“Yavapai-Apaches, be glad,” Yavapai-Apache Councilman David Kwail said. “Dance when you want, sing when you want about this day … You got land.”
In all, 3,201 acres to be exact.
Inside the Tunlii Community Center, hundreds in the audience cheered during the Monday ceremonial signing of a rare land exchange agreement between the Yavapai-Apache Nation and U.S. Forest Service in the Verde Valley.
This decades-in-the-making swap to expand one of Arizona’s smallest reservations has reclaimed a fraction of tribal lands once lost. Official talks began in 1996, but the Nation had been buying up properties long before that.
“You put up the money to make it happen,” said Yavapai-Apache Nation Attorney General Scott Canty. “You funded it, you believed in it, you encouraged it and you got it done.”
The swapped lands are worth roughly $45 million.
“The appraisal process is sort of held close to the vest by the Forest Service,” added Canty, “but once it’s done, once the values have been determined, it’s not a secret. That’s the match, because they have to be of equal value.”
Before the land exchange, the Yavapai-Apache Nation had 1,810 acres of fractured trust lands scattered across the Verde Valley. It’s a noncontiguous landbase, meaning its reservation is made up of multiple parcels of tribal lands that are not touching each other. Separate land holdings are spread across the five communities of Tunlii, Clarkdale, Camp Verde, Middle Verde and Rimrock.
As a result, the 2,700-member tribe has run out of elbow room. On top of that, there’s a housing shortage; at least 150 families are on a waiting list.
It’s a young and growing population, too. The median age for the 1,200 residents is 25 years old, according to latest Census counts. They’re crammed onto the reservation, which is smaller than 3 square miles.
But now, it’ll nearly triple in size to 5,011 acres — or almost 8 square miles.
“You’ll have room to breathe,” Canty said. “ You’ll be able to stretch out a bit, because the next step is developing these lands. We essentially have no place to build. This will change that.”
In return, the Forest Service has consolidated 4,782 acres of checkerboard inholdings, which are privately owned pieces of land, and located inside four of the state’s six national forests: Kaibab, Prescott, Coconino and Apache-Sitgreaves.
Prescott National Forest Supervisor Sarah Clawson, who signed the land exchange on behalf of the Forest Service, explained this swap is supposed to help maintain habitat and watershed health, but also improve recreational access.
“So this will eliminate confusion,” she said. “All of the parcels that we’re receiving are absolute gems. This is absolutely a benefit to us and to the American public.”
Although Clawson noted there were “many delays and changes to the proposal,” she added that neither side lost sight of their “shared objective of developing a land exchange that would benefit both public and tribal lands.”
Deputy Regional Forester Kristin Bail for the Southwestern Region noted that even being able to give “a little bit” back by leveraging Nation-to-Nation relationships is “very gratifying,” but land swaps are few and far between.

“Land exchanges don’t happen all that often,” she admitted. “Definitely not as common as we would like, so we take extra pleasure in celebrating when they do happen. When you’re trading lands, that can take time, and there’s a lot of due diligence that both parties need to do.”
Such land exchanges can occur by congressional or administrative action.
Meaning, Congress can authorize an agreement — similar to Indian water settlements — or it could be done administratively at the agency level between a tribe and the feds through the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.
The Yavapai-Apache Nation decided on the latter, though the Nation’s recently introduced $1 billion water settlement carved out a land provision as a backstop if negotiations with the Biden administration fell through.
In that case, the tribe would’ve needed to pursue congressional approval and secure this land through this same water deal that’s working its way through Capitol Hill.
“And so a lot of times, that’s just an easier thing to do. Working with Congress is hard. Settlements are hard to get done,” said Daniel Cordalis, a Navajo attorney who runs the Native American Rights Fund’s Tribal Water Institute. “When you can use an agency that’s willing to work with you, and you see a path for it, it makes a lot of sense to do this administratively.”
Still, these delicate deals are rare for lots of reasons. Few tribes own property that isn’t already part of their reservations, so they don’t have much surplus land to swap.
But for those tribes that do, Indian Land Tenure Foundation President Cris Stainbrook explained, they mean to “use the land for a reason, and rarely does that include trading the land away.”
Cordalis added that all Western public lands were once tribal lands. Because of this, he insisted, the U.S. “should be willing and open to talk to tribes in good faith about sensible land exchanges that benefit both the tribes and the general public.”
Originally, the Yavapai-Apache Nation was allotted 575,000 acres, including sprawling lands along 45 miles of the Verde River. It was known as the Camp Verde Indian Reserve, established by an executive order in 1871.
President Ulysses S. Grant terminated the reservation four years later, ordering the U.S. Army to march them nearly 200 miles to San Carlos during the wintertime as war prisoners.
But by 1909, they were given old Army barracks located in Camp Verde – an 18-acre parcel – after writing letters to the U.S., begging to regain a foothold in their ancestral homelands. In their absence, settlers had moved into the Verde Valley.
Now, 115 years later, the Nation is trading six parcels to the same government that dissolved their land and trust.

“Agencies don’t have the power to just dispose of federal property freely,” Cordalis mentioned. “They can’t just say, ‘Oh, we’re just going to give all these lands back to you,’ absent some authorization from Congress.”
“You’re making an exchange, which means you’re giving something up,” he added. “And for tribes, it’s often hard to give something up, especially land that is hard earned. It’s hard to have that kind of foresight and play that long game.”
But the Yavapai-Apache Nation did. It has taken generations of tribal councils to get this transfer across the finish line.
“We were still kind of looked at as the wild Indians of the Valley,” said former Yavapai-Apache Chairwoman Jane Russell-Winiecki, talking about their non-Native neighbors across Yavapai County. “I’m very happy to say that times have changed, and now we have friends.”

Tanya Lewis was sworn as the Yavapai-Apache Nation chairwoman in 2022, having been on the tribal council and previously serving a term as vice chairwoman. She called it “a long, heartfelt journey” to arrive to this day, adding that this land exchange is “a win-win situation for us all.”
“When I came in as the chairwoman, Forest Service learned to love me,” said Lewis, laughing. “I’ll tell you that. If I didn't get answers, I was on that next flight to Albuquerque. I didn’t get what I wanted to hear, I went to D.C.”
When asked whether this sizable land swap would’ve only happened under the Biden administration, the chairwoman claimed it could’ve been possibly reached at another time, but she didn’t downplay their support in “making this a priority for the Nation.”
“We have the entire Verde Valley here with us, here behind us. We’re in this together. This is our home, and we’re going to continue to grow,” Lewis added. “This is for our people. This is for everybody in this room and for those who are yet to come, and this is what we do as leaders.”
Yavapai-Apache Councilman Buddy Rocha Jr. echoed her message.
“Today is the day that we stretch our sovereignty to get back something that was ours,” he said. “Let’s go out there and revitalize our traditions, our values, our language. Let’s sing those songs just as hard as that little young man did up here. It put a tear in my eye. That’s how we need to be.”