Federal government

From the 2024 DOR Tax Exemption Study

Det. No. 10-0307R, 31 WTD 7 (May 31, 2012) 11 ANALYSIS In McClanahan v. Arizona Tax Comm’n, 411 U.S. 164, 172, 93 S.Ct. 1257 (1973), the U. S. Supreme Court articulated the tradition of tribal sovereignty against which issues of a state’s authority over Indian tribes, their members, and activity in Indian country must be considered. The court said: It must always be remembered that the various Indian tribes were once independent and sovereign nations, and that their claim to sovereignty long predates that of our own Government. Indians today are American citizens. They have the right to vote, to use state courts, and they receive some state services. But it is nonetheless still true, as it was in the last century, that “the relations of the Indian tribes living within the borders of the United States . . . [is] an anomalous one and of a complex character. . . . They were, and always have been, regarded as having a semi-independent position when they preserved their tribal relations; not as States, not as nations, not as possessed of the full attributes of sovereignty, but as a separate people, with the power of regulating their internal and social relations, and thus far not brough