Federal officials joined the state of Arizona to begin fulfilling a settlement agreement reached with the Hopi Tribe nearly three decades ago, marking what tribal officials described as a historic day.
Government attorneys filed condemnation documents Friday seeking to transfer dozens of square miles of state land into trust to the Hopi. The tribe will compensate the state nearly $4 million for more than 50 square miles of land near Winslow.
It could be the first of more transfers of land into trust to help eliminate the chessboard of ownership that characterizes many of the lands used by the tribe for ranching in northeastern Arizona.
Friday’s filing stemmed from the 1996 passage of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act, which ratified an agreement between the Hopi and the federal government that set conditions for land to be taken into trust for the tribe.
The land wrangling in northeastern Arizona has been bitter, pitting the Hopi and Navajo nations against each other for generations. The federal government failed in its attempt to get the tribes to share land, and after years of escalating conflict, Congress divided the area in 1974 and ordered tribesmen off each other’s reservations.
The resulting boundaries meant that the Navajo Nation — the nation’s largest reservation at 17,000 square miles — surrounded the 1,500-square-mile Hopi reservation.
Since the 1996 settlement, the Hopi tribe has purchased private land and attempted to take adjacent state lands into trust in hopes of consolidating properties for the tribe’s benefit.
There have been many roadblocks along the way, including in 2018 when the tribe sought the support of local governments in northern Arizona to support a proposed transfer of land south of the busy Interstate 40 corridor. These attempts were thwarted by the inclusion of national forest areas in the Flagstaff area.
Hopi Chairman Tim Nuvangyaoma said in a statement Friday that he was grateful to everyone who worked to make the condemnation request a reality and that the timing for this historic moment was appropriate.
“Within Hopi, it is our time of the soyal’ang ceremony – the beginning 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 past politicians had refused to hear the voices of tribal communities.
“Every Arizonan should have the opportunity to thrive and a space to call home, and this agreement brings us one step closer to realizing those Arizona values,” she said Friday.
In November, the Navajo Nation signed a deed of guarantee to 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 bring significant economic benefits.
For the Hopi, bringing more land into trust also holds the promise of greater economic opportunity. The state lands near Winslow that are part of the condemnation application are interspersed with lands owned by Hopi and have long been leased to the tribe for ranching and agricultural purposes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Federal officials said Friday’s filing is the first in an expected series of condemnation actions that would ultimately result in the transfer of more than 170 square miles (440 square kilometers) of state land into trust for the Hopi tribe.