15 December 1970
Taos Blue Lake returned
New Mexico; Taos Pueblo
On December 15, 1970, President Nixon signed Public Law 91-550, placing approximately 48,000 acres around Blue Lake in trust for Taos Pueblo as reservation land. The law recognized traditional and religious uses. Nixon’s July message described the Pueblo’s decades-long effort to regain the lake and watershed taken for a national forest in 1906.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The return was trust land subject to traditional-use and wilderness conditions, not unrestricted fee ownership. Nonmember entry required tribal consent; specified leases and vested water rights were protected. No claim that this was the first Native land restitution is adopted. The credited book chapter and its underlying sources were not rechecked.
Sources
- Primary law: Public Law 91-550, December 15, 1970, 84 Stat. 1437–1439, amended section 4(a)–(e) ↗
- Contemporary presidential account: Nixon, Special Message on Indian Affairs, July 8, 1970, section 3 (1906 taking and Pueblo campaign) ↗
- Book provenance, not rechecked: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 10; underlying source trail unresolved