16 U.S.C. § 539m — Findings and purposes

(a) Findings Congress finds that: (1) in 1748, the Pueblo of Sandia received a land grant from a representative of the King of Spain, which Congress recognized and confirmed in 1858; and (2) in 1994, the Pueblo sued the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture in federal court in Washington, D.C. (Civil No. 1:94CV02624), claiming that federal surveys of the grant's boundaries wrongly left out land that should have been part of the grant — land that ended up inside the Cibola National Forest, including part of the Sandia Mountain Wilderness. (b) Purposes The purposes of sections 539m through 539m–12 of this title are: (1) to create the T'uf Shur Bien Preservation Trust Area in the Cibola National Forest; (2) to confirm the status of national forest land and wilderness land in that Area, while resolving the issues raised in the 1994 lawsuit and in two opinions of the Interior Department's Solicitor (dated December 9, 1988, and January 19, 2001); and (3) to give the Pueblo, the parties to the lawsuit, and the public a fair and just settlement of the Pueblo's claim.