206
Opinion of the Court
to justify any differences in state regulatory authority. Moreover, as Justice Thomas acknowledges, post, at 223 (dissenting opinion), the starting point for any analysis of these questions is the treaty language itself. The Treaty must be interpreted in light of the parties' intentions, with any ambiguities resolved in favor of the Indians. Winters v. United States, 207 U. S., at 576-577. There is no evidence that the Chippewa understood any fine legal distinctions between rights and privileges. Moreover, under Justice Thomas' view of the 1837 Treaty, the guarantee of hunting, fishing, and gathering privileges was essentially an empty promise because it gave the Chippewa nothing that they did not already have.
The equal footing doctrine was only part of the holding in Race Horse, however. We also announced an alternative holding: The treaty rights at issue were not intended to survive Wyoming's statehood. We acknowledged that Congress, in the exercise of its authority over territorial lands, has the power to secure off-reservation usufructuary rights to Indian tribes through a treaty, and that "it would be also within the power of Congress to continue them in the State, on its admission into the Union." 163 U. S., at 515. We also acknowledged that if Congress intended the rights to survive statehood, there was no need for Congress to preserve those rights explicitly in the statehood Act. We concluded, however, that the particular rights in the Treaty at issue there— "the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States"—were not intended to survive statehood. Id., at 514; see id., at 514-515.
The Chief Justice reads Race Horse to establish a rule that "temporary and precarious" treaty rights, as opposed to treaty rights "which were 'of such a nature as to imply their perpetuity,' " are not intended to survive statehood. Post, at 219. But the "temporary and precarious" language in Race Horse is too broad to be useful in distinguishing rights that survive statehood from those that do not. In Race
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