Jicarilla Apache Tribe v. Board of County Commissioners

OPINION

MONTGOMERY, Chief Justice.

This case involves the subject of federal Indian law. We discuss the subject with some trepidation, given the considerable body of federal statutes and the vast array of sometimes confusing cases surrounding the subject. Nevertheless, the issue in the ease, as the parties stressed at oral argument, is a quite narrow one; and its resolution directly affects a matter in which the appellate courts of this state are vitally interested — the jurisdiction of our trial courts to resolve disputes between or among citizens of the state and arising out of state-law…