426
Blackmun, J., dissenting
rather than Indian title, thus became the measure of tribal jurisdiction.
As a result of the patina history has placed on the allotment Acts, the Court is presented with questions that their architects could not have foreseen. It resolves the resulting statutory ambiguities by requiring clear evidence of specific congressional intent to diminish a reservation based on the language and circumstances of each individual land Act. See Solem, 465 U. S., at 469. Accordingly, statutory language alone of sale and settlement to non-Indians is insufficient to establish diminishment. "The mere fact that a reservation has been opened to settlement does not necessarily mean that the opened area has lost its reservation status." Rosebud, 430 U. S., at 586-587; see also DeCoteau, 420 U. S., at 444 ("[R]eservation status may survive the mere opening of a reservation to settlement"). "[S]ome surplus land Acts diminished reservations, . . . and other surplus land Acts did not," Solem, 465 U. S., at 469, and we have refused to find diminishment based on language of opening or sale absent additional unequivocal evidence of a congressional intent to reduce reservation boundaries or divest all Indian interests. Thus, in Seymour v. Superintendent of Wash. State Penitentiary, 368 U. S. 351, 355 (1962), the Court found no diminishment under a statute providing for the settlement and entry of surplus lands under the homestead laws, and in Mattz, 412 U. S., at 495, the Court concluded that a statute opening the reservation " 'subject to settlement, entry, and purchase under the laws of the United States granting homestead rights' " did "not, alone, recite or even suggest that Congress intended thereby to terminate the . . . Reservation," id., at 497. Most recently, in Solem, 465 U. S., at 472, we unanimously agreed that a statute authorizing the Secretary of
Government. Such an impractical pattern of checkerboard jurisdiction was avoided by the plain language of § 1151." Seymour v. Superintendent of Wash. State Penitentiary, 368 U. S. 351, 358 (1962) (footnote omitted).
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