Opinion ID: 172454
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Heading: The Scope of Hunting Rights Guaranteed by the Treaty of 1868

Text: The Supreme Court has noted that Indians enjoy exclusive treaty rights to hunt ... on lands reserved to them, unless such rights were clearly relinquished by treaty or have been modified by Congress. United States v. Dion, 476 U.S. 734, 738, 106 S.Ct. 2216, 90 L.Ed.2d 767 (1986) (citing FELIX COHEN, HANDBOOK OF FEDERAL INDIAN LAW 449 (1982)). These rights need not be expressly mentioned in the treaty. Dion, 476 U.S. at 738, 106 S.Ct. 2216; see also Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States, 391 U.S. 404, 406 & n. 2, 88 S.Ct. 1705, 20 L.Ed.2d 697 (1968) (noting that hunting and fishing were normal incidents of Indian life and concluding that such rights were reserved by treaty even though [n]othing was said in the 1854 treaty about hunting and fishing rights). Article II of the Treaty of 1868 provides that the land making up the Navajo Reservation is hereby, set apart for the use and occupation of the Navajo tribe of Indians. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians, Aug. 12, 1868, 15 Stat. 667 (Treaty of 1868). We view this general language as sufficient to indicate that the Treaty of 1868 preserved for the Navajo Nation the right to hunt on reservation lands. Although the government agrees that the Treaty of 1868 codified the Navajo tribe's right to hunt on the reservation, it argues that hunting rights created by the Treaty of 1868 belong to the tribe, not to individual members of the tribe. Aple. Br. 7. Both of the other circuits to consider this question in the context of the prosecution of a tribal member pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) have reached the same conclusion. In United States v. Three Winchester 30-30 Caliber Lever Action Carbines, 504 F.2d 1288 (7th Cir.1974) (hereinafter Three Carbines), the Seventh Circuit found that a convicted felon, a Menominee Indian, was not exempt from prosecution under a predecessor statute to § 922(g) even though he allegedly possessed weapons for the purpose of hunting on lands to which his tribe retained hunting rights by treaty. The court determined that [t]he treaty rights allegedly abridged belong to the tribe as a whole and not to any one individual. Id. at 1292. As a result, the court concluded that by enforcing the felon-in-possession statute, the government has not made the exercise of a treaty right illegal, but rather the defendant's own actions have limited him from participating fully in his tribe's hunting rights. Id. (emphasis added). For similar reasons, the Ninth Circuit upheld a Colville Indian's conviction under § 922(g) in United States v. Gallaher, 275 F.3d 784, 788-89 (9th Cir.2001). Relying largely on Three Carbines, the court reasoned that Gallaher lost his right as a Colville Indian to hunt by committing felony crimes. Id. at 789. We are skeptical of the position that hunting rights guaranteed by treaty only benefit the tribe collectively, as opposed to its individual members. To be sure, [t]he very great majority of Indian treaties create tribal, not individual, rights. Dry v. United States, 235 F.3d 1249, 1256 (10th Cir.2000) (quoting Hebah v. United States, 192 Ct.Cl. 785, 428 F.2d 1334, 1337 (1970)). But while such treaties are the product of negotiations with tribes as collective entities, there can be little doubt that they endow individual tribal members with rights and responsibilities. As the Supreme Court commented in McClanahan v. State Tax Comm'n of Arizona, 411 U.S. 164, 181, 93 S.Ct. 1257, 36 L.Ed.2d 129 (1973), [w]e cannot accept the notion that it is irrelevant whether [the law] infringes on (appellant's) rights as an individual Navajo Indian.... To be sure, when Congress has legislated on Indian matters, it has, most often, dealt with the tribes as collective entities. But those entities are, after all, composed of individual Indians, and the legislation confers individual rights. (quotation and citation omitted). Over one hundred years ago, when addressing the applicability to individual Indians of fishing rights preserved by a treaty between the United States and the Yakima Nation, the Supreme Court explained: [T]he treaty [creating a reservation] was not a grant of rights to the Indians, but a grant of right from thema reservation of those not granted.... Reservations were not of particular parcels of land, and could not be expressed in deeds, as dealings between private individuals. The reservations were in large areas of territory, and the negotiations were with the tribe. They reserved rights, however, to every individual Indian, as though named therein. United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371, 25 S.Ct. 662, 49 L.Ed. 1089 (1905) (emphasis added); see also Mason v. Sams, 5 F.2d 255, 258 (W.D.Wash.1925) (The treaty was with the tribe; but the right of taking fish at all places within the reservation, and usual and accustomed grounds and stations outside the reservation, was plainly a right common to the members of the tribe a right to a common is the right of an individual of the community. ) (emphasis added). Accordingly, while acknowledging [t]he right to hunt and fish on reservation land is a long-established tribal right, we have long recognized that [i]ndividual Indians... enjoy a right of user in the tribe's hunting and fishing rights. United States v. Felter, 752 F.2d 1505, 1509 (10th Cir. 1985). The right of user in a tribal right to hunt or fish confers a personal right upon which an individual member of the tribe may rely. Hackford v. Babbitt, 14 F.3d 1457, 1467 (10th Cir.1994). Likewise, the Supreme Court has explicitly held that such hunting treaty rights can be asserted by ... an individual member of the Tribe. Dion, 476 U.S. at 738 n. 4, 106 S.Ct. 2216. We therefore agree with Mr. Fox that the Treaty of 1868 guarantees hunting rights that may be asserted by individual Navajos.