Opinion ID: 888091
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sovereignty.

Text: ¶ 19 The Indian tribes have a unique status in our federal system: Though tribes are often referred to as sovereign entities, it was long ago that the Court departed from Chief Justice Marshall's view that `the laws of [a State] can have no force' within reservation boundaries. Ordinarily, it is now clear, an Indian reservation is considered part of the territory of the State. Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 361-62, 121 S.Ct. 2304, 2311, 150 L.Ed.2d 398 (2001) (brackets in original; citations omitted). This aberrant status has led to a complex body of jurisprudence attempting to describe the respective bounds of the authority of the Indian tribes and the States. ¶ 20 There exist two general and overlapping approaches to analyzing the interaction of state regulatory authority and tribal self-government. [5] The first, exemplified by Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 101 S.Ct. 1245, 67 L.Ed.2d 493 (1981), takes the perspective of the tribe and seeks to identify the scope of authority it possesses. The second, embodied in White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U.S. 136, 100 S.Ct. 2578, 65 L.Ed.2d 665 (1980), takes the perspective of the state and seeks to prescribe the limits of its power. ¶ 21 In Montana, the United States Supreme Court considered whether the Crow Tribe had the power to regulate non-Indian fishing and hunting on reservation land owned in fee by nonmembers. The Court recognized that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe, but it nonetheless stated that: Indian tribes retain inherent sovereign power to exercise some forms of civil jurisdiction over non-Indians on their reservations, even on non-Indian fee lands. A tribe may regulate, through taxation, licensing, or other means, the activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members, through commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements. [Citations omitted.] A tribe may also retain inherent power to exercise civil authority over the conduct of non-Indians on fee lands within its reservation when that conduct threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe. Montana, 450 U.S. at 565-66, 101 S.Ct. at 1258. Applying this test, the Court concluded that [n]o such circumstances were present, Montana, 450 U.S. at 566, 101 S.Ct. at 1259, and that regulation of hunting and fishing by nonmembers of a tribe on lands no longer owned by the tribe bears no clear relationship to tribal self-government or internal relations. Montana, 450 U.S. at 564, 101 S.Ct. at 1258. Accordingly, the Court held that the Crow Tribe could not prohibit hunting and fishing within the reservation by nonmembers of the Tribe on non-Indian fee land. ¶ 22 In Bracker, the United States Supreme Court considered whether Arizona's application of motor carrier license and use fuel taxes to a non-Indian logging company operating entirely on an Indian reservation was preempted by federal law. The Court stated that there is no rigid rule by which to resolve the question whether a particular state law may be applied to an Indian reservation or to tribal members because the tribes have retained a semi-independent position not as States, not as nations, not as possessed of the full attributes of sovereignty, but as a separate people, with the power of regulating their internal and social relations, and thus far not brought under the laws of the Union or of the State within whose limits they resided. Bracker, 448 U.S. at 142, 100 S.Ct. at 2583 (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). The Court went on to articulate two independent but related barriers to the assertion of state regulatory authority over tribal reservations and members. First, the exercise of such authority may be pre-empted by federal law. [Citations omitted.] Second, it may unlawfully infringe on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them. [Citations omitted.] The two barriers are independent because either, standing alone, can be a sufficient basis for holding state law inapplicable to activity undertaken on the reservation or by tribal members. Bracker, 448 U.S. at 142-43, 100 S.Ct. at 2583. Where a State asserts authority over the conduct of non-Indians engaging in activity on the reservation this test does not depend on mechanical or absolute conceptions of state or tribal sovereignty, but it requires a particularized inquiry into the nature of the state, federal, and tribal interests at stake[.] Bracker, 448 U.S. at 144-45, 100 S.Ct. at 2584. The Court concluded that Arizona's authority to impose taxes was preempted by the comprehensive federal regulatory scheme governing logging on Indian reservations. Bracker, 448 U.S. at 148, 100 S.Ct. at 2586. ¶ 23 Because the present case concerns the State's regulation of activity on non-Indian land within the Reservation's boundaries, we conclude that the Bracker test is more pertinent, though Montana provides a useful backdrop. [6] Cf. Wagnon v. Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, 546 U.S. 95, 126 S.Ct. 676, 680, 163 L.Ed.2d 429 (2005) (But the Bracker interest-balancing test applies only where `a State asserts authority over the conduct of non-Indians engaging in activity on the reservation.' (quoting Bracker, 448 U.S. at 144, 100 S.Ct. at 2578)). This conclusion builds on and is congruent with our decision in In re Skillen in which we held that the Bracker test applies to resolve a jurisdictional conflict regarding a regulatory matter. . . . In re Marriage of Skillen, 1998 MT 43, ¶ 44, 287 Mont. 399, ¶ 44, 956 P.2d 1, ¶ 44 (differentiating Bracker from the test in State ex rel. Iron Bear v. District Court, 162 Mont. 335, 512 P.2d 1292 (1973), which applies to jurisdictional conflicts relating to adjudicatory matters). ¶ 24 The two cases most relevant to the issue here do not come from our own case law, however, but from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has twice applied Bracker when considering whether states can regulate water on reservation lands. ¶ 25 In Colville Confederated Tribes v. Walton, 647 F.2d 42 (9th Cir.1981), the Court examined whether the State of Washington could grant water permits to a non-Indian owner of allotted lands located within the No Name Basin on the Colville Reservation. Citing both Montana and Bracker, the Court concluded that Washington did not have authority to regulate these water rights: Where land is set aside for an Indian reservation, Congress has reserved it for federal, as opposed to state needs. Because the No Name System is located entirely within the reservation, state regulation of some portion of its waters would create the jurisdictional confusion Congress has sought to avoid. . . . . [W]e note that the state's interest in extending its water law to the reservation is limited in this case. Tribal or federal control of No Name waters will have no impact on state water rights off the reservation. Walton, 647 F.2d at 53. ¶ 26 Walton stands in contrast to the Court's decision three years later in United States v. Anderson, 736 F.2d 1358 (9th Cir. 1984). In Anderson, the Court held that the State [of Washington], not the Tribe, has the authority to regulate the use of excess Chamokane Basin waters by non-Indians on non-tribal, i.e., fee, land. Anderson, 736 F.2d at 1365. Again applying both Montana and Bracker, the Court stated, Central to our decision is the fact that the interest of the state in exercising its jurisdiction will not infringe on the tribal right to self-government nor impact on the Tribe's economic welfare because [the Tribe's reserved] rights have been quantified. . . . Anderson, 736 F.2d at 1366. However, a broader inquiry was necessary to resolve the question. Distinguishing Walton, the Court noted that the hydrology of the basins at issue in the two cases were significantly different in their size and impact. In Walton, the stream in question was small, non-navigable, and located entirely within the reservation, whereas the Chamokane Creek originated outside of the Spokane Indian Reservation, formed part of the eastern boundary of the reservation, and then flowed away from the reservation and eventually to the Pacific Ocean. Anderson, 736 F.2d at 1366. In these circumstances, the Court concluded that the State of Washington's interest in developing a comprehensive water program for the allocation of surplus waters weighs heavily in favor of permitting it to extend its regulatory authority to the excess waters, if any, of the Chamokane Basin. Anderson, 736 F.2d at 1366. ¶ 27 Walton was decided under the first prong of the Bracker test, preemption. Anderson was decided on the basis of the second, sovereignty. Despite the paucity of sovereignty analysis in Walton and the lack of preemption analysis in Anderson, one common factor appears to have weighed heavily in the Court's application of Bracker's particularized inquiry of the interests at stake in each of the above cases: the degree to which regulation of the waters at issue affects water rights off the reservation. See Walton, 647 F.2d at 53 (Tribal or federal control of No Name waters will have no impact on state water rights off the reservation.); Anderson, 736 F.2d at 1366 (The weight of the state's interest depends, in large part, on the extent to which waterways or acquifers [sic] transcend the exterior boundaries of Indian country.). ¶ 28 This commonality is consistent with the decision in New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe, 462 U.S. 324, 103 S.Ct. 2378, 76 L.Ed.2d 611 (1983), in which the United States Supreme Court articulated the principles that guided its consideration of New Mexico's claim that it may superimpose its own hunting and fishing regulations on the Mescalero Apache Tribe's regulatory scheme, as those regulations related to nonmembers on the reservation. New Mexico, 462 U.S. at 336-37, 103 S.Ct. at 2388. The Court stated that in assessing the interest asserted to justify state jurisdiction over a reservation . . . [a] State's regulatory interest will be particularly substantial if the State can point to off-reservation effects that necessitate state intervention. New Mexico, 462 U.S. at 336, 103 S.Ct. at 2387-88; see also Rice v. Rehner, 463 U.S. 713, 724, 103 S.Ct. 3291, 3298, 77 L.Ed.2d 961 (1983). Applying the Bracker test, the Court concluded that New Mexico's regulations were preempted by the comprehensive tribal regulatory scheme. . . . New Mexico, 462 U.S. at 344, 103 S.Ct. at 2392. ¶ 29 From the foregoing precedent, we conclude that two factual inquiries which are intertwined with the Bracker test will drive the legal determination of whether DNRC has the sovereign authority to process the change of use application at issue here. First, off-Reservation effects must be assessed. Second, the impact that the processing of these applications may have on the Tribes' political integrity, economic security, health, or welfare must be determined. ¶ 30 The first inquiry has two sides to it. In Walton, the Court noted that federal or tribal regulation of the waters at issue would have no impact on state rights off the reservation. This aspect of the inquiry is not determinative in the present case, however, because neither the Tribes nor the federal government have asserted regulatory authority over the Axes' water rights. In Anderson, by contrast, where the hydrology of the basin was such that state rights to the basin's water were implicated both on the reservation and downstream of it, the Court implicitly concluded that an absence of state authority to regulate waters on the reservation in excess of tribal rights would adversely affect state water rights holders downstream. With respect to the Axes' change of use application, we simply do not know what effect such an absence of authority would have on other state water rights holders. Indeed, we do not even know, from the record before us, whether there are other state water rights holders downstream of the Axes, on or off the Reservation. ¶ 31 The second inquiry drives at the heart of the dispute between the Tribes and DNRC. To decide whether processing the Axes' change of use application will have some direct effect on the Tribes' political integrity, economic security, health, or welfare, we must first know  at the least  whether the change of use would adversely affect the Tribes' reserved water rights because, as has been said many times, water is the lifeblood of the West. See, e.g., Walton, 647 F.2d at 52 (Especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the West, water is the lifeblood of the community.); In re General Adjudication of All Rights to Use Water in Big Horn River Sys., 835 P.2d 273, 279 (Wyo.1992) (Water is the lifeblood of Wyoming.). [7] Whether the change of use would adversely affect the Tribes and whether such assertion of regulatory authority by the State would have a direct effect on the Tribes are legal conclusions. However, these legal conclusions must emanate from a developed factual record, which is absent here. ¶ 32 As explained, these factual inquiries are intertwined with the Bracker test. We can, and do, conclude that the State's authority has not been preempted by federal or tribal interests because, as noted, neither the Tribes nor the federal government have asserted regulatory authority over the Axes' water rights. Cf. Bracker, 448 U.S. 136, 100 S.Ct. 2578 (pervasive federal regulatory scheme preempted state's authority to regulate). Thus, DNRC is not preempted from processing the Axes' change of use application. However, it is not at all clear whether this DNRC process would infringe on the Tribes' sovereignty under the second prong of Bracker. This prong, as we have intimated, is informed by the overlapping Montana test  that is, we must inquire whether the DNRC regulatory process at issue here would threaten[ ] or ha[ve] some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe. To properly resolve this sovereignty question, we need a more fully developed factual record addressing the matters discussed in ¶¶ 29-31, above.