And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Court OKs Chippewa Indian Hunting
www.nytimes.com/
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Eight bands of Chippewa Indians can continue to hunt and
fish on 13 million acres of public land in Minnesota without state
regulation, the Supreme Court ruled today in a case that attracted the
attention of tribes nationwide.
By a 5-4 vote, the court said that neither an 1850 presidential order nor
Minnesota's statehood in 1858 stripped the Chippewas of the hunting and
fishing privilege they received in an 1837 treaty.
``After an examination of the historical record, we conclude that the
Chippewa retain the ... rights guaranteed to them under the 1837 treaty,''
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court.
Some Indian law experts had said the court's decision could affect the
security of other Indian treaty rights. The Chippewas were supported in
friend-of-the-court briefs submitted by the National Congress of American
Indians, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and 32 individual tribes.
The Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa sued the state in 1990, challenging its
authority to impose hunting and fishing regulations on tribal members. The
federal government and seven other Chippewa bands in Minnesota and Wisconsin
joined the lawsuit. Nine counties and eight private landowners intervened on
the state's side.
A federal trial judge ruled in 1994 that the package of rights guaranteed by
the Chippewas' 1837 treaty with the United States ``continues to exist,''
and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
Today, the nation's highest court said those courts were correct.
The 1837 treaty gave the Chippewa Indians the rights to hunt and fish
``during the pleasure of the president'' on 13 million acres it ceded to the
United States.
Minnesota's lawyers contended that an order President Zachary Taylor signed
13 years later took those rights away and ordered the Chippewas removed from
the previously ceded lands.
The Chippewas opposed the removal order, and the federal government never
enforced it. The bands continued to hunt and fish in the ceded
territories -- an expanse of land in central Minnesota that includes Lake
Mille Lacs, one of the state's prime walleye lakes.
O'Connor wrote that Taylor's order requiring the Chippewas' removal from the
land was not authorized by federal law, and that other provisions in
Taylor's order revoking the hunting and fishing rights could not stand
separately.
The state's lawyers also contended that the hunting and fishing privilege
free of state regulation ended when Minnesota became a state in 1858 and
entered the union on an equal footing with all other states.
However, O'Connor said Indian treaty rights can be revoked only when
Congress clearly states its intent to do so. The legislation admitting
Minnesota into the union did not mention Indian treaty rights, she said.
``Statehood by itself is insufficient to extinguish Indian treaty rights to
hunt, fish and gather on land within state boundaries,'' O'Connor wrote.
Her opinion was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth
Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Dissenting were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin
Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
Writing for the four, Rehnquist said Taylor's order ending the Chippewas'
treaty privileges was valid, adding, ``There is simply no principled reason
to invalidate the 150-year-old executive order.''
The case is Minnesota vs. Mille Lacs Band, 97-1337.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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