In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the Crow Tribe ceded vast areas of Wyoming and
Montana to the United States, shown in yellow and labeled 517, while reserving hunting
rights on those lands so long as they remained unoccupied. An upcoming panel at the
UW College of Law will discuss the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Herrera v.
Wyoming, which cited the 1868 treaty to overturn a conviction of Crow tribal member
Clayvin Herrera, who was cited and fined for killing elk in Wyoming out of season
and without a license.
The University of Wyoming College of Law is set to host two public events this month
focusing on the timely American Indian topics of water contamination on the Wind River
Indian Reservation and a Crow hunting rights case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme
Court.
“At the College of Law, we strive to serve our students and the state with relevant
legal information that will help them understand current events,” says Professor Jason
Robison. “This knowledge helps to create an educated population that can better engage
with the legal system.”
On Tuesday, Oct. 15, Itzchak Kornfeld, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will
deliver a presentation, titled “The Human Right to Water on the Wind River Indian
Reservation.” He will discuss the legacy of contaminated groundwater left by the Susquehanna-Western
uranium mill near Riverton, and ask whether Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho
American citizens have a right to uncontaminated water. The panel takes place from
7-9 p.m. in Room 178 of the College of Law Building.
Starting in 1958, the Susquehanna-Western company processed uranium to make yellowcake near the Wind River Indian Reservation
towns of Arapahoe and St. Stephens. When the mine closed in 1963, it left piles of
radioactive tailings on the site until 1988, when the U.S. Department of Energy removed
the hazardous materials for burial in the Gas Hills. By that time, however, some of
the radioactive tailings had leached into the groundwater, creating a contamination
plume that continues to be present in monitoring wells, causing reports of thyroid
problems and higher cancer rates among residents. The site of the former uranium mill
was later occupied by the Chemtrade sulfuric acid plant.
Kornfeld has a background in geology and works as a legal scholar focusing on environmental
issues and water security, particularly on how courts adjudicate issues related to
natural resources and water law.
On Thursday, Oct. 17, the College of Law will host a panel discussion, “Herrera v. Wyoming: The Way Forward on American Indian Treaty Rights,” at 6 p.m. in the College of Law’s
large moot courtroom. The discussion also will be broadcast via livestream on the
Wyoming State Bar website. Registration is required; see details here and below.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s May 2019 decision in Herrera v. Wyoming confirmed that Crow hunting rights enumerated in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie
remain in force, allowing members of the tribe to hunt on unoccupied lands of Wyoming
and Montana. Specifically, the decision overturned Wyoming’s previous ruling that
convicted Crow tribal game warden Clayvin Herrera of shooting elk on the Bighorn National
Forest out of season and without a license in 2015.
Herrera was cited after an investigation by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
Wyoming courts ordered him to pay $8,000 in fines and revoked his hunting privileges.
On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the findings of the lower courts. According
to the decision, neither Wyoming statehood in 1890 nor the creation of the Bighorn
National Forest in 1897 abrogated the treaty. The Supreme Court’s decision further
remanded the case back to Wyoming to resolve outstanding legal questions -- for example,
how Crow hunting rights might be regulated for conservation purposes.
Public concern over the conservation implications of the decision has led Crow leaders
to call for patience from their Wyoming neighbors, as reported in The Sheridan Press. It’s unclear how long it may take Wyoming to honor the treaty by creating policies
to sustainably share wildlife resources with Crow tribal members.
The College of Law panel will discuss the meaning of the court’s decision, along with
outstanding legal and factual questions surrounding the case. Further, panelists will
discuss the implications of the case for the Crow and other tribes with similar treaty
rights, and how other states have handled related situations. Finally, they will discuss
potential further litigation and cooperative paths forward for Wyoming and the Crow
Tribe to address wildlife resources of concern to all.
Herrera v. Wyoming has sparked significant discussion in Wyoming, in part, because treaty rights are
seldom discussed or considered by the general public. The Crow treaty rights date
back more than 150 years. Under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the United States
negotiated with the Crow Tribe as a sovereign nation. The resulting agreement ceded
millions of acres of Crow territory with certain stipulations, including that tribal
members would still be able to hunt on unoccupied lands outside their reservation
so long as game persisted.
The Crow cession encompasses a large part of what is now northern Wyoming, an area
roughly between Sheridan, Buffalo, Lander and Cody. That includes the Big Horn Mountains,
Tongue River Valley, the western portion of the Powder River Basin, the Wind River
Basin, Big Horn Basin and parts of the Absaroka Range and Yellowstone National Park.
The Crow Tribe further ceded much of Montana below the Musselshell River, including
the Yellowstone River Valley between today’s Miles City and Big Timber and the location
of Billings, Mont.
In a September 2018 statement, Crow Tribal Chairman A.J. Not Afraid said the treaty remains important to members
of the Crow/Apsaalooke Nation.
“Our ancestors gave up a lot to ensure the survival of our people, and they reserved
for us the right to hunt on the lands we ceded, as long as they were not occupied
by settlers,” Not Afraid said. “We want to see these promises and the sacrifices of
our ancestors honored.”
Panel participants include accomplished legal practitioners Kyle Gray, an attorney
with the law firm Holland and Hart, who represented Herrera before the U.S. Supreme
Court; John Knepper, chief deputy for the Wyoming attorney general, who represented
Wyoming before the U.S. Supreme Court; Kelly Rudd, a managing partner at the law firm
Baldwin, Crocker and Rudd in Lander, which specializes in American Indian law; and
Daniel Stone, an attorney and enrolled member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe in Idaho,
where he works as a policy analyst for the tribe’s Fish and Wildlife Department.
The panel is free to students and non-bar members, though registration is required.
There is an admission fee of $30 for members of the bar and $15 for members of the
Federal Indian and Tribal Law Section. Learn more and register at www.wyomingbar.org.
