Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians

What happened

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians' website says its reservation is in Santa Barbara County and was established and officially recognized by the federal government on December 27, 1901. It says the Band is the only federally recognized Chumash tribe in the nation, a self-governing sovereign nation under its tribal constitution. A Business Committee of four elected members and the Tribal Chairman oversees its legal and business affairs. Its Environmental Office, established in 1998, works on air and water quality and natural resources.

The Band's best-documented land action is the property known as Camp 4. A 2017 U.S. House committee report says the Tribe purchased a 1,400-acre tract called Camp 4 in 2010, about two miles from the reservation. It says the Tribe intended to use it for tribal housing, and that the Tribe applied in June 2013 to have the land taken into trust. The same report prints a bill to ratify the Secretary of the Interior's action of January 20, 2017 placing approximately 1,427.28 acres in Santa Barbara County into trust for the Band.

Some accounts give the date as 2017, others as 2019. The House report supports January 20, 2017 for the trust action. A federal court later voided that 2017 decision, and in December 2019 the National Defense Authorization Act directed Interior to take the land into trust, according to the Band (see the Camp 4 land return record). The tribe's own pages do not mention Camp 4 as a program.

Good to know. The Camp 4 account comes from a congressional report and the Tribe's dispute with the county, not from the Band itself.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error