YAKIMA — A federal judge has ruled that a disputed area in southern Washington state is part of the Yakama Nation Indian Reservation.
The Yakima-Herald Republic reports the ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice allows the tribe to have jurisdiction over Native American residents in the nearly 190-square-mile (492-square-kilometer) rural area southwest of Goldendale.
The land became disputed more than a century ago after the original map of the reservation was lost.
Rice says in the ruling that the land disputes “prompted a number of erroneous federal surveys that further complicated the historical record.”
Klickitat County officials argued the tribe’s treaty with the U.S. government never intended to include the area and the matter was settled when the government adopted a reservation boundary without it.
