Cnty. of Amador v. U.S. Dep't of the Interior
| Decision Date | 06 October 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 15-17253.,15-17253. |
| Citation | 872 F.3d 1012 |
| Parties | COUNTY OF AMADOR, California, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR; Ryan K. Zinke, Secretary of the United States Department of Interior; Kevin K. Washburn, Acting Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, United States Department of Interior, Defendants-Appellees, Ione Band of Miwok Indians, Intervenor-Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Christopher E. Skinnell (argued) and James R. Parrinello, Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni LLP, San Rafael, California; Cathy A. Christian, Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni LLP, Sacramento, California; for Plaintiff-Appellant.
John L. Smeltzer (argued), Katherine J. Barton, and Judith Rabinowitz, Attorneys; John C. Cruden, Assistant Attorney General; Environment and Natural Resources Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; Matthew Kelly, Office of the Solicitor, United States Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.; for Defendants-Appellees.
Jerome L. Levine (argued) and Timothy Q. Evans, Holland & Knight LLP, Los Angeles, California, for Intervenor-Defendant-Appellee.
Before: Susan P. Graber and Michelle T. Friedland, Circuit Judges, and Jeremy D. Fogel,* District Judge.
This case involves a dispute over a proposed casino in Amador County, California.
Plaintiff, the County of Amador ("County"), challenges a 2012 record of decision ("ROD") issued by the United States Department of the Interior ("Interior") in which the agency announced its intention to take land into trust for the benefit of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians ("Ione Band" or "Band"). The ROD also allowed the Ione Band to build a casino complex and conduct gaming on the land once it is taken into trust. Reviewing Interior's decision under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"), we conclude that the agency did not err. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's award of summary judgment to Interior and the Ione Band.
Amador County is located roughly 45 miles southeast of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The county is rural, with a population density well below the state average, and it contains just five incorporated cities.
The Ione Band's origins lie in the amalgamation of several "tribelets" indigenous to Amador County and the surrounding area. The tribelets, which included the Northern Sierra Miwok and the Wapumne, were independent, self-governing groups that maintained their own territories but regularly interacted with one another. The political and geographic lines separating the tribelets began to erode in the 18th and early 19th centuries, as Spanish and Mexican missionary efforts and the arrival of white settlers in the area decimated the Native American population and displaced many villages. The discovery of gold in the area in 1848 and the subsequent inpouring of miners and prospectors accelerated the process of amalgamation. For instance, the Foothill Nisenan living in the American River drainage were displaced by miners and were forced to move south, where they joined with Plains Miwok and Northern Sierra Miwok.
Conflicts arose between the miners and settlers who flooded into California beginning in 1848, on the one hand, and the Native Americans already in the vicinity, on the other. The federal government tried to ameliorate the situation by convincing Native Americans to give up their lands and move to "safer" areas. In 1851, federal agents negotiated 18 treaties with Native Americans that required such resettlement. One of those treaties—Treaty J—was signed by members of some of the tribelets that would eventually blend together to form the Ione Band. Treaty J set aside land for those tribelets in what is now Amador County. The land, which included the site of the proposed casino, was to be "set apart forever for the sole use and occupancy of the tribes whose representatives signed the treaty." Neither Treaty J nor any of the other treaties ever went into effect, however. The California legislature, which opposed the assignment of the lands to Native Americans, successfully lobbied against the treaties and, in 1852, the United States Senate voted not to ratify the treaties. Larisa K. Miller, The Secret Treaties With California's Indians , Prologue Magazine, Fall/Winter 2013.
Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, Native Americans in the Amador County area continued to be displaced by white settlers. By 1900, most Native Americans lived either in remote settlements or on the edges of towns. They were largely destitute and often lacked permanent homes. Congress felt that California was largely responsible for this state of affairs and would have to play a primary role in addressing the problem of the "landless Indians," but its position changed in 1905 when the 18 unratified treaties from the 1850s were brought to light. Id. The treaties had been printed "in confidence" in 1852 and could not be accessed by the public from the Senate archives, so they had been largely forgotten. Id. at 43. Two activists convinced Senator Thomas Bard of California to have the treaties printed. After he did, Congress was forced to acknowledge the role that it had played in creating the problem of landless Indians in California. Id. Capitalizing on the change in sentiment among his colleagues, Senator Bard proposed an amendment to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1905 that authorized the Secretary of the Interior ("Secretary") to "investigate ... existing conditions of the California Indians and to report to Congress ... some plan to improve the same." Pub. L. No. 58-212, 33 Stat. 1048, 1058 (1905).
The Secretary tasked C.E. Kelsey with conducting the investigation into the condition of Native Americans in California. In Kelsey's 1906 report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, he recommended that Native Americans in Northern California who were "landless through past acts [or] omissions of the National Government ... receive land in lieu of any claims they may have against the Government, moral or otherwise; that the land ... be of good quality with proper water supply, and ... be located in the neighborhoods in which the Indians wish to live." Indian Tribes of California: Hearings Before a Subcomm. of the H. Comm. on Indian Affairs , 66th Cong. 131, at 23–24 (1920) (). The Commissioner, in turn, recommended to Congress that it appropriate money to carry out Kelsey's plan. Congress responded by appropriating $100,000 in 1906 for the purchase of land in California for "Indians ... now residing on reservations which do not contain land suitable for cultivation, and for Indians who are not now upon reservations." Pub. L. No. 59-258, 34 Stat. 325, 333 (1906). Congress continued to appropriate money for that purpose almost every year until the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 made such annual appropriations unnecessary. William Wood, The Trajectory of Indian Country in California: Rancherías, Villages, Pueblos, Missions, Ranchos, Reservations, Colonies, and Rancherias , 44 Tulsa L. Rev. 317, 357–58 (2008).
Kelsey also prepared a census of non-reservation Indians living in California. That census served as a guide for John Terrell, a Special Agent with Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs who traveled to California in 1915. Terrell was to assess which groups of Indians were in need of land and was to negotiate purchases of land for their benefit. Terrell visited the Native Americans living near Ione and counted some 101 members of the Ione Band, including Charlie Maximo, the recently elected Chief of the Band. In a May 1915 letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Terrell wrote that, "[o]f all the Indians I have visited," the members of the Ione Band "have stronger claims to their ancient Village than any others." After visiting the Band, Terrell almost immediately set about trying to buy some of the land on which the Band resided, for use as a permanent home for the Band.
In August 1915, Terrell reached an agreement for the purchase of 40 acres at a total price of $2,000. But the purchase stalled because of problems with the title to the property. For years, various officials with Interior tried to close the deal, but with no success. In a July 1923 letter, one Interior official wrote that the agency "ha[d] tried very hard for five years to get this sale through because ... [the Ione Band], if dispossessed, would be placed in such shape as to call forth untold criticism by all people knowing the circumstances of their occupation of this land as homesites for years." A different Interior official wrote, in a January 1924 letter, that the deal was "all but closed." More than five years later, though, the transaction still had not been consummated. As one official wrote to a member of the Band in a May 1930 letter, "[w]e have for more than eight years been negotiating with owners of the [land] for the purpose of purchasing same, but because of our inability to get a clear title to the land, the deal has not been closed."
In 1934, Congress enacted the Indian Reorganization Act ("IRA").
The IRA was designed to improve the economic status of Indians by ending the alienation of tribal land and facilitating tribes' acquisition of additional acreage and repurchase of former tribal domains. Native people were encouraged to organize or reorganize with tribal structures similar to modern business corporations. A federal financial credit system was created to help tribes reach their economic objective. Educational and technical training opportunities were offered, as were employment opportunities through federal Indian programs.
Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law § 1.05, at 81 (Nell Jessup Newton ed., 2012) [herei...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
United States v. Nishiie
...was passed can help to elucidate the statute's purpose and the meaning of statutory terms and phrases." Cty. of Amador v. U.S. Dep't of Interior , 872 F.3d 1012, 1022 (9th Cir. 2017). World War II engulfed the consciousness of the entire country. Few families were untouched by that conflict......
-
Altera Corp. v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
...Treasury "articulated a rational connection" between its decision and these industry standards. County of Amador v. U.S. Dep't of Interior , 872 F.3d 1012, 1027 (9th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 64, 202 L.Ed.2d 21 (2018). Presuming ......
-
Castellar v. Nielsen
...Court looks to the statutory history and purpose underlying Section 1252(b)(9) on this issue. See Cty. of Amador v. United States Dep't of the Interior, 872 F.3d 1012, 1021 (9th Cir. 2017). Section 1252(b)(9) expressly circumscribes the availability of federal habeas jurisdiction:Except as ......
-
Koi Nation of N. Cal. v. U.S. Dep't of the Interior
...methods of recognition that would permit a tribe to be considered as "restored," but no such limiting language was used. See Cty. of Amador , 872 F.3d at 1030 ("[I]f Congress wanted to exclude those tribes that were administratively re-recognized outside the Part 83 process, it could have d......