Court Opinion

ID: 9551050
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:47:06.141357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:57.825786
License: Public Domain

ON DENIAL OF PETITION FOR REHEARING
BISTLINE and HUNTLEY, Justices.
Today’s released opinion is a rewrite of an earlier opinion — now withdrawn by the Court — in an attempt to address substantive issues raised by the defendants in an articulate and extensive petition for rehearing. Rather than grant the petition, which we voted to do, the majority in its new opinion attempts to answer the issues raised by the defendants. When one compares the two opinions, however, it is readily apparent that today’s rewrite is nothing but a recycling of that which it wrote the first time around. Nothing has changed— century-old rights enjoyed by Indians of this state are still being extinguished; constitutional provisions are still being ignored; United States Supreme Court and Idaho precedent are still being grossly misapplied; and this Court is still breaking faith with a people who have been conspicuous and unfaltering in loyalty to the United States and principles of law.
The majority’s recycled effort is transparently incorrect for the reasons set forth in our dissenting opinion. Additional errors the majority commits, however, cannot go unanswered, and it is to these we now turn.
I.
The majority cites to United States v. Hicks, 587 F.Supp. 1162 (W.D.Wash.1984), to support its proposition that the defendants’ hunting in this case is inconsistent with the state’s use of Sand Creek Ranch. Nothing could be more incorrect. Although the district court in Hicks did hold that the hunting of Roosevelt elk within Olympic National Park by Quinault tribal members was incompatible with the use of the land, the analysis and reasons upon *463which it based its decision, far from supporting the majority here, supports the defendants' right to hunt within the Sand Creek Ranch.
In Hicks two Quinault tribal members were charged with killing elk within the boundaries of Olympic National Park. The defendants raised Article III of the Treaty with the Qui-Nai-elts (Quinaults), also referred to as the Treaty of Olympia, 12 Stat. 971, as a defense to their prosecution. That provision states that Indians would have the privilege of hunting on “all open and unclaimed lands.”6 In 1938, Congress created Olympic National Park. 16 U.S.C. §§ 251 et seq. The question to be answered, then, was whether land within Olympic National Park is still “open and unclaimed” for purposes of hunting under Article II of the Quinault Treaty.
The district court erred in giving scant attention to what the Indians to the Quinault Treaty would have thought “open and unclaimed” meant in entering into the Treaty. Nevertheless, the construction it adopted for the term is very broad:
The construction of “open and unclaimed lands” that best accommodates Indian hunting as settlement occurs and matures is that “open and unclaimed lands” include public lands put to uses consistent with an Indian hunting privilege. Lands cease to be “open and unclaimed” when they are put to uses incompatible with hunting. This broad construction of “open and unclaimed lands” contemplates hunting among multiple uses with which it is compatible yet precludes it where it is not compatible. Hicks, supra, at 1165-66 (emphasis in original).
The district court applied this construction to the facts of the case in holding that lands within Olympic National Park are not “open and unclaimed.” Those facts do not exist in this case.
The district court extensively quoted congressional reports and legislation for the proposition that one of the primary reasons the Park was established was to permanently protect mature Roosevelt elk — a species of elk that had been “rapidly decreasing in numbers.” Proclamation of March 2, 1909, 35 Stat. 2247. In addition, the court also held that the enactment of 16 U.S.C. § 256b, which prohibits hunting in Olympic National Park, effectively accomplishes the withdrawal of Olympic National park land from that which is “open and unclaimed.” Thus, for these two reasons, the district court held that Indian hunting within the Park was incompatible with the purpose for which the land was being used.
Neither of these crucial facts appears in this case. The Sand Creek Ranch was not established to preserve and protect elk and other game from hunting. The fact that the state seeks to protect such game in the winter months is a qualitatively different type of protection being afforded than that granted Roosevelt elk. The Roosevelt elk were a species facing extinction; elk in this state are not. Readily apparent, then, is the fact that Olympic National Park was intended to be a refuge for Roosevelt elk. The same is not true with the Sand Creek Ranch — a federally funded wildlife management area in which sport hunting has occurred for decades. Equally clear is the difference between Congress’ prohibition of all hunting within Olympic National Park and the absence of such prohibition within the Sand Creek Ranch area.
Thus, nothing in Hicks lends credence to the majority’s unsupportable statement that hunting in Sand Creek Ranch is incompatible with the use of that land. Hard as it may try, the majority cannot produce one valid, sustaining reason why Indian hunting in Sand Creek Ranch is incompatible with the uses of the land. This is under*464standable, however, in light of the overwhelming evidence, which reveals that hunting within the Ranch is a compatible use. Accordingly, rather than support the majority’s position, Hicks undermines it.
II.
The majority’s decision leads to the type of legal sophistry that Indian jurisprudence has long held should be eschewed. The facts of this case reveal that three of the elk were taken between one-eighth and one-fourth mile west of the Sand Creek Ranch-Targhee National Forest boundary line, and that the defendants had pursued the elk from the national forest onto the Ranch. The fourth elk and one deer were also taken in the same area.
In our dissent we noted that this Court, as well as many other federal and state courts, has held that National Forest Lands are “unoccupied lands” for purposes of construing either the Fort Bridger Treaty or other treaties with similar or identical phraseology. See ante pp. 860-861. By ruling as it does, the majority’s opinion produces the illogical anomaly that Indians will face prosecution only if they cross the Sand Creek Ranch-Targhee National Forest boundary line and kill an elk or deer within the Ranch area, despite the fact that the land is managed virtually the same on both sides of the boundary line and Indians continue to have such hunting rights within the National Forests. Can anyone reasonably argue that this is what the Shoshone-Bannock tribes contemplated when they entered into the 1868 Treaty?
III.
The majority’s use of historical evidence to buttress its conclusions should turn all historians on their heads. The majority narrowly focuses on only part of the record to reach conclusions that are skewed and off-based. It states:
It is apparent from the record that the signatory Indians understood that their off-reservation hunting rights reserved in the treaty were not absolute and would diminish with the increased occupation of the lands and the decrease in available game.
Ante, p. 858.
Such a conclusion is a far cry from what this Court concluded in State v. Tinno, 94 Idaho 759, 762, 497 P.2d 1386, 1389 (1972), where, after examining the very same minutes and notes the majority today says it examined, this Court stated:
Those notes reflect the true concern of the tribal negotiators, recognized by the government agents, that the signatory Indians were facing a major change in their way of life and that their traditional food gathering would have to be insured in the future. (Emphasis added.)
The majority also reaches its present conclusion by relying upon author Grace Raymond Hebard’s opinion of Chief Washakie. We find it remarkable that the majority is willing to elevate to a factual conclusion this undocumented and irrelevant opinion written some 63 years after the 1868 Treaty had been entered into.
Finally, the majority quotes Chief Tahgee’s remarks. Several crucial problems exist with this quote. First, the remarks were not made during negotiations on a previously unratified treaty. Rather, they were made to Territorial Governor David Ballard in the context of an “article of agreement” between the two parties. This article of agreement was entered into despite the fact that Governor Ballard stated that he had not been authorized to represent or negotiate for the federal government any sort of agreement.
Second, this “article of agreement” contains no provision concerning retention of off-reservation hunting rights by the Bannocks. How then Chief Tahgee’s quote can be relevant at all in indicating his understanding of “reserved hunting rights under a proposed treaty closely related ... to the Fort Bridger Treaty,” ante, p. 858, n. 2, requires a creativity of mind we do not possess.
Third, the quote is taken out of context. The complete quote, which was translated *465by Governor Ballard into English, is an eloquent and revealing indictment of the white settlers’ callous treatment of Chief Tahgee and his people. Years of frustration and anguish that Chief Tahgee and his people had experienced in being hounded, cheated, and demeaned by the white settlers had, no doubt, welled up inside, and in this 1867 meeting with Governor Ballard— the first time Chief Tahgee had been given an opportunity to speak to a representative of the United States — he said in full:
I thought when the white people came to Soda Springs and built houses and put Soldiers in them it was to protect my people, but now they are all gone, and I do not know where to go, nor what to do; the white men have come into my country, and have not asked my consent. Why is this — and why have no persons talked to me before? I have never known what the white people wanted me to do — I have never killed white men who were passing into my Country. What you say now I will never forget. All my people [the Bannocks] will obey me, and be good, but the “Sheep Eaters” are not my people; they may Steal, but I am not responsible for them, I will answer for the Bannocks. The Boises and Bruneaus are poor, they cannot travel far, they have no horses for hunting the Buffalo, but they are good Indians, and are my friends.
The Buffalo do not come so far south now as formerly, so we must go further to the north to hunt them, the white people have scared them away. I am willing to go upon a reservation, but I want the privilege of hunting the Buffalo for a few years. When they are all gone then we hunt no more, perhaps one year, perhaps two or three years, then we stay on the reservation all the time.
I want the reservation large enough for all my people and no white men on it, except the Agent, other officers and employees of the Government. I want the right-of-way for my people to travel when on the way to and from the Buffalo Country, and when going to sell their furs and skins. I want the right to camp and dig roots on Camas prairie, when coming to Boise City to trade. Some of my people have no horses; they could remain at Camas prairie while others went on to Boise.
Our hunting is not so good as it used to be, or my people so numerous. I will go from here to the Buffalo Country; there I will meet all my tribe, and will tell them of this talk, and of the arrangements we may make. I am willing to go onto the reservation as you propose, but when will you want us to go? We could go next Spring.
B. Madsen, The Northern Shoshoni 52 (1980).
The historical evidence the majority relies upon is impotent. The conclusions the majority reaches amount to grand-scale historical revision. The simple truth is that the Indians who entered into the Fort Bridger Treaty did not understand “unoccupied” to mean what the majority claims they did. What they did understand is that which we have documented in our dissenting opinion.
IV.
Today’s opinion is a disaster in terms of history, law, reason, and logic. We conclude by reiterating that which we said when we first wrote our dissent: that we stand as witnesses to a travesty in Indian jurisprudence and the continued tragic and abysmal disregard for Indian rights by a court of law.

. We note that the treaty language of the 1868 Fort Bridger Treaty grants the Eastern Shoshone and Bannock tribes rights to hunt on "unoccupied” lands of the United States. We will not attempt to determine if “open and unclaimed” and "unoccupied” grant similar rights. Such is not necessary, for the determinative factor in interpreting these treaty rights is the Indians' understanding of their meaning. Washington v. Fishing Vessels Ass'n, 443 U.S. 658, 678, 680-81, 99 S.Ct. 3055, 3071-72, 61 L.Ed.2d 823 (1979).