Opinion ID: 1130959
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Reserved Rights Doctrine

Text: An understanding of the basis for the rights claimed by the Indians in this case is essential in considering the issues raised by the parties. As noted above, the Yakima Indian Nation and the United States entered into a treaty in 1855. The treaty was ratified by the Senate in 1859. The treaty provides that an area of land, about 1,100,000 acres, in the Yakima Basin would be reserved for the exclusive use of the Indians for agricultural purposes. The treaty further provides that the Indians have the exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams, where running through or bordering said reservation, ... [and] also the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places.... Treaty Between the United States and the Yakama Nation of Indians, June 9, 1855, art. III, 12 Stat. 951, 952-53. The treaty does not specifically reserve to the Indians a right to use water for irrigation or fishing purposes. [3] In 1908 the United States Supreme Court in Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564, 52 L.Ed. 340, 28 S.Ct. 207 (1908) established the reserved rights or  Winters  doctrine. There the Court held that the Indians' right to use the waters of the Milk River was impliedly reserved in the agreement which established the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. The reserved right vested no later than the date the reservation was created. [23] Winters was concerned solely with recognizing the existence of a reserved right to water, and the Court failed to set a standard for determining the quantity of water reserved. The Winters doctrine was interpreted by lower courts as giving the Indians the right to that amount of water needed to satisfy the present and future needs of the reservation. [24] Courts further decided that the right was not subject to state control. [25] Commentators, too, gave broad interpretation to the Winters doctrine. [26] However, as noted by others, Though attractive to the Indians, this approach plays havoc with the rest of the watershed, for no one can know how secure his water rights are. Note, Indian Reserved Water Rights: The Winters of Our Discontent, 88 Yale L.J. 1689, 1695 (1979). The need for a final determination of the quantity of an Indian tribe's right to water has been recognized by the Supreme Court. [27] Following its enunciation of the Winters doctrine, the Supreme Court did not construe the doctrine for another 55 years when, in Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546, 600-01, 10 L.Ed.2d 542, 83 S.Ct. 1468 (1963) ( Arizona v. California I), it recognized the need for and articulated a standard for quantifying water rights for irrigation. That standard is based on the reservation's practicably irrigable acreage (pia). The pia standard has been under attack and the continued vitality of the standard in the future is unknown. [28] [4] The Court again discussed the doctrine in Cappaert v. United States, 426 U.S. 128, 48 L.Ed.2d 523, 96 S.Ct. 2062 (1976), a case considering reserved water rights in a federally reserved monument. The Court stated: This Court has long held that when the Federal Government withdraws its land from the public domain and reserves it for a federal purpose, the Government, by implication, reserves appurtenant water then unappropriated to the extent needed to accomplish the purpose of the reservation. In so doing the United States acquires a reserved right in unappropriated water which vests on the date of the reservation and is superior to the rights of future appropriators. Cappaert, 426 U.S. at 138. The implied-reservation-of-water-rights doctrine, however, reserves only that amount of water necessary to fulfill the purpose of the reservation, no more. (Italics ours.) Cappaert, 426 U.S. at 141. A right to water may be reserved for any primary purpose of the reservation and there may be more than one such purpose. [29] Where water is valuable only for a secondary purpose of the reservation, no reserved right is implied and the Indians, or the United States on their behalf, would be required to acquire water in the same manner as any other public or private appropriator. [30] In summary, it is clear that, unless limited by Congress, the water rights impliedly reserved in the treaty between the United States and the Yakima Indian Nation would be for a quantity sufficient to fulfill the primary purposes of the reservation and no more. Water to fulfill the fishing rights under the treaty may be found to have been reserved, if fishing was a primary purpose of the reservation. [31] The controlling purpose of the treaty was to make possible the permanent settlement of the Yakima Indians and their transformation into an agricultural people. Report of Joint Cong. Comm'n, S. Doc. 334 (hereinafter Senate Doc. 334), at 23. However, the joint commission also noted that The exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams running through or bordering the reservation was expressly reserved by the treaty to the Indians. Senate Doc. 337, at 23.