Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government

In this ease, we must decide whether approximately 1.8 million acres of land in northern Alaska, owned in fee simple by the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, is “Indian country.” We conclude that it is not, and we therefore reverse the judgment below.

I

The Village of Venetie, which is located in Alaska above the Arctic Circle, is home to the Neets’aii Gwieh’in Indians. In 1948, the Secretary of the Interior created a reservation for the Neets’aii Gwieh’in out of the land surrounding Venetie and another nearby tribal village, Arctic…