Opinion ID: 891574
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Tempest Recovery Servs., Inc. v. Belone

Text: {48} In reaching its conclusion that the tribal court had exclusive jurisdiction over the child-custody issue, the Court of Appeals relied on this Court's opinion in Belone, 2003-NMSC-019, ¶¶ 10-12, for the proposition that Section 1151's definition of Indian Country applies in civil cases. Garcia, 2008-NMCA-116, ¶ 21. In part due to some of the collateral language therein, Belone may have been misapprehended. {49} In Belone, we concluded that a Navajo tribal court and a New Mexico district court shared concurrent jurisdiction over an auto repossession action, where the automobile was repossessed from an Indian allotment outside the boundaries of the Navajo reservation. 2003-NMSC-019, ¶ 15. In addition to reaffirming the Belone Court's emphasis on concurrent state-tribal jurisdiction in civil cases, we note that the opinion's express holding is only that allotted Indian lands ... [are] Indian country pursuant to § 1151. Id. ¶ 12. This uncontroversial proposition is fully supported by the text of Section 1151(c), which grants Indian country status to all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished.... In the course of observing that Section 1151 has been applied beyond the criminal context for which the statute was originally intended, the Belone Court made some broad statements about its application to civil cases. Those statements should not be taken to mean that Section 1151 necessarily applies in all civil matters. To the extent the Court of Appeals may have done so, it read more into Belone than we intended.