Cite as: 524 U. S. 103 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
this, because in 1995 it successfully applied to the Secretary of the Interior under § 465 to restore federal trust status to seven of the eight parcels at issue here. See Complaint ¶ 18 and Affidavit of Joseph F. Halloran in support of Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment, in Civ. No. 5-95-99, ¶ V (DC Minn.); Tr. of Oral Arg. 9.5
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When Congress makes Indian reservation land freely alienable, it manifests an unmistakably clear intent to render such land subject to state and local taxation. The re-purchase of such land by an Indian tribe does not cause the land to reassume tax-exempt status. The eight parcels at issue here were therefore taxable unless and until they were restored to federal trust protection under § 465. The judgment of the Court of Appeals with respect to those lands is reversed.
It is so ordered.
5 The Leech Lake Band and the United States, as amicus, also argue that the parcels at issue here are not alienable—and therefore not taxable—under the terms of the Indian Nonintercourse Act, which provides: "No purchase, grant, lease, or other conveyance of lands . . . from any Indian nation or tribe . . . shall be of any validity in law or equity, unless the same be made by treaty or convention entered into pursuant to the Constitution." 25 U. S. C. § 177.
This Court has never determined whether the Indian Nonintercourse Act, which was enacted in 1834, applies to land that has been rendered alienable by Congress and later reacquired by an Indian tribe. Because the parcels at issue here are not alienable—and therefore not taxable— under the terms of the Indian Nonintercourse Act, which provides: "No taxation if it remains freely alienable", and because it was not addressed by the Court of Appeals, we decline to consider it for the first time in this Court. See, e. g., Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Epstein, 516 U. S. 367, 379, n. 5 (1996) (declining to address issue both because it was "outside the scope of the question presented in this Court" and because "we generally do not address arguments that were not the basis for the decision below").
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