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20 

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

vacuum.  It is a fundamental canon of statutory construc-
tion that the words of a statute must be read in their con-
text and with a view to their place in the overall statutory 
scheme’ ”);  cf.  B.  Garner,  Modern  English  Usage  784  (4th 
ed. 2016) (noting the “increasingly common” “ ‘remote rela-
tive,’ ” i.e., the practice of separating “the relative pronoun 
(that, which, who) from its antecedent”).

Consider an example with the same syntax as the “Indian
tribe”  definition.  A  restaurant  advertises  “50%  off  any 
meat, vegetable, or seafood dish, including ceviche, which 
is cooked.”  Say a customer orders ceviche, a Peruvian spe-
cialty of raw fish marinated in citrus juice.  Would she ex-
pect it to be cooked?  No.  Would she expect to pay full price 
for it?  Again, no.  Under the reading recommended by the 
series-qualifier canon, however, the ceviche was a red her-
ring.  Even  though  the  50%-off  sale  specifically  named
ceviche (and no other dish), it costs full price because it is 
not cooked.  That conclusion would make no sense to a rea-
sonable customer. 

Like applying a “cooked” requirement to ceviche, apply-
ing a “federally recognized” requirement to ANCs is implau-
sible in context.  When Congress enacted ISDA in 1975, not
a single Alaska Native village or ANC had been recognized 
for  a  government-to-government  relationship  with  the 
United  States.  On  respondents’  reading,  then,  the  entire 
Alaska clause originally had no effect.  None of its entities 
qualified as Indian tribes for purposes of ISDA, even though 
the only entities expressly included in ISDA’s definition of 
an “Indian tribe” are those in the Alaska clause. 

The  only  explanation  respondents  offer  for  this  highly
counterintuitive  result  is  that  Congress  included  Alaska
Native villages and corporations in the “Indian tribe” defi-
nition on the possibility they might one day become feder-
ally recognized.  That is highly unlikely.  First, the Alaska 
clause would be redundant on that account.  See Brief for 
Respondents Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Reservation