ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – Leaders of an American Indian community in northern New Mexico are not giving up on efforts to reclaim the Valles Caldera National Preserve as their own.

Jemez Pueblo considers the nearly 140-square-mile swath of federally-managed public land as a “spiritual sanctuary” and part of its traditional homeland.

The tribe went before a panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during a special hearing at the University of New Mexico law school in hopes of keeping alive its lawsuit against the federal government. The question is whether the tribe still holds aboriginal title to the land.

Karl Johnson, an attorney representing the pueblo, outlined for the court how Spanish land-grant heirs came to hold title to the land following a swap more than 150 years ago. The federal government then purchased the property in 2000 with the goal of operating it as a working ranch while developing recreational opportunities for the public.

“Almost immediately the United States began restricting the pueblo’s access to the property and interfering with its traditional, religious and ceremonial uses of the property in which it had been engaged for hundreds and hundreds of years,” Johnson told the judges.

U.S. Justice Department attorney Robert Stockman argued that the tribe’s aboriginal title was essentially extinguished when surveyors, working under the authority of Congress, determined the land was vacant and turned it over to the land-grant heirs in 1860.

The appellate panel hammered Stockman with questions, suggesting at one point that Congress would have had to extinguish the tribe’s title rather than surveyors.

It could be months before the judges issue a ruling.

The makeshift courtroom was packed with tribal and religious leaders, Native American rights activists, Valles Caldera officials and others. Dozens of observers had to watch the proceedings from an overflow room.

“I believe the ancestors are with us,” Jemez Pueblo Gov. Joshua Madalena told The Associated Press before the hearing. “We have to continue to push this issue. These are the most sacred lands and represent who we are as Jemez culture.”

Madalena described Valles Caldera as the tribe’s spiritual mother, likening it to the Vatican for Catholics. When ancestors were no longer allowed to use the area as their church, it was “a culture shock” for the pueblo, and the effects are still being felt today, he said.

The preserve is home to vast grasslands, the remnants of one of North America’s few super volcanoes and one of New Mexico’s most famous elk herds.

In court filings last year, the Justice Department argued that the pueblo surrendered rights to claim the land under proceedings conducted decades ago. A federal judge sided with the government and dismissed the tribe’s lawsuit.

The tribe appealed, asking for a new trial on the issue of Indian title.

Attorney Tom Luebben, one of the pueblo’s lawyers, has said he believes this marks one of the first times a tribe has sued the federal government under the Quiet Title Act to recover unlawfully appropriated Indian title lands.

The pueblo’s lawsuit describes the preserve as the “Jemez Holy Land” and talks about more than 800 years of occupation by the Jemez people. Archaeological surveys have identified dozens of pueblo villages, an extensive network of trails and thousands of ceremonial sites, agricultural fields and hunting traps, according to the lawsuit.

Madalena said Native American communities from across the nation support the pueblo’s efforts to reclaim the preserve, which he said amounts to just a fraction of the tribe’s traditional lands in the Jemez Mountains.

“They’re all watching us. They’re looking to us,” he said. “We’re not going to give up.”

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