508
Opinion of the Court
Indian owner and his heirs." Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting 25 U. S. C. § 406(a)).12
Instead, the Secretary's involvement in coal leasing under the IMLA more closely resembles the role provided for the Government by the GAA regarding allotted forest lands. See Mitchell I, 445 U. S., at 540-544. Although the GAA required the Government to hold allotted land "in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made," id., at 541 (quoting 25 U. S. C. § 348), that Act did not "authoriz[e], much less requir[e], the Government to manage timber resources for the benefit of Indian allottees," Mitchell I, 445 U. S., at 545. Similarly here, the IMLA and its regulations do not assign to the Secretary managerial control over coal leasing. Nor do they even establish the "limited trust relationship," id., at 542, existing under the GAA; no provision of the IMLA or its regulations contains any trust language with respect to coal leasing.
Moreover, as in Mitchell I, imposing fiduciary duties on the Government here would be out of line with one of the statute's principal purposes. The GAA was designed so that "the allottee, and not the United States, . . . [would] manage the land." Id., at 543. Imposing upon the Government a fiduciary duty to oversee the management of allotted lands would not have served that purpose. So too here. The IMLA aims to enhance tribal self-determination by giving Tribes, not the Government, the lead role in negotiating mining leases with third parties. See supra, at 494. As the Court of Federal Claims recognized, "[t]he ideal of Indian self-determination is directly at odds with Secretarial control over leasing." 46 Fed. Cl., at 230.
12 Both the Tribe and the dissent refer to portions of 25 CFR pt. 211 that require administrative decisions affecting tribal mineral interests to be made in the best interests of the tribal mineral owner. See Brief for Respondent 27, 31; post, at 516-517. We note, however, that the referenced regulatory provisions were adopted more than a decade after the events at issue in this case. See 61 Fed. Reg. 35653 (1996).
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