District Court dismisses NW Band of Shoshone hunting case
By LORI ANN EDMO
Sho-Ban News
BOISE — U.S. District Court Judge David Nye dismissed with prejudice the Northwestern Band of Shoshone case against Gov. Brad Little and state wildlife officials that contended they were wrongly denied hunting rights under the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868.
The Fort Bridger Treaty was signed among the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and the Eastern Shoshone.
It means they will not be able to refile the claim again in the same court.
The court determined Idaho is immune from the lawsuit because it didn’t waive its sovereign immunity. The ruling also said the Northwestern Band is not entitled to hunting rights because the Northwestern Band has not made its permanent home on either the Fort Hall Indian Reservation or the Wind River Reservation that is necessary to share the Fort Bridger Treaty off reservation hunting rights.
The District Court declined to rule on whether the Northwestern Band has maintained political cohesion with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes because it said Treaty rights vest with the tribes at the time of treaty signing. “For a tribe to receive treaty rights, they must show ‘that they maintained political cohesion with the tribal entities created by the treaties.’”
The District Court also declined to rule whether the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes are an indispensable party regarding the sharing of off-reservation treaty hunting rights.
The Northwestern Band previously lost a case in state court in 1997 in State v. Warner where Fort Bridger Treaty rights were claimed. In addition, in 2019 State of Idaho Fish and Games officers cited two Northwestern Band of Shoshone tribal members Wyatt R. Athay and Shanelle M. Long for hunting without state tags. Both asserted they had rights under the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868. Both parties agreed to a stay pending the resolve of this case.
