Opinion ID: 1565977
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Appellants Have the Right to Sue Individually.

Text: The appellee maintains that the appellants, as individuals, have no standing to prosecute a claim based on Indian title, but that the Indian right, if any, is tribal. Since the appellee is here referring to original Indian title, its statement may be correct, although we are not expressing an opinion on this point. As we have already pointed out, however, the only sound basis for relief that the appellants have is not based upon original Indian title. The true foundation of their right is the repeated Congressional recognition of the occupancy or possession of the land by the Indians who were on the land at the time the act of 1884 was passed. Not once in the various Congressional recognitions that we have referred to, does the word tribe occur. The occupancy or possession sought to be protected or recognized by those statutes is always that of Indians or persons or claimants or the natives of Alaska; i. e., the individual Indians or other persons who happened to be occupying the lands in 1884 and in the other years when the succeeding statutes were enacted. See Cramer v. United States, 261 U.S. 219, 227, 228, 229, 43 S.Ct. 342, 67 L.Ed. 622.