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WASHINGTON — The San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe may finally get its own reservation after nearly two centuries of fighting for its homelands.
A bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives, HR2461, would create a reservation for the tribe by ratifying a 23-year-old treaty between the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe and the Navajo Nation. The San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, which is located in Arizona and southern Utah, is among the over 40% of 574 federally recognized tribes without a reservation.
The tribe has shared land within the Navajo Indian Reservation for 160 years but has been in the area long before the establishment of the reservation. Tribe President Johnny Lehi Jr. said a reservation is vital for the tribe's self-governance and ensuring its members have access to basic necessities like housing, running water, health care, infrastructure and electricity.
"Generations of the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe have come and gone without ever seeing the creation of our exclusive homeland," Lehi said during a committee hearing of HR2461. "Without an exclusive reservation, most tribal members continue to lack access to adequate housing, running water and electricity. Far worse, we are treated like strangers in our ancestral homeland."
In 1907, the federal government set aside the tribe's land in southern Utah as the Paiute Strip Reservation. However, in the 1930s, the U.S. declared the tribe's land in southern Utah and northern Arizona as part of the Navajo Nation.
The San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe didn't receive federal recognition until 1989 — a designation that allowed it to intervene in a legal dispute between the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe over lands in northeast Arizona. A federal court determined in 1992 that the San Juan Southern Paiute and the Navajo held joint interest in 26,000 acres of land. After the Paiute appealed that ruling, the two tribes negotiated their current treaty.
If HR2461 is approved, the treaty would give the tribe 5,400 acres of Navajo Reservation land and accompanying water rights. A formal reservation would allow the tribe to access state and federal funding that is currently out of reach. For example, Lehi said the tribe's attempts to get funding to build a bridge over a wash have been turned down by the Arizona Department of Transportation because the treaty wasn't ratified.
"Multiple doors get shut because we have no treaty land, and that's the biggest challenge we have," Lehi said. "This would mean a lot to our people."
The reservation would be the fruits of decades of labor and dreams, including from Lehi's grandmother, Mabel Lehi, who helped negotiate the treaty with the Navajo Nation.
"She told me that she hopes to see our people living on our reservation homeland before she leaves this place. I also hope she's here to see this dream become a reality," Lehi said. "A tribe without land is a tribe without a future. Land is what allows tribes to develop economic opportunities, generate revenue and continue to pass down our way of life to our children and children's children."
House Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs Chairwoman Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., said HR2461 and the other bills the committee heard show that Congress must do better for tribal members.
"They're about fixing past mistakes, they're about righting past wrongs, they're about allowing for healing, and they're about honoring those who have suffered, but it's also recognizing the United States' responsibilities, obligations and, in some cases, culpability," she said. "These bills also seem to expose the failure of a government that can take literally decades to correct these types of things."
HR2461 was introduced into the U.S. House in April by first-year Rep. Elijah Crane, R-AZ. No further action has yet been taken on it, but it has the support of the Department of the Interior, Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe.
