Cite as: 533 U. S. 353 (2001)
Souter, J., concurring
We said that the passage "scarcely supports the view that the Montana rule does not bear on tribal-court adjudica-tory authority in cases involving nonmember defendants," 520 U. S., at 451-452, and stressed the "three informative citations" accompanying the statement, which mark the true contours of inherent tribal authority over nonmembers:
"The first citation points to the passage in Montana in which the Court advanced 'the general proposition that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe,' with two prime exceptions. The case cited second is Washington v. Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation, a decision the Montana Court listed as illustrative of the first Montana exception . . . . The third case noted in conjunction with the Iowa Mutual statement is Fisher v. District Court of Sixteenth Judicial Dist. of Mont., a decision the Montana Court cited in support of the second Montana exception . . . ." Id., at 452 (citations omitted).
Accordingly, in explaining and distinguishing Iowa Mutual, we confirmed in Strate what we had indicated in Montana: that as a general matter, a tribe's civil jurisdiction does not extend to the "activities of non-Indians on reservation lands," Iowa Mutual, supra, at 18, and that the only such activities that trigger civil jurisdiction are those that fit within one of Montana's two exceptions.
After Strate, it is undeniable that a tribe's remaining inherent civil jurisdiction to adjudicate civil claims arising out of acts committed on a reservation depends in the first instance on the character of the individual over whom jurisdiction is claimed, not on the title to the soil on which he acted. The principle on which Montana and Strate were decided (like Oliphant before them) looks first to human relationships, not land records, and it should make no difference per se whether acts committed on a reservation
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