698
Blackmun, J., dissenting
is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Blackmun, with whom Justice Souter joins, dissenting.
The land at issue in this case is part of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation.1 The United States did not take this land with the purpose of destroying tribal government or even with the purpose of limiting tribal authority. It simply wished to build a dam. The Tribe's authority to regulate hunting and fishing on the taken area is consistent with the uses to which Congress has put the land, and, in my view, that authority must be understood to continue until Congress clearly decides to end it.
The majority's analysis focuses on the Tribe's authority to regulate hunting and fishing under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 15 Stat. 635, see ante, at 687-694, with barely a nod acknowledging that the Tribe might retain such authority as an aspect of its inherent sovereignty, see ante, at 694-695. Yet it is a fundamental principle of federal Indian law that Indian tribes possess " 'inherent powers of a limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished.' " United States v. Wheeler, 435 U. S. 313, 322 (1978) (emphasis omitted), quoting F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law 122 (1945). This Court has recognized that the inherent sovereignty of Indian tribes extends " 'over both their members and their territory.' " 435 U. S., at 323 (emphasis added), quoting United States v. Mazurie, 419 U. S. 544, 557 (1975). Inherent tribal sovereignty "exists only at the sufferance of Congress and is subject to complete defeasance. But until
1 The District Court found that conveyance of the taken area to the United States did not diminish the reservation, see App. 96-104, and South Dakota did not appeal that determination. See also 949 F. 2d 984, 990 (CA8 1991) (case below) ("[I]t seems clear . . . that the Cheyenne River Act did not disestablish the boundaries of the Reservation").
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