680
Syllabus
Congress' intent to divest the Tribe of its treaty right to do so. As for the 18,000 acres of former fee lands, the court held that Montana v. United States, 450 U. S. 544, and Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 492 U. S. 408, controlled, and therefore that the Tribe's regulatory authority was divested unless one of the Montana exceptions was met.
Held: Congress, in the Flood Control and Cheyenne River Acts, abrogated the Tribe's rights under the Fort Laramie Treaty to regulate non-Indian hunting and fishing on lands taken by the United States for construction of the Oahe Dam and Reservoir. Pp. 687-698. (a) Congress has the power to abrogate Indians' treaty rights, provided that its intent is clearly expressed. The Tribe's original treaty right to exclude non-Indians from reservation lands (implicit in its right of "absolute and undisturbed use and occupation"), and its incidental right to regulate non-Indian use of these lands were eliminated when Congress, pursuant to the Cheyenne River and Flood Control Acts, took the lands and opened them for the use of the general public. See Montana v. United States, supra; Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, supra. Section 4 of the Flood Control Act opened the water project lands for "recreational purposes," which includes hunting and fishing. The Cheyenne River Act declared that the sum paid by the Government to the Tribe for the 104,420 acres "shall be in final and complete settlement of all [of the Tribe's] claims, rights, and demands." Had Congress intended to grant the Tribe the right to regulate non-Indian hunting and fishing, it would have done so by an explicit statutory command, as it did with other rights in § 10 of the Cheyenne River Act. And since Congress gave the Army Corps of Engineers regulatory control over the area, it is irrelevant whether respondents claim the right to exclude nonmembers or only the right to prevent nonmembers from hunting or fishing without tribal licenses. Montana cannot be distinguished from this case on the ground that the purposes of the transfers in the two cases differ, because it is a transfer's effect on pre-existing tribal rights, not congressional purpose, that is the relevant factor. Moreover, Congress' explicit reservation of certain rights in the taken area does not operate as an implicit reservation of all former rights. See United States v. Dion, 476 U. S. 734. Pp. 687-694. (b) The alternative arguments—that the money appropriated in the Cheyenne River Act did not include compensation for the Tribe's loss of licensing revenue, that general principles of "inherent sovereignty" enable the Tribe to regulate non-Indian hunting and fishing in the area, and that Army Corps regulations permit the Tribe to regulate non-
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