Wilson v. Omaha Tribe
Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U.S. 653 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that in a land dispute, 25 U.S.C. § 194 applied only to individuals and not a state, that federal law governed the tribe's right to possession, but that state law was to be used in determining how that applied to the natural movement of a river's boundaries. Background In 1854, the Omaha Tribe and the United States entered into a treaty that provided for the tribe to have a reservation in Nebraska, bounded on the east by the center line of the Missouri River. In 1867, a survey by the Federal General Land Office established the boundaries. During the intervening years, changes in the river's course occurred. leaving a good deal of land from the survey on the Iowa side of the river. Non-Indian farmers had also occupied the land in question over those same year. On April 2, 1975, the tribe dispossessed the farmers with the assistance of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the State of Iowa, Wilson, and others filed suits to obtain title to the land in Iowa claimed by the tribe. District Court