The court of appeals affirmed a district court judgment in part, reversed in part, and remanded the action with directions. The court held that an Indian tribe had regulatory and adjudicative jurisdiction over defendants who engaged in non-Indian conduct on tribal land, namely the operation of a resort on land leased from the Indian tribe. The court held further that where a non-Indian activity occurred on tribal land, the activity interfered directly with the tribe’s inherent powers to exclude and manage its own lands, and there were no competing state interests at play, the tribe’s status as landowner was enough to support regulatory jurisdiction without considering seminal Supreme Court authority on the issue of tribal regulation of non-Indians on non-Indian land.
Water Wheel Camp Recreational Area, Inc. leased twenty-six acres of Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) tribal land, located within the CRIT reservation, on which it operated a recreational resort. Robert Johnson, a non-Indian, was the owner and president of Water Wheel.
