Page:Washington Department of Licensing v. Cougar Den, Inc..pdf/30

8 give full effect to the treaty’s terms and the Yakamas’ original understanding of them. After all and as we’ve seen, the treaty doesn’t just guarantee tribal members the right to travel on the highways free of most restrictions on their movement; it also guarantees tribal members the right to move goods freely to and from market using those highways. And it’s impossible to transport goods without possessing them. So a tax that falls on the Yakamas’ possession of goods as they travel to and from market on the highway violates the treaty just as much as a tax on travel alone would.

Consider the alternative. If the State could save the tax here simply by labeling it a fee on the “possession” of a good, the State might just as easily revive the fishing license fee Tulee struck down simply by calling it a fee on the “possession” of fish. That, of course, would be ridiculous. The Yakamas’ right to fish includes the right to possess the fish they catch–just like their right to move goods on the highways embraces the right to possess them there. Nor does the State’s reply solve the problem. It accepts, as it must, that possessing fish is “integral” to the right to fish. Post, at 6, n. 2 (, dissenting). But it stands pat on its assertion that the treaty protects nothing more than a personal right to travel, ignoring all of the facts and binding findings before us establishing that the treaty also guarantees a right to move (and so possess) goods freely as they travel to and from market. Ibid.

What about the supposed “mink coat” anomaly? Under the terms of the treaty before us, it’s true that a Yakama who buys a mink coat (or perhaps some more likely item) at an off-reservation store in Washington will have to pay sales tax because the treaty is silent there. And it is also true that a Yakama who buys the same coat right over the state line, pays any taxes due at market there, and then drives back to the reservation using the public highways is