Hoopa Valley Tribe v. Christie

• Decision Date: 13 March 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2861,86-2861
• Citation: 812 F.2d 1097
• Parties: The HOOPA VALLEY TRIBE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joe CHRISTIE, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 1097

812 F.2d 1097

The HOOPA VALLEY TRIBE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joe CHRISTIE, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 86-2861.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Nov. 21, 1986.

Decided Dec. 4, 1986.

Amended March 13, 1987.

Sarah P. Robinson, Land & Natural Resources Div., Washington, D.C., for defendants-appellants.

Pirtle, Morisset, Schlosser & Ayer, Thomas P. Schlosser, Seattle, Wash., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Before SNEED, KENNEDY and NOONAN, Circuit Judges.

AMENDED OPINION

NOONAN, Circuit Judge:

The Hoopa Valley Tribe (the Hupas) sought an order enjoining Joe Christie and other officers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (the Bureau) from transferring the Bureau's office, staff and equipment from the Hoopa Valley Reservation to Redding, California. Jurisdiction existed under 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1331, 1361, and 1362. The district court on November 7, 1986 granted a preliminary injunction against the transfer.

On November 13, 1986 the federal defendants filed a timely notice of appeal. On November 21 this court issued a stay of the district court's order with a statement that an opinion would be filed in due course.

On November 24, 1986 the Hupas made a motion in the district court to amend or make additional findings of fact pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(b) and 59(e). This motion could not, of course, deprive our court of jurisdiction that it had already exercised on November 21, 1986. Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(4) is not applicable as to this exercised jurisdiction. The stay of November 21, 1986, and the opinion explanatory thereof, establish the law of the case.

Background. The Hupas have existed for centuries in northern California. B. Nelson, Our Home Forever. A Hupa Tribal History (1978) 3. In addition to the Hupas there have been a great variety of other Indian tribes in northern California. S. Cook, The Population of the California Indians 1769-1970 (1976) 16. Among them the Hupas stood out, in the view of an early ethnologist, as "the Romans of Northern California in their valor and their wide-reaching dominions." S. Powers, Tribes of California (1877) 72. In 1864 a reservation was created by Congress in the Hoopa Valley on the lower part of the Trinity River in northwestern California. This reservation is the abode of the Hupas. Nelson, Our Home Forever 90. The reservation is characterized by its identity with the ancestral homelands of the Hupas, by its exceptional size, and by its relative prosperity from timber and concessions. J Rawls, Indians of California (1984) 211, 213.

The statute creating the reservation was enacted April 8, 1864. It authorized the President to appoint "an Indian agent" for each reservation authorized by the statute and directed that such agent "shall reside upon the reservation for which he shall be appointed, and shall discharge all the duties now or hereafter to be required of Indian agents by law, or by rules and regulations adopted, or to be adopted, for the regulation of the Indian service, so far as the same may be applicable." 13 Stat. 40-41. The statute also authorized the appointment of one physician, one blacksmith, one assistant blacksmith, one farmer and one carpenter. Austin Wiley, editor of the Humboldt Times and advocate of deporting hostile Indians to Santa Catalina Island, became Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California in the same year. Rawls, 169. After sporadic fighting in which some Hupas were involved and negotiations were entered into, on August 16, 1864 Wiley signed a document entitled "Treaty of Peace and Friendship ". Wiley acted on behalf of the United States. The tribes agreeing to the document were the Hupas and the South Fork, Redwood, and Grouse Creek Indians. The government promised to maintain an agent on the reservation and enough employees "to instruct the Indians in farming and harvesting." The tribes promised to "obey all orders emanating from the agent in charge." Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1864) 134-136. This treaty was never ratified as a treaty by the United States nor enacted as a statute by Congress. An executive order designating the land that was to constitute the reservation was issued by the President on June 23, 1876. The boundaries of the reservation were extended by executive order on October 16, 1891, were curtailed by executive order March 2, 1909, and were restored by executive order February 17, 1912. Nelson, Our Home Forever 189-192.

Various arrangements have been made by which Indian reservations in California have been administered. For example, in the 1870's the United States put them in charge of persons nominated by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Rawls, p. 158. The jurisdiction of the different agencies has also varied, not always in accordance with the dictates of geography. For example, since 1972 the Central California Agency, located in Sacramento, has dealt with Indians almost as far south as Palm Springs and as far north as the northwestern section of the state; the previously much-broader coverage of the agency at Hoopa Valley has been restricted to the six northwestern counties. California Indian Task Force, Report (1984) 11 (hereafter Report ).

The Indian population of California has grown remarkably in recent years. In 1840 it has been estimated to have been about 300,000. Cook, p. 43. By 1900 it was as low as 15,000. Id. 53. By 1970 it had rebounded to 91,000. Id. Improved health and substantial immigration from other states led to a doubling of the 1970 population by 1980, making it the largest Indian population in the nation. Rawls, 211, 214.

Not all of the Indians who have entered California are entitled to federal services but many of them seek information from the Bureau. Report, p. 12. They seek it at offices that are accessible. The burdens of the Central California Agency have greatly increased. In 1984 a task force was formed by the United States to study ways of improving service to the Indians of California. This "California Indian Task Force" was chaired by Maurice H. Babby, the Sacramento Area Director of the Bureau. Its members were five representatives of the Bureau; a representative of the Indian Public Health Service; a representative of the Regional Solicitor's Office of the Department of the Interior; and eleven tribal leaders, representing eleven separate Indian groups in California, including the Hupas. Hearings were held in Sacramento, San Diego, and Arcata. At the Arcata hearing on July 10, 1984 the Task Force heard from Dale Risling "representing the Tribal Chairperson, Elsie Ricklefs" of the Hupas; from Danny Jordan, of the governing body of the Hupas, the Hoopa Valley Business Council; and from Marcelene Norton, identified as belonging to the Tribal Education Department of the Hupas. Report, 159-162.

The Task Force, which had been formed in March 1984, filed its recommendations with the Assistant Secretary of the Interior--Indian Affairs in October 1984. The Report was critical of past efforts of the federal government on behalf of the Indians and emphatic in asking for more money and better organization of these efforts. The degree of unanimity as to the recommendations is not clear. It was stated in oral argument that Superintendent Babby was the principal draftsman, as might be expected of the chairman. It is at any rate evident that the recommendations were not made without listening to Indian representatives including representatives of the Hupas.

Among the many recommendations in the 162 pages of the Report was that a high priority be assigned the Bureau's exercise of trust responsibility to the Indians of California. A statement on "Trust Responsibility" declared "The Bureau of Indian Affairs should exercise trust responsibility to all Indian tribes." Report, 14. "Already limited Bureau funding and services," it was critically observed, focus on "the landed few" and ignore "most of the Indians of California whose needs are as great or greater." Report, 33; cf. id. 12. Specifically it was recommended, "That the Secretary affirm that trust responsibility exists for California tribes, bands, or groups." Report, 14.

Among the detailed recommendations related to this theme were these: "Agency office locations must be increased or relocated to improve 'outreach' capability to California tribal groups." Report, p. 7. The Central California Agency was found to be overextended in attempting to cover the vast area assigned it. Report, 148. A discussion of "bureau staffing needs" recommended that the northeast corner of the state be reassigned to the Northern California Agency. Report, 153. The Report emphasized that "relocation of the existing Northern California Agency office to a location more accessible by all groups within the jurisdiction is absolutely essential." Id.

The Department of the Interior did not take the Task Force Report as a blueprint for action in every respect, and in argument something was made of the difference between what the Report recommended and what the department did. But as to the transfer in dispute in this case it is clear that its basis was laid in the analysis and recommendations made in the Report.

In December 1985, over a year after the Report was filed, Ross O. Swimmer, Assistant Secretary of Interior--Indian Affairs, met in Washington with representatives of the Hoopa Valley Business Council and told them of a pending reorganization of the Northern California Agency which involved the transfer of the agency from Hoopa Valley to Redding. The Hoopa Valley Business Council by resolution adopted January 30, 1986 opposed the proposal. The Secretary of the Interior on June 5, 1986 approved the addition of reservations and rancherias in Modoc and Lassen counties to the Northern California Agency; the relocation of the primary office of the Agency from the Hoopa Valley Reservation to...