BANGOR, Maine — The Penobscot Indian Nation and the U.S. Department of Justice are appealing a Maine federal judge’s ruling that found the tribe’s reservation includes the islands on the main stem of the Penobscot River but not the water itself.
The notices that U.S. District Judge George Singal’s decision would be appealed to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in Boston were posted Monday through the court’s electronic case filing system.
Singal’s ruling in December 2015 came more than three years after the tribe filed a lawsuit against the state as a result of former Attorney General William Schneider sending a letter dated Aug. 8, 2012, to the tribal warden service saying that the state, not the tribe, has the authority to charge people with violating fishing regulations and water safety rules, according to court documents.
The tribe alleged in the lawsuit that its reservation includes the water in the river because of the tribe’s sustenance fishing rights. A year later, seven municipalities along the river were granted intervenor status in the case and supported the state’s contention that the reservation included the islands but not the water. One town has since withdrawn as an intervenor, according to the electronic case filing system. The municipalities claimed that a ruling in the tribe’s favor would give it control over water quality on the river and allow the tribe to impose stricter rules than the state does on municipal discharges into the river.
The justice department intervened in the case and supported the tribe’s claims.
Singal based his decision in part on language in the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, which defined the Penobscot Indian Reservation as the islands “consisting solely of Indian Island, also known as Old Town Island, and all islands in that river northward.”
“There is, in the court’s view, no ambiguity in these definitions,” Singal wrote in his 64-page decision. “MICSA is explicitly silent on the issue of any waters being included within the boundaries of the Penobscot Indian Reservation because [the statute] speaks only of ‘lands.’”
The statutes that cover most other tribes around the nation use the phrase “land and natural resources,” the judge wrote.
“Thus, [MICSA’s] use of the word ‘lands,’ instead of the more broadly defined phrase ‘land and natural resources,’ appears to reflect a congressional focus on defining only what land would make up the ‘Penobscot Indian Nation.’”