Cite as: 523 U. S. 696 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
persons engaged in or carrying on the business of coal mining within the boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservatio[n]." Id., at 81; see also id., at 97-98. Reservation boundaries, as described in the code, included the coal beneath the ceded strip. Id., at 81.5 Under the Tribe's constitution, the tax adopted by the Tribal Council was subject to review by the Department of the Interior. Id., at 329.
In January 1977, the Department approved the Tribe's code "to the extent that it applied to coal underlying the Crow Reservation proper." Id., at 98. Because of a limitation in the Tribe's constitution, however, the Department "disapproved the tax to the extent that it applied to the Crow Tribe's coal in the ceded strip." Id., at 153; see also id., at 217-218, 329.6 In 1982, the Tribe again enacted a tax for coal mined on the ceded strip, and again the Department rejected the tax. See Crow Tribe v. Montana, 819 F. 2d 895, 897 (CA9 1987). According to the Superintendent of the Crow Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department continued to withhold permission for extension of the Tribe's tax to the ceded area because the Tribe's constitution "dis-claimed jurisdiction outside the boundaries of the reservation." App. 218. The Tribe endeavored to amend its constitution to satisfy the Department's objection; it did
5 The Tribe's Chairman, in a March 11, 1975, statement opposing an increase in Montana coal taxes, however, observed that the State "has an important governmental responsibility" for development of Indian coal resources, particularly on the ceded strip; the role of the State, the Chairman added, "is substantially reduced where development takes place on the Crow Reservation, for under . . . federal law the Crow Tribe . . . exercises governmental and proprietary jurisdiction over the people and property within its reservation." App. 53.
6 On March 3, 1978, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior disapproved, on procedural grounds, an amendment to the Crow Constitution that would have had the effect of applying the Tribe's 1976 coal tax code to the removal of coal underlying the ceded area. Id., at 98; see also Defendant's Exhs. 542, 543.
703
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