United States v. Lavon R. Kent

945 F.2d 1441, 1990 WL 305673
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedSeptember 27, 1991
Docket88-1088
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 945 F.2d 1441 (United States v. Lavon R. Kent) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Lavon R. Kent, 945 F.2d 1441, 1990 WL 305673 (9th Cir. 1991).

Opinions

ORDER

The petition of the United States for rehearing is GRANTED. Our prior decision in this case, United States v. Kent, 912 F.2d 277 (9th Cir.1990), is vacated and the opinion is withdrawn. The matter is submitted on rehearing upon the briefs and record previously filed, and on the petition for rehearing and response thereto. The following opinion, issued upon rehearing, now represents the opinion and decision of this court.

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge, dissents from this order; he would deny the petition for rehearing.

OPINION

CANBY, Circuit Judge:

Lavon R. Kent, a Karuk Indian, appeals her conviction after a bench trial for unauthorized residential occupancy of land in a national forest. Kent contends that the district court erred in holding that she had no individual aboriginal rights to occupy the land in question. She also contends, for the first time on appeal, that she was entitled to occupy the land because the Department of the Interior had issued her a certificate of eligibility for an allotment in a national forest and because the relevant statute contemplated that an Indian would occupy the land before actually applying for an allotment. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

This case was submitted to the district court on stipulated facts. Kent is a member of the federally recognized Karuk Indian Tribe, for whom no reservation has been set aside. Any tribal aboriginal title that [1443]*1443the Karuks possessed in the area involved here has been extinguished; Congress has set aside compensation for the Tribe for the taking of its lands.

Kent moved onto a site at Sandy Bar Creek within the Klamath National Forest in February 1984, and has occupied and possessed that site since then. She has placed a trailer on the site, which she uses as her living quarters, and has planted a garden, which yields food for her sustenance. Kent excludes others from the site.

The United States Forest Service has not issued a special-use authorization to Kent. Nor has the Forest Service granted Kent or anyone else an allotment of land on this site. Kent, however, applied for and on July 18, 1982, received a certificate of eligibility from the Department of the Interior which certifies that she is a California Indian who is eligible to obtain an allotment of land on the public domain or in a national forest.

Kent’s great-grandmother lived at Sandy Bar Creek continuously until her death in 1870. From approximately 1870 to 1984, no blood relative of Kent lived at this site on Sandy Bar Creek. Kent’s mother was born one mile from Sandy Bar Creek and lived there until 1939. Relatives of Kent have allotments just west of Sandy Bar Creek. Every year “since time immemorial” Karuk Indians have traveled along a road immediately adjacent to where Kent resides on Sandy Bar Creek to participate in the Karuk ceremony of Pikiyowish (World Renewal).

On September 4, 1987, the district court found Kent guilty of unauthorized residential occupancy of national forest land, in violation of 16 U.S.C. § 551 (1985) and 36 C.F.R. § 261.10(b) (1988).1 United States v. Kent, 679 F.Supp. 985 (E.D.Cal.1987). The district court subsequently sentenced Kent to a thirty-day jail term and ordered her to pay a $25 penalty assessment. The district court stayed its sentence pending Kent’s appeal of the judgment of conviction. On August 1, 1990, we issued a decision reversing the district court. United States v. Kent, 912 F.2d 277 (9th Cir.1990). We have today granted the government’s petition for rehearing, and vacated our earlier decision. We now affirm the district court’s judgment of conviction.

DISCUSSION

I. Individual Aboriginal Title

At trial, Kent defended her occupancy of this parcel of land as protected by individual aboriginal title. On appeal, Kent argues that the district court erred because its holding was based solely on the extinguishment of Kent’s tribal aboriginal rights, and failed to consider her claim of individual aboriginal right to this parcel of land. Kent relies on the Supreme Court’s decision in Cramer v. United States, 261 U.S. 219, 43 S.Ct. 342, 67 L.Ed. 622 (1923), to support her claim to individual aboriginal title. We reject her contention.

The district court clearly addressed and ruled on Kent’s claims to individual aboriginal title to this parcel of land. After reciting a number of actions which extinguished Karuk tribal title, the district court went on to hold that “[ejven if these actions did not extinguish any right defendant may have as an individual (as opposed to as a Ka-ruk) to occupy a particular parcel of land, this case is still distinguishable from Cramer.” Kent, 679 F.Supp. at 987 (emphasis added).2

More important, the district court properly distinguished Kent’s individual ab[1444]*1444original title claim from those upheld in Cramer. As the district court stated, “[i]n Cramer, the Indians had lived on the same 175 acre parcel with their parents for over sixty years.” Id. Kent, by contrast, has occupied this parcel since 1984. After the parties briefed and argued this appeal, this court applied Cramer to another claim of individual aboriginal title, in United States v. Dann, 873 F.2d 1189 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 890, 110 S.Ct. 234, 107 L.Ed.2d 185 (1989). In Dann, we held that such title can be established, under Cram-er, when an Indian can show that she or her lineal ancestors continuously occupied a parcel of land, as individuals, and that the period of continuous occupancy commenced before the land in question was withdrawn from entry for purposes of settlement. Dann, 873 F.2d at 1198-99.

Kent’s claim fails to meet the requirements established in Dann. She began her occupancy of this parcel of land in 1984, long after her tribe’s title to the land had been extinguished, and long after the land had been established as a National Forest,3 closed to public entry and settlement. No lineal ancestors immediately preceded her in occupancy. We are acutely aware of, and respect, the strong attachment that Kent has by virtue of family, culture and tradition to this parcel of land on Sandy Bar Creek. Cramer, however, permits us to protect such ties in the form of legal title only for those Indians who have maintained a presence on that land. We cannot, under Cramer and Dann, find such title in all Indians who attempt to return to their ancestral lands.

Kent argues for a different application of the rule in Cramer because, she asserts, the Forest was not closed to her because of the Forest Allotment Act and her certificate of eligibility for such an allotment, which she obtained in 1981.4 We question that her certificate, which refers to no specific site, confers upon Kent a right of entry to this particular parcel of land.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. John Sears
652 F. App'x 553 (Ninth Circuit, 2016)
United States v. Bibbins
637 F.3d 1087 (Ninth Circuit, 2011)
United States v. Lowry
512 F.3d 1194 (Ninth Circuit, 2008)
United States v. Susan L. Freed
189 F. App'x 888 (Eleventh Circuit, 2006)
United States v. Murphy-Ellis
47 F. App'x 488 (Ninth Circuit, 2002)
United States v. Robert W. Unser
165 F.3d 755 (Tenth Circuit, 1999)
United States v. Unser
Tenth Circuit, 1999
United States v. Johnson
988 F. Supp. 920 (W.D. North Carolina, 1997)
United States v. James R. Hensher
97 F.3d 1462 (Ninth Circuit, 1996)
Whiterock v. State
918 P.2d 1309 (Nevada Supreme Court, 1996)
John L. Voisin v. Jerry Cole
56 F.3d 75 (Ninth Circuit, 1995)
Pai 'Ohana v. United States
875 F. Supp. 680 (D. Hawaii, 1995)
PaiOhana v. United States
875 F. Supp. 680 (D. Hawaii, 1995)
United States v. David Turk
5 F.3d 544 (Ninth Circuit, 1993)
Larry Howard v. Lawrence J. Barrows
962 F.2d 14 (Ninth Circuit, 1992)
United States v. Lavon R. Kent
945 F.2d 1441 (Ninth Circuit, 1991)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
945 F.2d 1441, 1990 WL 305673, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-lavon-r-kent-ca9-1991.