A RECIPROCITY: OFF-RESERVATION TREATY HUNTING RIGHTS

Hunting encompasses a reciprocal relationship between animal and hunter—a social act between two equals. To hunt is to be given a gift and to be indebted to the animal. American Indians recognize an animal’s autonomy and “inner vital essence of being”—the animal as a “loci of causality in the dynamics of the universe.” The social reciprocity between hunter and animal is greater than metaphor or belief; it is real. Since time immemorial, tribes have relied on the gift of the animal for survival.

By doing so, they have established what American law recognizes as aboriginal title. As Montana tribes negotiated the cession of their traditional territories and took smaller tracts called reservations, many tribes impliedly reserved the right to hunt within these tracts and some reserved the right outside the reservation’s exterior boundary. The tribal signatories’ understanding that the animal is “intimately connected and related” to the hunter informs their reserved right . . .