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Page Number: 17

14 

YELLEN v. CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF CHEHALIS 
RESERVATION 
Opinion of the Court 

“Recognized”  is  too  common  and  context  dependent  a
word to bear so loaded a meaning wherever it appears, even 
in laws concerning Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
Cf. Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, 562 U. S. 223, 235 (2011) (de-
clining  to  read  “unavoidable”  as  a  term  of  art  in  part  be-
cause “ ‘[u]navoidable’ is hardly a rarely used word”).  Cer-
tainly, “recognized” can signify political recognition; it can 
also  refer  to  something  far  more  pedestrian.    See,  e.g., 
Black’s  Law  Dictionary  1436  (rev.  4th  ed.  1968)  (defining 
“recognition”  as  “[r]atification;  confirmation;  an  acknowl-
edgment  that  something  done  by  another  person  in  one’s
name  had  one’s  authority”).  The  type  of  recognition  re-
quired is a question best answered in context.  See, e.g., 25 
U. S. C. §3002(a)(2)(C)(1) (providing for control over certain
cultural items “in the Indian tribe that is recognized as ab-
originally occupying the area in which the objects were dis-
covered”); §4352(3) (defining a “Native Hawaiian organiza-
tion” as a nonprofit that, among other things, “is recognized
for having expertise in Native Hawaiian culture and herit-
age, including tourism”).  In ISDA, the required recognition
is of an entity’s eligibility for federal Indian programs and 
services,  not  a  government-to-government  relationship 
with the United States.5 
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legal  status  as  a  tribe  is  a  formal  political  act  confirming  the  tribe’s 
existence  as  a  distinct  political  society,  and  institutionalizing  the 
government-to-government relationship between the tribe and the fed-
eral government”).  For instance, in 1978, three years after ISDA’s en-
actment, the Bureau of Indian Affairs adopted “procedures for acknowl-
edging that certain American Indian tribes exist.”  43 Fed. Reg. 39361 
(1978).  To this day, applications to become a federally recognized tribe 
are made to the Office of Federal Acknowledgement, and the Interior De-
partment  still  uses  “recognized”  and  “acknowledged”  somewhat  inter-
changeably.  See, e.g., 86 Fed. Reg. 7554 (2021) (“Published below is an
updated list of federally acknowledged Indian Tribes”). 

5 The dissent reads the congressional findings to ISDA as providing a 
textual clue that government-to-government recognition is required.  See 
post,  at  7  (opinion  of  GORSUCH,  J.)  (“When  Congress  passed  ISDA,  it 
sought to provide Indians ‘meaningful leadership roles’ that are ‘crucial