Analysis Of Chapters 14 And 15 Of American Indian Water System

This week’s readings included chapters 14 and 15 of American Indian Law in a nutshell. In chapter 14, Canby explains Indian water rights with an introduction to the Riparian and Appropriative water right systems, which are implemented in the East and West parts of the United States respectively. The Riparian system gives the sole rights of the water to the owner of land that borders it. Any other riparian owners cannot interfere with each other’s use of water. The Appropriative system gives the sole right of the water to anyone who uses it first, regardless of bordering land, but must be continuously used or else the current user would lose the right to it. Indians, from the establishment of the reservations, obtained water rights that were

In chapter 15, Canby explains the hunting and fishing rights of the Indians as well as the problems that occur in relation to it from the non-Indians. It has been clearly stated and abided by that “a reservation by treaty, statute or agreement includes an implied right of Indians to hunt and fish on that reservation free of regulation by the state” (497). This right deters state interference along with the state’s inability to regulate them even when Public Law 280 in place. The tribes can also hunt and fish off-reservation any specific pieces of land that they chose, as long as it is “on “open and unclaimed lands” within [the] tribe’s aboriginal territory” (500), but they would need a treaty in order to do so. This would also prevent state laws from being enacted upon the tribes, but not “regulations essential to conservation” (501) and also when criminal prohibition comes into play. Federal laws are not exempted unless stated otherwise in the treaties. Temporary rights could not be removed by the President and usufructuary rights. These treaty rights can still be utilized even if a tribe hadn’t exercised it in a long period of

The state can regulate fishing by the Indians whether it be on or off-reservation from using this reason, but only when the waters are shared between Indians and non-Indians. The Supreme Court later on set up propositions that basically gave the states the power to limit how much fish that could be obtained from streams and that allowed the tribes to have “exclusive use of all fishing stations within the reservation” (515). It was clear that the states should only regulate Indian fishing while also abiding by the treaties that the tribes have with the Federal government. The tribes are able to take shellfish from publicly cultivated beds but not from privately owned ones. Wholly protected mammals, like whales, from the oceans were immune to fishing by the tribes. There had been another conflict that occurred on the Great Lakes of Michigan that had to do with “Indian off-reservation rights” (521). The tribes tried to stop the Indian fishing on the lakes for not having licenses, but they could not do that unless it had a strong case for