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Page Number: 118

36 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

that they dealt not with “Indians who have left or never in-
habited reservations set aside for their exclusive use or who 
do  not  possess  the  usual  accoutrements  of  tribal  self-gov-
ernment,” but only with Indians residing on Indian lands. 
McClanahan v. Arizona Tax Comm’n, 411 U. S. 164, 167– 
168 (1973); accord, Fisher v. District Court of Sixteenth Ju-
dicial Dist. of Mont., 424 U. S. 382, 383 (1976) (per curiam)
(dealing with “an adoption proceeding in which all parties
are  members  of  the  Tribe  and  residents  of  the  Northern 
Cheyenne  Indian  Reservation”);  United  States  v.  Algoma 
Lumber Co., 305 U. S. 415, 417 (1939) (regulations of “con-
tracts for the sale of timber on land of the Klamath Indian 
Reservation”).  In case after case, the law at issue purported
to reach only tribal governments or tribal lands, no more. 
To be sure, applying Kagama’s conceptual framework ul-
timately reveals a catch-22 of sorts: If Congress regulates
tribal  governments  as  a  matter  of  external  affairs,  then 
such  regulation  seems  to  undercut  the  very  tribal  sover-
eignty that serves as the basis for that congressional power.
See Lara, 541 U. S., at 214–215 (THOMAS, J., concurring in 
judgment).  But that appears to be a hallmark of Kagama
and its progeny, not a peculiarity.  As  Chief Justice Mar-
shall  once  stated,  Indians  are  neither  wholly  foreign  nor
wholly domestic, but are instead “domestic dependent na-
tions,”  akin  to  “ ‘[t]ributary’ ”  states.    Worcester,  6  Pet.,  at 
561; Cherokee Nation, 5 Pet., at 16–17.  It may be that this 
contradiction  is  simply  baked  into  our  Indian  jurispru-
dence.  And, in any event, recognizing the proper conceptual 
root for these precedents makes the most sense of them as
a textual and original matter—and it is surely preferable to 
continuing along this meandering and ill-defined path. 

Yet,  even  confining  Kagama’s  conceptual  error  to  its 
roots, the majority seems concerned that other precedents 
suggest that the Commerce Clause has broader application 
with  respect  to  Indian  affairs.    But  many  of  this  Court’s
precedents,  even  when  referring  to  some  broader  power,