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Page Number: 43

12 

YELLEN v. CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF CHEHALIS 
RESERVATION 
GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

listed three kinds of Alaskan entities:  Alaska Native Vil-
lages,  Village  Corporations,  and  Regional  Corporations.  
And the law did “meaningful work by extending ISDA’s def-
inition  of  Indian  tribes”  to  whichever  among  them  “ulti-
mately were recognized.”  976 F. 3d, at 26.  It is perfectly 
plausible to think Congress chose to account for uncertainty 
in this way; Congress often adopts statutes whose applica-
tion depends on future contingencies.  E.g., Gundy v. United 
States, 588 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (GORSUCH, J., dissent-
ing) (slip op., at 11–12) (citing examples). 
  Further  aspects  of  Alaskan  history  confirm  this  under-
standing.    Over  time,  the  vast  majority  of  Alaska  Native 
Villages went on to seek—and win—formal federal recogni-
tion as Indian tribes.  See 86 Fed. Reg. 7557–7558 (2021); 
Brief for Respondent Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Res-
ervation et al. 23.  (It’s this recognition which makes them 
indisputably eligible for CARES Act relief.  See supra, at 2.)  
By the time it enacted ISDA, too, Congress had already au-
thorized certain Alaska Native groups to organize based on 
“a common bond of occupation, or association, or residence.”  
25 U. S. C. §5119.  This standard, which did not require pre-
vious  recognition  as  “bands  or  tribes,”  was  unique  to 
Alaska.    See  ibid.    And  at  least  one  such  entity—the 
Hydaburg  Cooperative  Association,  organized  around  the 
fish industry—also went on to receive federal tribal recog-
nition in the 1990s.  86 Fed. Reg. 7558; see also Brief for 
Respondent  Confederated  Tribes  of  Chehalis  Reservation 
et al.  35–36. 
lived  and  not  a  full  
government-to-government political recognition, the Secre-
tary of the Interior at one point even listed ANCs as “ ‘In-
dian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services 
From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs,’ ” before 
eventually removing them.  Ante, at 15–16.  And in 1996, 
Congress considered a bill that would have “deemed” a par-
ticular  ANC—the  Cook  Inlet  Region,  Inc.—“an  Indian 
tribal entity for the purpose of federal programs for which 

  Though  short