Santa Ana Pueblo, BIA sign vast tract into trust

PUEBLO OF SANTA ANA — When a 60,000-acre tract of prime ancestral land hit the market in 2016, Pueblo of Santa Ana leaders snapped it up in just 30 days.

But another eight years passed before the Pueblo and federal officials signed the huge Sandoval County tract into trust at a ceremony on Wednesday.

“This is our land that our ancestors walked on,” former Santa Ana Gov. Joseph Sanchez told a gathering of tribal and community leaders at Santa Ana’s Prairie Star restaurant.

“It’s a good feeling to know that this is ours forever,” Sanchez said of the huge tract 20 miles west of Rio Rancho. “The vision that we have is to make it better than when we got it.”

The property, formerly called the King Brothers Alamo Ranch, was purchased by the Pueblo from the King family for about $33 million in 2016.

The land occupies ancestral farming and hunting grounds used centuries ago by the Tamayame people. It was later used for domestic livestock grazing by Spanish colonists and U.S. ranchers.

The tract, now called the Kwii Kee Nee Puu, officially was signed into trust by Pueblo and the federal Bureau of Land Management officials as dozens of Pueblo members and others looked on.

The action provides a number of protections for the property, which lies between Rio Rancho Estates on the east and the Rio Puerco to the west.

The trust document prohibits any commercial or gaming development on the property, said Patricia Mattingly, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Southwest regional office.

“The Pueblo is resolute that the property will remain in its natural state as a habitat for wildlife,” Mattingly said.

The land is home to elk, mountain lions, mule deer, pronghorn and other wildlife that the Pueblo now is nurturing with water sources, called “guzzlers.”

The trust also provides federal protections for the land that were unavailable previously, Santa Ana Gov. Myron Armijo said.

At the time of the purchase, the land was badly damaged by overgrazing, illegal dumping and hunting. The land also was scarred by off-road vehicle use and profit-hunters searching for Native American artifacts, Armijo said.

Some of that misuse has been curbed since the Pueblo purchased the land. But under the new trust protections, the Pueblo’s eight conservation officers now will have enhanced authority to arrest vandals and trespassers without relying on local law enforcement, Armijo said.

The trust designation also is expected to provide greater protections for the property’s Puebloan ruins, petroglyphs and artifacts that the Santa Ana consider their cultural heritage.

Richard Hughes, Santa Ana’s attorney, said he has handled dozens of trust land transfers in his 40 years as an attorney, “but this one was truly epic.”

The transfer, which nearly doubles the size of Pueblo of Santa Ana, involved “unbelievable, unprecedented and unending obstacles that were put in our way to trying to get this,” he said.

In particular, the legal description of the property was riddled with errors, which required the Pueblo to undertake an expensive and time-consuming survey of the vast property, Hughes said.

The land also required an extensive environmental cleanup and negotiations over utility rights of way, he said.

Several speakers said the trust designation will preserve the land for future generations.

“Today is historic for the Pueblo,” former Santa Ana Gov. Glenn Tenorio said. “It’s the day that we’ve been looking for for the last eight years. And it finally came to today to where we can actually accept our land wholeheartedly.”