Cite as: 510 U. S. 399 (1994)
Blackmun, J., dissenting
be construed as either preserving that provision or replacing it. Ordinarily under these circumstances, the canon that repeals by implication are disfavored might require us to construe the later Act's silence as consistent with the earlier statute. See ante, at 416. The Court's invocation of this canon here, however, "fails to appreciate . . . that the standard principles of statutory construction do not have their usual force in cases involving Indian law." Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe, 471 U. S. 759, 766 (1985).
In Blackfeet Tribe, the Court refused to rely on the rule against repeals by implication under circumstances analogous to those presented here. That case involved the question whether a 1924 provision authorizing States to tax tribal mineral royalties remained in force under a 1938 statute which was silent on the taxation question but which repealed all prior inconsistent provisions. The State argued that because the 1938 statute neither expressly repealed the earlier taxation provision nor was inconsistent with it, the rule against repeals by implication required a finding that the State's taxation power remained intact. The Court rejected this argument as, among other things, inconsistent with two fundamental canons of Indian law: that a State may tax Indians only when Congress has clearly expressed such an intent, and that "statutes are to be construed liberally in favor of the Indians, with ambiguous provisions interpreted to their benefit." Ibid. Cf. Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U. S. 363, 366- 367 (1930); Choate v. Trapp, 224 U. S. 665, 675 (1912).
A similar construction is required here. The 1905 Act does not purport to fulfill the "purposes" of the 1902 Act nor to preserve its public domain language; the Act instead simply opens the lands for settlement under the homestead and townsite laws. Under these circumstances, both the requirements that congressional intent must be explicit and that ambiguous provisions must be construed in favor of the Indians compel a resolution in favor of petitioner Hagen. Although a "canon of construction is not a license to disre-
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