In 1978, the United States Supreme Court decided a case called Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978). The question before the Court was whether tribes had the power to prosecute non-Indian defendants in tribal court for crimes committed on reservations. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion in which the Court held that tribes did not have that power because it was “inconsistent with their status” as wards of the federal government. Rehn