Native Americans
Native Americans in Upper Midwest protect their drumming tradition
At summertime social powwows and spiritual ceremonies throughout the Upper Midwest, Native Americans are gathering around singers seated at big, resonant drums to dance, celebrate and connect with their ancestral culture.
"I grew up singing my entire life, and I was always taught that dewe'igan is the heartbeat of our people," said Jakob Wilson, 19, using the Ojibwe term for drum that's rooted in the words for heart and sound. "The absolute power and feeling that comes off of the drum and the singers around it is incredible."
Wilson has led the drum group at Hinckley-Finlayson High School. In 2023, Wilson's senior year, they were invited to drum and sing at graduation. But this year, when his younger sister Kaiya graduated, the school board barred them from performing at the ceremony, creating dismay across Native communities far beyond this tiny town where cornfields give way to northern Minnesota's birch and fir forests.
"It kind of shuts us down, makes us step back instead of going forward. It was hurtful," said Lesley Shabaiash. She was participating in the weekly drum and dance session at the Minneapolis American Indian Center a few weeks after attending protests in Hinckley.
"Hopefully this incident doesn't stop us from doing our spiritual things," added the mother of four, who grew up in the Twin Cities but identifies with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose tribal lands abut Hinckley.
In written statements, the school district's superintendent said the decision to ban "all extracurricular groups" from the ceremony, while making other times and places for performance available, was intended to prevent disruptions and avoid "legal risk if members of the community feel the District is endorsing a religious group as part of the graduation ceremony."
But many Native families felt the ban showed how little their culture and spirituality is understood. It also brought back traumatic memories of their being forcibly suppressed, not only at boarding schools like the one the Wilsons' grandmother attended, but more generally from public spaces.
It was not until the late 1970s that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act directed government agencies to make policy changes "to protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices."
"We had our language, culture and way of life taken away," said Memegwesi Sutherland, who went to high school in Hinckley and teaches the Ojibwe language at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
The Center's weekly drum and dance sessions help those who "may feel lost inside" without connections to ancestral ways of life find their way back, said Tony Frank, a drum instructor.
"Singing is a door opener to everything else we do," said Frank, who has been a singer for nearly three decades. "The reason we sing is from our heart. Our connection to the drum and songs is all spiritual. You give 100 percent, so the community can feel a piece of us."
In drum circles like those in Minneapolis, where many Natives are Ojibwe and Lakota, there is a lead singer, who starts each song before passing on the beat and verse to others seated at the drum, which is made of wood and animal hide (usually deer or steer).
A drum keeper or carrier cares for the drum, often revered as having its own spirit and considered like a relative and not like personal property. Keepers and singers are usually male; according to one tradition, that's because women can already connect to a second heartbeat when pregnant.
These lifelong positions are often passed down in families. Similarly, traditional lyrics or melodies are learned from older generations, while others are gifted in dreams to medicine men, several singers said. Some songs have no words, only vocables meant to convey feelings or emulate nature.
Songs and drums at the center of social events like powwows are different from those that are crucial instruments in spiritual ceremonies, for example for healing, and that often contain invocations to the Creator, said Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe language and culture professor at Bemidji State University.
Meant to mark the beginning of a new journey in life, the "traveling song" that the drum group wanted to sing at the Hinckley graduation includes the verse "when you no longer can walk, that is when I will carry you," said Jakob Wilson.
That's why it was meant for the entire graduating class of about 70 students, not only the 21 Native seniors, added Kaiya Wilson, who trained as a back-up singer – and why relegating it to just another extracurricular activity hurt so deeply.
"This isn't just for fun, this is our culture," said Tim Taggart, who works at the Meshakwad Community Center – named after a local drum carrier born in the early 20th century – and helped organize the packed powwow held in the school's parking lot after graduation. "To just be culturally accepted, right? That's all everybody wants, just to be accepted."
The school had taken good steps in recent years, like founding the Native American Student Association, and many in the broader Hinckley community turned out to support Native students. So Taggart is optimistic that after this painful setback, bridges will be rebuilt.
And the drum, with all that it signifies about community and a connected way of life, will be brought back.
"Nothing can function without that heartbeat," said Taggart, whose earliest memory of the drum is being held as a toddler at a ceremony. "It's not just hearing the drums, but you're feeling it throughout your entire body, and that just connects you more with the spirit connection, more with God."
As dancers – from toddlers to adults in traditional shawls – circled the floor to the drum's beat in the Minneapolis center's gym, Cheryl Secola, program director for its Culture Language Arts Network, said it was heartwarming to see families bring children week after week, building connections even if they might not have enough resources to travel to the reservations.
On reservations too, many youths aren't being raised in cultural ways like singing, said Isabella Stensrud-Eubanks, 16, a junior and back-up singer on the Hinckley high school drum group.
"It's sad to say, but our culture is slowly dying out," she said, adding that several elders reached out to her and the Wilsons after the graduation controversy to teach them more, so the youth can themselves one day teach their traditions.
Mark Erickson was already about 20 when he went back to Red Lake, his father's band in northern Minnesota, to learn his people's songs.
"It's taken me a lifetime to learn and speak the language, and a lifetime to learn the songs," said Erickson, who only in his late 60s was awarded the distinction of culture carrier for Anishinaabe songs, a term for Ojibwe and other Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.
Believing that songs and drums are gifts from the Creator, he has been going to drum and dance sessions at the Minneapolis Center for more than a decade to share them, and the notions of honor and respect they carry.
"When you're out there dancing, you tend to forget your day-to-day struggles and get some relief, some joy and happiness," Erickson said.
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High winds force Biden to cancel event announcing two new national monuments
Dangerously high winds forced U.S. President Joe Biden to cancel a trip Tuesday to the Eastern Coachella Valley, where he was to announce the creation of two new national monuments in California that will honor Native American tribes.
Winds began gaining strength across Southern California as forecasters warned of "life-threatening, destructive" gusts. The president was in his limousine ready to leave Los Angeles when the event was canceled. The White House initially said Biden would speak in Los Angeles but later announced the event would be rescheduled at the White House next week at a time when others could attend.
The National Weather Service said it could be the strongest Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade and it will peak in the early hours of Wednesday, when gusts could reach 129 kilometers per hour. Isolated gusts could top 160 kph in mountains and foothills.
Biden's announcement was part of his administration's effort to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 through his "America the Beautiful" initiative. But the cancellation of the trip was also a stark reminder of another administration priority: climate change and the increasing effects of extreme weather.
The proclamations name the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sattitla National Monument in Northern California. The declarations bar drilling and mining and other development on the 2,400-square-kilometer Chuckwalla site and roughly 800 square kilometers near the Oregon border in Northern California.
The new monuments protect clean water for communities, honor areas of cultural significance to tribal nations and Indigenous peoples and enhance access to nature, the White House said.
Biden, who has two weeks left in office, announced Monday he will ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, including in California and other West Coast states. The plan is intended to block possible efforts by the incoming Trump administration to expand offshore drilling.
The flurry of activity has been in line with the Democratic president's "America the Beautiful" initiative launched in 2021, aimed at honoring tribal heritage, meeting federal goals to conserve 30% of public lands and waters by 2030 and addressing climate change.
The Pit River Tribe has worked to get the federal government to designate the Sattitla National Monument. The area is a spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc Tribes and encompasses mountain woodlands and meadows that are home to rare flowers and wildlife.
Several Native American tribes and environmental groups began pushing Biden to designate the Chuckwalla National Monument, named after the large desert lizard, in early 2023. The monument would protect public lands south of Joshua Tree National Park, spanning the Coachella Valley region in the west to near the Colorado River.
Advocates say the monument will protect a tribal cultural landscape, ensure access to nature for residents and preserve military history sites.
"The designation of the Chuckwalla and Sattitla National Monuments in California marks an historic step toward protecting lands of profound cultural, ecological and historical significance for all Americans," said Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.
The new monuments "honor the enduring stewardship of Tribal Nations and the tireless efforts of local communities and conservation advocates who fought to safeguard these irreplaceable landscapes for future generations,'' Hauser said.
Senator Alex Padilla of California called the new monuments a major victory that will safeguard the state's public lands for generations to come.
Designation of the Chuckwalla monument "accelerates our state's crucial efforts to fight the climate crisis, protect our iconic wildlife, preserve sacred tribal sites and promote clean energy," Padilla said. The new Sattitla monument, meanwhile, ensures that land that has "long served as the spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc Nation" will "endure for generations to come," Padilla said.
The Chuckwalla monument is intended to honor tribal sovereignty by including local tribes as co-stewards, following in the footsteps of a recent wave of monuments such as the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, which is overseen in conjunction with five tribal nations.
"The protection of the Chuckwalla National Monument brings the Quechan people an overwhelming sense of peace and joy," the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe said in a statement. "Tribes being reunited as stewards of this landscape is only the beginning of much-needed healing and restoration, and we are eager to fully rebuild our relationship to this place."
In May, the Biden administration expanded two national monuments in California — the San Gabriel Mountains in the south and Berryessa Snow Mountain in the north. In October, Biden designated the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary along the coast of central California, which will include input from the local Chumash tribes in how the area is preserved.
Last year, the Yurok Tribe in Northern California also became the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed by the tribe, Redwood National and State Parks and the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League, which is conveying the land to the tribe.
Native American news: 2024 in review
The 2024 elections in the U.S. highlighted the growing impact of Native American voters, especially in swing states such as Arizona. Home to 22 tribes, Native voters played a key role in that state’s results.
Unfounded claims of voter fraud and election irregularities four years ago triggered a surge of restrictive voting laws across the United States for this year’s vote, raising concerns about potential harassment and intimidation of voters and poll workers.
Exit polls showed a shift in Native American support toward Republican Donald Trump, driven by economic concerns and alignment with his party’s traditional values.
Biden apologizes for federal boarding school system
During his October visit to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, President Joe Biden delivered a long-awaited official apology to Native Americans for the Indian boarding school system that severed the family, tribal and cultural ties of thousands of Indian children over multiple generations.
“I say this with all sincerity: This, to me, is one of the most consequential things I've ever had an opportunity to do in my whole career as president of the United States,” Biden said, calling it his “solemn responsibility.”
In a related story, the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in May launched the National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive, a public archive of information on boarding schools and students that includes documents, photographs and other ephemera.
Supreme Court: Feds must pay for tribal health care programs
In a landmark June decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Indian Health Service (IHS) must fully reimburse tribes for the administrative costs of running their own health care programs.
Chief Justice John Roberts explained that if the federal government’s position had prevailed — opposing payment of administrative costs — it would have created a “systemic funding shortfall” for tribes that chose to manage their own health care programs, thus imposing “a penalty for pursuing self-determination.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that the ruling could cost the government as much as $2 billion.
The 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act allows federally recognized tribes to contract with the Indian Health Service to operate their own health care programs, which IHS would otherwise manage. When a tribe opts for this arrangement, IHS provides the funds it would have used to run those programs.
Museums, institutions, under pressure to return Native remains
The Interior Department issued new regulations in 2024 to improve compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Passed in 1990, it calls on federally funded museums and other institutions to inventory and return to tribal communities all ancestral remains and funerary objects.
The new rules cut out a loophole that allowed institutions to hang onto “culturally unidentifiable” remains and give tribes a greater say in the process. Throughout the year, institutions have made some progress, but as ABC News reported in November, nearly 500 museums and federal agencies have so far failed to identify or make available for repatriation more than 90,000 remains and associated cultural objects.
South Dakota governor banned from nine Indian reservations
Since taking office in 2019, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has had a tense relationship with the nine tribes in her state. Tensions escalated in January when Noem accused Mexican drug cartels of operating on reservations and then later suggested that tribal leaders were “personally benefiting” from that drug trade.
Oglala Lakota tribal president, Frank Star Comes Out, who had earlier declared a state of emergency over drug use and violence on the Pine Ridge Reservation, accused Noem of being politically motivated and in February became the first of nine tribes to ban her from the reservation.
Land Back movement sees some wins
The Land Back movement, a push for the return of lands lost to colonization, grew in momentum in 2024, and several tribes regained control of land or ancestral territories.
Among the successes, the Yurok Tribe of coastal California signed a memorandum of understanding to co-manage with the National Park Service 50 hectares (125 acres) of land they lost after the California gold rush in the mid-19th century.
TheLeech Lake Band of Ojibwe reclaimed more than 4760 hectares (11,000 acres) of ancestral land that the federal government seized from them in the 1940s.
And in the largest ever return of Indigenous land, the nonprofit Trust for Public Land returned 12,545 hectares (31,000 acres) to the Penobscot Tribe in Maine, with no easements or restrictions on its use.
Birth of white buffalo viewed as a blessing and a warning
A rare white buffalo calf was born June 4 in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley, an event of profound cultural and spiritual significance for many Native American tribes.
According to Lakota tradition, White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared to the Lakota people during a time of great need, bringing them the sacred pipe and teachings of harmony, respect and gratitude for the Earth.
The pipe has been passed down for generations and is now held by Chief Arvol Looking Horse from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who explains the tradition in the video below:
Looking Horse presided over a ceremony in Yellowstone June 26, naming the calf Wakan Gli, (“Sacred Return”) and warning that the calf’s birth was both a fulfillment of prophecy and a warning for people to unite and protect the earth.
Wounded Knee anniversary renews push to revoke US Medals of Honor
Each year, the Sitanka Wokiksuye, or Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride, remembers the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre with a 14-day journey on horseback from the Cheyenne River Reservation to the site of that violence on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.
By the late 1880s, the Native American Lakota tribe was confined to reservations, their traditional ways of life forbidden, and the buffalo, critical to their survival, were decimated. Left to survive on inadequate U.S. government rations, the Lakota and many other tribes found hope in the Ghost Dance, a messianic movement that promised a return to their former way of life.
The U.S. Army interpreted the dance as a call to arms and sent the 7th Cavalry to suppress the dancing and arrest Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, who the U.S. government believed was orchestrating rebellion.
Sitting Bull was shot dead, and his half-brother, Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitanka, dubbed Big Foot, led his followers to consult with the Oglala leadership on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
The Army intercepted them and forced them to camp at Wounded Knee village; the next day, while confiscating weapons, a shot rang out, triggering the Army to open fire. By the end of the day, Big Foot and about 300 Lakota, including unarmed women, and children, lay dead. The event was celebrated as a victory for the U.S. Army, and the government awarded Medals of Honor to 20 cavalry soldiers for their actions.
This year, the Big Foot riders and their supporters hoped that President Joe Biden might revoke those medals.
Oliver “O.J.” Semans has spent years lobbying U.S. administrations to “take back honor wrongly bestowed.” The Sicangu Lakota voting rights advocate from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota lost many ancestors in that violence and said, “If Biden’s going to do anything, the best day would be December 29th” as that is the anniversary of the massacre.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Remove the Stain Act in 2019, calling on the Army to revoke those Medals of Honor. Despite some bipartisan support and backing from Native leaders and advocacy groups, the bill did not advance.
Administrative action
This July, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of medals of honor given for what he called the “engagement” at Wounded Knee to assess whether awardees violated the laws and military ethics of the era.
"It's never too late to do what's right," said an unnamed senior defense official quoted in the Pentagon press release that announced the decision. "And that's what is intended by the review that the secretary directed, which is to ensure that we go back and review each of these medals in a rigorous and individualized manner to understand the actions of the individual in the context of the overall engagement."
Austin directed a review panel of five members – three from the Department of Defense and two from the Interior Department -- to gather all relevant historical records and assess the actions of those soldiers based not on today’s standards but by those at the time.
"This is not a retrospective review," said another unnamed DoD official in the same Pentagon press release. "We're applying the standards at the time. And that's critical because we want to make sure that as these are reviewed and as a recommendation is made to the secretary and then to the president that we have applied the standards appropriately, while ensuring that we look at the context.”
The U.S. Army’s 1863 General Orders No. 100, also known as the “Lieber Code,” banned using excessive force, killing noncombatants, attacking during a ceasefire, and looting.
The Army held two sets of hearings on the matter in early 1891, interviewing officers and witnesses that included newspaper reporters, a surgeon and a Catholic priest.
“The Army was on the cusp of being a modern professional force, and so they at least made an effort to investigate allegations of crimes at Wounded Knee,” said Dwight S. Mears, author of “The Medal of Honor: The Evolution of America's Highest Military Decoration.”
In the end, the Army excused the cavalry’s actions as accidental and unintentional, and the U.S. Secretary of War recommended commendations.
“There was no political will to prosecute anybody, but they did collect a lot of evidence,” Mears said, “and if you sift through that with a critical eye, you can find a whole bunch of places where officers misrepresented themselves, which is a crime under oath.”
Three months after the massacre, the first Medal of Honor for Wounded Knee was awarded to an officer who, according to the medal citation “killed a hostile Indian at close quarters, and although entitled to retirement from service, remained to the close of the campaign.”
An award without guidelines
The U.S. Medal of Honor was created in 1863 to recognize acts of bravery, gallantry, and other distinguished actions in battle.
"But the Army didn't publish any standards for awarding it until 1889, so the commanding general of the Army just gave the medal out however he saw fit,” Mears explains.
In 1916, Congress directed the Army to review more than 2,600 medals and determine whether any had been issued “for any cause other than distinguished conduct by an officer or enlisted man in action involving actual conflict with an enemy.”
After an eight-month review, the Army struck more than 900 medals from the record. All of the Wounded Knee medals remained in place.
This year’s Wounded Knee review panel was given until October 15 to present its findings. By mid-November, Cheyenne River Sioux President Ryman LeBeau reported that the panel had voted three-to-two in favor of maintaining all medals awarded.
Semans believes that review was flawed from the start.
“Military historians weren’t used, and it was done over such a short period of time that evidence really couldn’t be put together,” he said.
Senator Warren and South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds asked the Interior and Defense departments to extend the review’s deadline to give stakeholders — including tribes, survivor descendants and historians a chance to weigh in.
"The devil is in the details,” Mears said. “If you don't know what actually happened at Wounded Knee, you might assume that every member of the 7th Cavalry, you know, just stood up and executed Lakota. And that is not what the record supports.”
To date, neither the Pentagon nor the White House has made any statement about the review panel’s findings.
“We have no additional updates to share at this time,” a Defense Department official told VOA.
What is the Native American Church and why is peyote sacred to members?
The Native American Church is considered the most widespread religious movement among the Indigenous people of North America. It holds sacred the peyote cactus, which grows naturally only in some parts of southern Texas and northern Mexico. Peyote has been used spiritually in ceremonies, and as a medicine by Native American people for millennia.
It contains several psychoactive compounds, primarily mescaline, which is a hallucinogen. Different tribes of peyote people have their own name for the cactus. While it is still a controlled substance, U.S. laws passed in 1978 and 1994 allow Native Americans to use, harvest and transport peyote. However, these laws only allow federally recognized Native American tribes to use the substance and don't apply to the broader group of Indigenous people in the United States.
The Native American Church developed into a distinct way of life around 1885 among the Kiowa and Comanche of Oklahoma. After 1891, it began to spread as far north as Canada. Now, more than 50 tribes and 400,000 people practice it. In general, the peyotist doctrine espouses belief in one supreme God who deals with humans through various spirits that then carry prayers to God. In many tribes, the peyote plant itself is a deity, personified as Peyote Spirit.
Why was the Native American Church incorporated?
The Native American Church is not one unified entity like, say, the Catholic Church. It contains a diversity of tribes, beliefs and practices. Peyote is what unifies them. After peyote was banned by U.S. government agents in 1888 and later by 15 states, Native American tribes began incorporating as individual Native American Churches in 1918.
In order to preserve the peyote ceremony, the federal and state governments encouraged Native American people to organize as a church, said Darrell Red Cloud, the great-great grandson of Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Nation and vice president of the Native American Church of North America.
In the following decades, the religion grew significantly, with several churches bringing Jesus Christ's name and image into the church so their congregations and worship would be accepted, said Steve Moore, who is non-Native and was formerly a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund.
"Local religious leaders in communities would see the image of Jesus, a Bible or cross on the wall of the meeting house or tipi and they would hear references to Jesus in the prayers or songs," he said. "That probably helped persuade the authorities that the Native people were in the process of transformation to Christianity."
This persecution of peyote people continued even after the formation of the Native American Church, said Frank Dayish Jr. a former Navajo Nation vice president and chairperson for the Council of the Peyote Way of Life Coalition.
In the 1960s, there were laws prohibiting peyote in the Navajo Nation, he said. Dayish remembers a time during that period when police confiscated peyote from his church, poured gasoline on the plants and set them on fire.
"I remember my dad and other relatives went over and saved the green peyote that didn't burn," he said, adding that it took decades of lobbying until an amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1994 permitted members of federally recognized Native American tribes to use peyote for religious purposes.
How is peyote used in the Native American Church?
Peyote is the central part of a ceremony that takes place in a tipi around a crescent-shaped earthen altar mound and a sacred fire. The ceremony typically lasts all night and includes prayer, singing, the sacramental eating of peyote, water rites and spiritual contemplation.
Morgan Tosee, a member of the Comanche Nation who leads ceremonies within the Comanche Native American Church, said peyote is utilized in the context of prayer — not smoked — as many tend to imagine.
"When we use it, we either eat it dry or grind it up," he said. "Sometimes, we make tea out of it. But, we don't drink it like regular tea. You pray with it and take little sips, like you would take medicine."
Tosee echoes the belief that pervades the church: "If you take care of the peyote, it will take care of you."
"And if you believe in it, it will heal you," he said, adding that he has seen the medicine work, healing people with various ailments.
People treat the trip to harvest peyote as a pilgrimage, said Red Cloud. Typically, prayers and ceremonies take place before the pilgrimage to seek blessings for a good journey. Once they get to the peyote gardens, they would touch the ground and thank the Creator before harvesting the medicine. The partaking of peyote is also accompanied by prayer and ceremony. The mescaline in the peyote plant is viewed as God's spirit, Red Cloud said.
"Once we eat it, the sacredness of the medicine is inside of us and it opens the spiritual eye," he said. "From there, we start to see where the medicine is growing. It shows itself to us. Once we complete the harvest, we bring it back home and have another ceremony to the medicine and give thanks to the Creator."
Native American tribe closer to acquiring more land in Arizona after decades of delay
Federal officials have joined with the state of Arizona to begin fulfilling a settlement agreement that was reached with the Hopi Tribe nearly three decades ago, marking what tribal officials described as a historic day.
Government attorneys filed condemnation documents on Friday to transfer dozens of square kilometers of state land into trust for the Hopi. The tribe will compensate the state nearly $4 million for more than 80 square kilometers of land near Winslow.
It could mark the first of more transfers of land into trust to help eliminate the checkerboard of ownership that characterizes much of the lands used by the tribe for ranching in northeastern Arizona.
A long time coming
Friday's filing was born out of the 1996 passage of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act, which ratified an agreement between the Hopi and federal government that set conditions for taking land into trust for the tribe.
The wrangling over land in northeastern Arizona has been bitter, pitting the Hopi and the Navajo Nation against one another for generations. The federal government failed in its attempt to have the tribes share land and after years of escalating conflict, Congress in 1974 divided the area and ordered tribal members to leave each other's reservations.
The resulting borders meant the Navajo Nation — the country's largest reservation at close to 70,000 square kilometers — surrounded the nearly 6,500-square-kilometer Hopi reservation.
Since the 1996 settlement, the Hopi Tribe has purchased private land and sought to take neighboring state lands into trust in hopes of consolidating property for the tribe's benefit.
A historic day
There have been many roadblocks along the way, including in 2018 when the tribe sought the support of local governments in northern Arizona to back a proposed transfer for land south of the busy Interstate 40 corridor. Those efforts were stymied by the inclusion of national forest tracts in the Flagstaff area.
Hopi Chairman Tim Nuvangyaoma said in a statement Friday that he was grateful for everyone who worked to make the condemnation filing a reality and that the timing for this historic moment was fitting.
"Within Hopi, it is our time of the soyal'ang ceremony — the start of the New Year and the revitalization of life," he said.
Gov. Katie Hobbs, who first visited the Hopi reservation in 2023, acknowledged that the tribe has been fighting for its rights for decades and that politicians of the past had refused to hear the voices of tribal communities.
"Every Arizonan should have an opportunity to thrive and a space to call home, and this agreement takes us one step closer to making those Arizona values a reality," she said Friday.
More transfers and economic opportunities
In November, the Navajo Nation signed a warranty deed to take into trust a parcel of land near Flagstaff as part of the federal government's outstanding obligations to support members of that tribe who were forcibly relocated as a result of the Navajo-Hopi dispute.
Navajo leaders are considering building a casino on the newly acquired land, saying such a project would provide significant economic benefits.
For the Hopi, bringing more land into trust also holds the promise of more economic opportunities. The state lands near Winslow that are part of the condemnation filing are interspersed with Hopi-owned lands and have long been leased to the tribe for ranching and agricultural purposes, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Federal officials said Friday's filing is the first of an anticipated series of condemnation actions that ultimately would result in the transfer of more than 1440 square kilometers of state land into trust for the Hopi Tribe.