Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1484_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

15 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

State  Commercial  Passenger  Fishing  Vessel  Assn.,  443 
U. S., at 666–667. 

It is easy to see the purchase these rules have for reser-
vation-creating  treaties  like  the  one  at  issue  in  this  case. 
Treaties like that almost invariably designate property as
a  permanent  home  for  the  relevant  Tribe.    See  McGirt  v. 
Oklahoma, 591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 5).  And the 
promise  of  a  permanent  home  necessarily  implies  certain
benefits  for  the  Tribe  (and  certain  responsibilities  for  the 
United States).  One set of those benefits and responsibili-
ties  concerns  water.  This  Court  long  ago  recognized  as 
much in Winters v. United States, 207 U. S. 564 (1908). 

That case involved the Milk River, which flows along the 
northern  border  of  the  Fort  Belknap  Reservation.    Id.,  at 
565–567 (statement of McKenna, J.).  Upstream landown-
ers invested their own resources to build dams and reser-
voirs which indirectly deprived the Tribes living on the res-
ervation  of  water  by  reducing  the  volume  available 
downstream.  Id., at 567.  The United States sued on the 
Tribes’ behalf to enjoin the landowners’ actions.  Id., at 565. 
In  assessing  the  government’s  claim,  the  Court  looked  to 
the agreement establishing that reservation and found no
language speaking to the Tribes’ water rights at all.  Id., at 
575–576.  Nevertheless,  the  Court  concluded,  the  agree-
ment reserved water rights for the Tribes in the Milk River
and found for the government.  Id., at 577.  The Court con-
sidered it inconceivable that, having once enjoyed “benefi-
cial use” of nearby waters, the Tribes would have contracted 
to “give up all th[at].”  Id., at 576.  After all, the lands de-
scribed  in  the  reservation  “were  arid  and,  without  irriga-
tion,  were  practically  valueless,”  and  “communities  could 
not be established” without access to adequate water.  Ibid. 
(internal quotation marks omitted).  For these reasons, the 
agreement’s  provisions  designating  the  land  as  a  perma-
nent  home  for  the  Tribes  necessarily  implied  that  the 
Tribes  would  enjoy  continued  access  to  nearby  sources  of