OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit
No. 96-1581. Argued December 8, 1997—Decided January 26, 1998
The Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota was established pursuant to an 1858 Treaty between the United States and the Yankton Tribe. Congress subsequently retreated from the reservation concept and passed the 1887 Dawes Act, which permitted the Government to allot tracts of tribal land to individual Indians and, with tribal consent, to open the remaining holdings to non-Indian settlement. In accordance with the Dawes Act, members of the respondent Tribe received individual allotments and the Government then negotiated with the Tribe for the cession of the remaining, unallotted reservation lands. An agreement reached in 1892 provided that the Tribe would "cede, sell, relinquish, and convey to the United States" all of its unallotted lands; in return, the Government agreed to pay the Tribe $600,000. Article XVIII of the agreement, a saving clause, stated that nothing in its terms "shall be construed to abrogate the [1858] treaty" and that "all provisions of the said treaty . . . shall be in full force and effect, the same as though this agreement had not been made." Congress ratified the agreement in an 1894 statute, and non-Indians rapidly acquired the ceded lands.
In this case, tribal, federal, and state officials disagree as to the environmental regulations applicable to a solid waste disposal facility that lies on unallotted, non-Indian fee land, but falls within the reservation's original 1858 boundaries. The Tribe and the Federal Government contend that the site remains part of the reservation and is therefore subject to federal environmental regulations, while petitioner State maintains that the 1894 divestiture of Indian property effected a diminishment of the Tribe's territory, such that the ceded lands no longer constitute "Indian country" under 18 U. S. C. § 1151(a), and the State now has primary jurisdiction over them. The District Court declined to enjoin construction of the landfill but granted the Tribe a declaratory judgment that the 1894 Act did not alter the 1858 reservation boundaries, and consequently that the waste site lies within an Indian reservation where federal environmental regulations apply. The Eighth Circuit affirmed.
Held: The 1894 Act's operative language and the circumstances surrounding its passage demonstrate that Congress intended to diminish the Yankton Reservation. Pp. 343-358.
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