblo’s claim to the land, the court ruled.
The court also pointed out that various sales of the land, land grants by the American government, homesteads, establishments of national forest, and other real estate actions had not been contested by Jemez Pueblo over many years.
In 2018 Jemez Pueblo returned to court and argued that it had “aboriginal title” to the Valles Caldera that gives it rights to this property from ancient times. The federal courts have ruled that a tribe must establish aboriginal title by proving “immemorial occupancy . . . to the exclusion of other Indians.” The Pueblo argued first that they were the exclusive user of the entire Valles Caldera for hundreds of years. When this claim was denied in 2019 they tried to establish that they were the exclusive native users of 4 sub areas of the Valles Caldera. This claim was rejected by the same court late last month. The proceedings were closed to the public because of sensitive, specific cultural practices discussed.
In general, the court ruled that the Pueblo could not claim a subset of the Valles Caldera if they did not have a valid aboriginal claim to the whole of the Valles Caldera. In the process, the court examined in detail the history and prehistory of various tribes use of the Valles Caldera area, their interactions with one another, and the archeological record proving use. They took testimony from many Native people. The decision stands as a fascinating history of the Valles Caldera. Read the decision here.
The court ruled: “Aboriginal title, or original Indian title, refers to American Indian land occupancy rights premised on exclusive use and occupancy of a particular territory at the time of first European contact, and to an entitlement arising subsequent to such contact under the governing European sovereign’s laws, which are derived largely from international law concepts that prevailed before the American Revolution…”
(The judge concluded that Zia Pueblo was the earliest user of the upper Jemez Mountains. Zia Pueblo and Jemez Pueblo are close neighbors but speak different languages and have divergent histories since the arrival of the Spanish.)
Jemez Pueblo had appealed that since they could not be granted the whole of the VCNP, they wanted to claim Valle San Antonio, Banco Bonito, Redondo Meadows, and Redondo Peak. Since the court rejected these claims, we don’t know if the Pueblo will appeal.
Congress acknowledged Jemez Pueblo and other Pueblos interest in specific places in the VCNP when the Preserve was transferred to the National Park Service in 2015. Congress asked the NPS to protect specific sacred sites from road building and to discourage the general public from visiting sacred places, especially when those areas are in tribal ceremonial use. Given that Native Americans share ownership of public lands in the US with other Americans, tribal members have full access to the VCNP for ceremonial and other uses.
The Pueblo of Santa Clara asked the US Congress to allow them to purchase the upper watershed of Santa Clara Canyon when the Baca Land Grant was purchased from the Dunnigans in 2000. Jemez Pueblo did not ask to purchase any land at that time.
