The San Francisco Peak, adjacent to Flagstaff, Arizona, is not within an Indian Treaty. 

During the Treaty era, all Indian Tribes lost many acres of their aboriginal lands.

In the mid 1980, the Navajo Nation filed with the Federal Land Claim Court claiming aboriginal lands encompassing the San Francisco Peak and beyond. 

The Navajo Nation won the claim and was awarded monetary compensation. 

The Navajo Nation Council placed the monetary compensation  into a Permanent Trust Fund and not to be used for 50 years.

Thereafter and slowly, the Navajo Nation re-acquired, by purchase, a section of the San Francisco Peak, approximately on the North side of the mountain. 

The Navajo Nation purchased the grazing permit from the U.S BLM and purchased the deeded lands, which is normally used as a ranch based property to operate the federal grazing permit from. As for the Navajo People, the San Francisco Peak is one of the Four Sacred Mountain.

Appeals court rehears San Francisco Peaks case
Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Some judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appeared sympathetic to the tribes’ views. Their questions essentially accepted as fact that the use of the reclaimed wastewater will harm the sanctity of the peaks.

The key issue, then, is whether the Forest Service’s action violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The law was designed to protect Native and other practitioners from government actions that infringe on their religious rights.

“The dilemma we have is that the government does have … some right to administer the forest,” said Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson. “That’s what we’re looking at — the balance between the RFRA rights and the government’s undisputed right to manage public land.”

Dook’o'oosliid is one of the sacred mountain leader to many indigenous peoples. Our family have done offerings there many times.

This is the only homeland we know of, we must protect.

Those people who took the time to go to California to represent us for the hearings, Ahxehee!