ASSOCIATED PRESS
- An 18th-century cemetery in Texas was just transferred back to the original tribe.
- The Presidio City Council voted Monday to give lands of the Lipan Apache cemetery back to the tribe after years of debate.
- The tribe first acquired the land in the 18th century from the Spanish as part of a peace deal.
A cemetery in Texas that dates back to the 18th Century was just transferred back into the hands of its original tribe.
The Presidio City Council voted Monday to give lots it owned in the Lipan Apache cemetery to Presidio County, which had already agreed to donate said lands back to the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, The Big Bend Sentinel reported.
A fight over who should own the land had gone on for two years as the council debated who had rights to the cemetery.
According to The Big Bend Sentinel, the land the cemetery is located on was given to the Lipan Apache Tribe by the Spanish as part of a peace settlement in the 1700s.
But years of intermarriage caused confusion over true ownership of the land.
Oscar Rodriguez, tribal administrator for the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, told CNN that he was "thankful" for the council's decision to transfer the land to the tribe.
"We are just elated with the community response," he said. "We got 100% cooperation and support all the time by everybody."
The city council's decision to transfer the land back into the hands of the Lipan Apache Tribe is "groundbreaking," the Big Bend Sentinal reported, proving steps forward in a government effort to honor the Land Back movement, which aims to "return indigenous land to indigenous hands."