United States v. Joe and Wanda Kabinto, His Wife

This is an appeal from a summary judgment of ejectment declaring 16 Navajo Indians to be trespassers upon a portion of the Hopi Indian Reservation and enjoining them from using or occupying the land. We affirm.

The background of the litigation:

1. In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur by executive order set aside a two and one-half million acre tract in northeastern Arizona for the use and occupancy of the Hopi Tribe “and such other Indians as the Secretary of the Interior may see fit to settle thereon”.

2. For many years thereafter the Hopi and Navajo Indians asserted conflicting claims to the tract. All attempts to resolve the controversy by agreement and administrative action failed.

3. Finally, the two tribes, the Secretary of the Interior and Congress determined that resort must be had to the courts.

4. A special jurisdictional statute, the Act of July 22, 1958, 72 Stat. 403 , was passed “to determine the rights and interests of the Navaho Tribe, Hopi Tribe, and individual Indians to the area set aside by Executive order of December 16,1882 . . . .”

5. Section 1 of the Act provided that the land was to be held by the United States in trust for the Hopi Indians and such…