Opinion ID: 891574
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Montana Cases

Text: {27} In Montana, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Crow tribe lacked authority to regulate the hunting and fishing of non-Indians on non-Indian fee land located within tribal boundaries. 450 U.S. at 566-67, 101 S.Ct. 1245. The cases following in the Montana line have severely limited Indian civil authority over non-Indians on non-Indian fee lands surrounded by Indian lands. The Court has even gone so far as to note in a footnote that, after Montana, tribal sovereignty over nonmembers `cannot survive without express congressional delegation,' and is therefore not inherent. South Dakota v. Bourland, 508 U.S. 679, 695 n. 15, 113 S.Ct. 2309, 124 L.Ed.2d 606 (1993) (quoting Montana, 450 U.S. at 564, 101 S.Ct. 1245). The cases do not go so far as to completely erase tribal authority over nonmembers where there is no congressional delegation of such authority, but they have clearly restricted such authority. [5] See Nev. v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 365-68, 121 S.Ct. 2304, 150 L.Ed.2d 398 (2001) (finding no tribal jurisdiction over civil-rights claim by Indian against non-Indian police who searched Indian's house on tribal lands); Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley, 532 U.S. 645, 645, 121 S.Ct. 1825, 149 L.Ed.2d 889 (2001) (finding no tribal authority to tax a private hotel on non-Indian fee land within the exterior boundaries of the Navajo Nation); Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 459, 117 S.Ct. 1404, 137 L.Ed.2d 661 (1997) (finding no tribal court jurisdiction for a personal injury action between two non-Indians for an automobile crash on a federal right-of-way surrounded by an Indian reservation). See generally William C. Canby, Jr., American Indian Law in a Nutshell 205 (4th ed. 2004) (With the Montana `rule' broadly applicable throughout reservations, the extent of ... tribal court jurisdiction over nonmembers is subject to great limitation.); L. Scott Gould, The Consent Paradigm: Tribal Sovereignty at the Millennium, 96 Colum. L.Rev. 809, 814 (1996) (With very few exceptions, inherent powers now extend to only tribal members... and to nonmembers who enter into consensual relationships with tribes.). But see Philip P. Frickey, Adjudication and its Discontents: Coherence and Conciliation in Federal Indian Law, 110 Harv. L.Rev. 1754, 1768 (1997) (asserting that Gould falls victim... to the desire to impose an artificial coherence upon the field, and describing Gould's theory as riddled with exceptions that deprive it of the quality of a coherent theoretical framework). {28} The U.S. Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the proposition, initially stated in Atkinson Trading Co., 532 U.S. at 659, 121 S.Ct. 1825, that a tribe's efforts to exert civil authority over nonmembers on non-Indian fee land are presumptively invalid. See Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle Co., ___ U.S. ___, ___, 128 S.Ct. 2709, 2720, 171 L.Ed.2d 457 (2008) (finding no tribal jurisdiction over discrimination claim concerning a non-Indian bank's sale of fee land within tribal boundaries). In the same case, the Court also reaffirmed that once tribal land is converted into fee simple, the tribe loses plenary jurisdiction over it. Id. at 2719. See generally Cohen's, supra § 7.02[1][a], at 600-01 ([W]hen nonmembers have a right to be in Indian country by virtue of land ownership, the usual presumption favoring tribal jurisdiction is reversed.). {29} Only one of the Montana cases directly addresses whether Section 1151 Indian country applies in cases like ours, where Indian civil authority over a non-Indian on non-Indian fee land is at issue. In Atkinson Trading Co., the Court held that the Navajo Nation lacked civil authority to tax a private hotel which was owned by a non-Indian and was located within the exterior boundaries of the Navajo Nation. 532 U.S. at 653-54, 121 S.Ct. 1825. Important to the Atkinson Court, the hotel, though within the exterior boundaries of the Navajo reservation, was on non-Indian fee land. Id. at 653, 121 S.Ct. 1825. In a footnote, the Court rejected out of hand the application of the Section 1151 Indian country analysis. Section 1151 simply does not address an Indian tribe's inherent or retained sovereignty over nonmembers on non-Indian fee land. Atkinson, 532 U.S. at 653 n. 5, 121 S.Ct. 1825. {30} Elsewhere, the Montana cases mention Section 1151 only in passing, if at all. See, e.g., Strate, 520 U.S. at 454 n. 9, 117 S.Ct. 1404 (noting the fact that Section 1151(a) treats rights-of-way as part of Indian country, while another statute does not); Montana, 450 U.S. at 562, 101 S.Ct. 1245 (observing that a federal trespassing statute did not incorporate the Section 1151 definition of Indian country, which the Court takes to be an indication that Congress did not want to include non-Indian fee lands within its scope). To the extent the footnote in Atkinson Trading Co. does not voice an explicit rejection of the applicability of Section 1151 and of exclusive Indian civil authority in the present context, the other cases in the Montana line, taken as a whole, amount to an implicit rejection of the Section 1151 paradigm on facts like those now before us. [6] {31} The reason is that, if the U.S. Supreme Court had applied Section 1151 to the Montana cases in the way in which our Court of Appeals believed it should be applied here, the U.S. Supreme Court would have had to conclude, in each of the Montana cases discussed above, that the tribes had exclusive civil authority. In each case, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded the opposite, of course. The problem with our Court of Appeals' analysis emerges upon a step-by-step analysis of that Court's reasoning. {32} The logic our Court of Appeals followed was (1) non-Indian fee land surrounded by tribal land is Indian country, and (2) Indian country connotes tribal jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters, and (3) the tribe must therefore have exclusive jurisdiction here. The Montana cases make clear that this analysis is too simplistic. In each case except Venetie, the Court analyzed non-Indian fee land surrounded by tribal land and concluded that the tribe had no exclusive jurisdiction, at least as far as non-Indians were concerned. Although our case addresses state jurisdiction, not tribal jurisdiction, the Montana cases nonetheless show that it is not enough merely to conclude that a certain plot of land is, or is not, Indian country. Courts must also consider whether the parties involved are tribal members or not, and the type of case at issue. Where tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians on non-Indian fee land is concerned, the Supreme Court has made clear, at the very least, that exclusive tribal jurisdiction is problematic, even though such land may well qualify as Indian country. {33} Following the U.S. Supreme Court's lead, as we must, we conclude that while the fee land at issue is Indian country, consistent with our holding in Romero, the Indian country paradigm cannot, and does not, answer the narrow question here: whether the fee land can be considered part of the Pojoaque Pueblo solely for the purposes of the UCCJEA's home-state jurisdiction. The Montana cases strongly suggest that the fee land here cannot be so considered. In cases with substantially similar facts, the Supreme Court has essentially concluded that such fee land is not within tribal authority with respect to non-Indians. We note, and explain in detail below, that state jurisdiction here does not exclude tribal jurisdiction. Rather, comity allows and encourages both courts to exercise jurisdiction. In coming to our conclusion, we emphasize that we are determining the nature of this fee land only for UCCJEA purposes, and only on the facts of this case. Different facts might produce different results. {34} In sum, contrary to our Court of Appeals, we find no authority in federal Indian law or in recognized principles of tribal sovereignty that would give the Pojoaque Pueblo tribal court exclusive civil jurisdiction over this child-custody matter, such that it would displace concurrent jurisdiction with state courts. We next look to New Mexico statutory law  the UCCJEA  to see whether our Legislature has directed these parties to one forum or the other.