Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-543_3e04.pdf
Page Number: 24

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 

et al.  31  ([T]he  Alaska  [clause]  is  . . .  best  read  as  redun-
dant”).  A  federally  recognized  Alaska  Native  village  or
ANC  would  presumably  already  fit  into  one  of  the  pre-
existing ISDA categories of “tribe[s], band[s], nation[s], or 
other  organized  group[s]  or  communit[ies].”    25  U. S. C. 
§5304(e).

Second, it is quite doubtful that anyone in 1975 thought 
the United States was going to recognize ANCs as sovereign 
political  entities.    ANCs  are  for-profit  companies  incorpo-
rated under state law that Congress itself created just four
years prior to ISDA.  They are not at all the type of entities 
normally considered for a government-to-government rela-
tionship  with  the  United  States.    Accord,  25  CFR  §83.4 
(1994) (“The Department will not acknowledge,” i.e., feder-
ally recognize, “[a]n association, organization, corporation,
or entity of any character formed in recent times unless the
entity has only changed form by recently incorporating or
otherwise  formalizing  its  existing  politically  autonomous 
community”).  Indeed, at the time ISDA was enacted, some 
doubted whether even Alaska Native villages could be fed-
erally recognized.7 

Respondents counter by pointing to certain organizations
created in Alaska in the 1930s that later became federally 
recognized  tribes.  One  such  organization,  the  Hydaburg
Cooperative Association (HCA), was formed under the 1936
Amendment  to  the  Indian  Reorganization  Act,  which  au-
thorized Alaska Natives groups “not heretofore recognized
as bands or tribes” to organize based on “a common bond of
occupation, or association, or residence.”  Ch. 254, 49 Stat. 
1250  (codified  at  25  U. S. C.  §5119).    The  HCA  organized
around “a common bond of occupation in the fish industry.” 
Constitution and By-Laws of the Hydaburg Cooperative As-

—————— 

7 That doubt was resolved in the villages’ favor in 1993.  See 58 Fed. 

Reg. 54365.