340
Opinion of the Court
ing legacy. The conflict between the modern-day approach to tribal self-determination and the assimilation impetus of the allotment era has engendered "a spate of jurisdictional disputes between state and federal officials as to which sovereign has authority over lands that were opened by the [surplus land] Acts and have since passed out of Indian ownership." Solem, 465 U. S., at 467.
B
We confront such a dispute in the instant case, in which tribal, federal, and state officials disagree as to the environmental regulations applicable to a proposed waste site. In February 1992, several South Dakota counties formed the Southern Missouri Recycling and Waste Management District (hereinafter Waste District) for the purpose of constructing a municipal solid waste disposal facility. The Waste District acquired the site for the landfill, which falls within the 1858 boundaries of the Yankton Sioux Reservation, in fee from a non-Indian. The predicate for the parties' claims in this case is that the waste site lies on land ceded in the 1894 Act, and the record supports that assumption.
In the Tribe's complaint, the proposed landfill is described as "the south one-half north one-quarter (S1/2 N1/4), Section
6, Township 96 North, Range 65 West (S6, T96N, R65W) of the Fifth Principal Meridan [sic], Charles Mix County, South Dakota." App. 24. That description corresponds to the account of a tract of land deeded to Lars K. Langeland under the Homestead Act in 1904. See App. to Brief for Respondent Southern Missouri Waste Management District 1a-2a. Because all of the land allotted to individual Indians on the Yankton Reservation was inalienable, pursuant to the Dawes Act, during a 25-year trust period, the tract acquired by a homesteader in 1904 and currently owned by the Waste District must consist of unallotted land ceded in the 1894 Act. (The Dawes Act was amended in 1906 by the Burke Act, 34 Stat. 182, 25 U. S. C. § 349, which permitted the issuance of
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