Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States case brief summary

Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States

171, SCOTUS (1968)

 

• Menominee terminated by an act that did not speak to hunting and fishing rights. 
• Does tribal termination also terminate hunting and fishing rights to reservation area?
• Hunting and fishing free of state control
• SCOTUS held that those rights were reserved because the same committee passed PL 280, which provides for the preservation of those rights.
• Rely on canon of in pari materia – the read them together
• Congress may only abrogate treaty rights when it explicitly says it is doing so
• This is kind of a crazy case
• After termination, does Indian Country even EXIST anymore in any meaningful sense?
• They had two bills that would have preserved treaty rights explicitly and didn’t pass them
• BUT this can be seen as a really extreme example of the idea that treaty rights can’t be abrogated without a clear statement.