Court says part of reservation is no longer Indian country
Story-Date: 09:34 a.m. PST Monday   , January 26, 1998

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Court says part of reservation is no longer Indian country


By Laurie Asseo
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- An area of South Dakota that was part of an Indian
reservation created during the 1850s for the Yankton Sioux tribe can no
longer be considered Indian country, the Supreme Court ruled today.

The court's unanimous decision said about 168,000 acres the tribe sold to
non-Indians under an 1894 federal law are no longer Indian land.

Therefore, the justices said the state has control over a waste site built
on the land sold by the tribe at the end of the 19th century.

The Yankton Sioux reservation was created in an 1858 treaty with the U.S.
government, under which the tribe exchanged 11 million acres for cash and a
430,000-acre reservation in southern South Dakota.

Under an 1894 federal law, the government paid the tribe $600,000 for about
168,000 acres, which was to be sold to settlers. The rest of the
reservation land was allotted to individual tribe members, and most of that
land has since been sold to non-Indians.

The 1894 law also said provisions of the 1858 treaty that created the
reservation were to remain in force.

But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court, "The 1894 act at issue
here ... bears the hallmarks of congressional intent to diminish a
reservation."

She said the court's ruling applied only to the land ceded by the tribe in
1894, adding that the court was not deciding whether Congress intended to
terminate the reservation altogether.

State officials had exercised civil and criminal jurisdiction over the land
for about the past 100 years.

But a dispute arose over the land's reservation status after a regional
waste management district, formed in 1992, sought to build a landfill in
Charles Mix County. The land, owned by a non-Indian, was among the land
sold by the tribe in 1894.

The tribe sued the waste district in federal court to stop construction.
The state joined the case to argue that the tribe had no authority over the
land sold in 1894.

A federal judge ruled that the 1894 law did not end the land's reservation
status, and that the landfill could be built if it met federal standards.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

But the South Dakota Supreme Court later ruled in an unrelated case that
the 1894 law ended the Yankton Sioux reservation status.

Today, the Supreme Court said the 8th Circuit court was wrong.

The case is South Dakota vs. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 96-1581.



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