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AUGUST 17, 2000

A new bill proposed by Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.Mex) would transfer more than 10,000 acres of public and national forest lands to Santo Domingo Pueblo and pay them $23 million to settle their outstanding land claims.

Introduced in the Senate last month, the bill is the result of several years of negotiations between the Pueblo and the federal government over more than 50,000 acres of land in New Mexico. Some of the claims date back to early in the century and involve land from Spanish times.

The Pueblo, located in north-Central New Mexico, has three outstanding claims against the government. The bill would resolve all three.

One claim stems from legislation designed to resolve land disputes of New Mexico's 19 Pueblos. Under the Pueblo Lands Act of 1924, the government attempted to terminate the Pueblo's ownership of about 27,000 acres of land in 1927.

But in 1991, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government ignored the intent of Congress when it attempted to extinguish the Pueblo's land title.

A second claim concerns the Pueblo's rights to a 1748 Spanish land grant. The Pueblo still possesses the original deed to 25,000 acres of land of the grant, but when the United States assumed control of the Southwest after the Mexican-American War, the government did not confirm the Pueblo's land.

As a result, much of it the land has fallen into the hands of various federal agencies, the state, other tribes, and private landowners. The land is the subject of a lawsuit pending in New Mexico.

The final claim is pending in the US Court of Claims and is a hold-over case from the now-defunct Indian Claims Commission (ICC Docket No. 355). The Pueblo claims the government mismanaged and misappropriated their land.

Under the bill, $8 million would be paid to the tribe to settle the Court of Claims suit. An additional $15 million over 3 consecutive years would be paid to the tribe.

Part of the money would be used to buy land from the US Forest Service. Approximately 7,355 acres would be sold to the Pueblo for $3.7 million.

In addition, approximately 4,577 acres of Bureau of Land Management land would be transferred to the Pueblo.

Get the Bill:
A bill to settle the land claims of the Pueblo of Santo Domingo (S.2917 July 2000)

Relevant Links:
Senator Pete Domenici - www.senate.gov/~domenici
Indian Land Areas Judicially Established 1978, from cases before the Indian Claims Commission - www.wes.army.mil/el/ccspt/natamap/tx_poly.html