It is not a dispute over compliance with IGRA, and does not belong in federal court. Congress did not define “member” when it enacted IGRA, nor would federally imposed criteria be consonant with federal Indian policy. The great weight of authority holds that tribes have exclusive authority to determine membership issues. See Martinez v. Southern Ute Tribe, 249 F.2d 915, 920 (10th Cir.1957), cert. denied, 357 U.S. 924, 78 S.Ct. 1374, 2 L.Ed.2d 1376 (1958) (“[t]he Courts have consistently recognized that in the absence of express legislation by Congress to the contrary, a tribe has complete authority to determine all questions of its own membership as a political entity”); see also Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 72 n. 32, 98 S.Ct. 1670, 1684 n. 32, 56 L.Ed.2d 106 (1978) (<HOLDING>). A sovereign tribe’s ability to determine its
holding that federal court lacks jurisdiction to decide tribal membership disputes holding that an indian tribes exercise of criminal jurisdiction over nonindians is inconsistent with the domesticdependent status of the tribes and that tribes may not assume such jurisdiction without congressional authorization holding that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to determine whether a tribes membership requirements violated icra and noting that a tribes right to define its own membership for tribal purposes has long been recognized as central to its existence as an independent political community holding that indian tribes lack tribal jurisdiction over crimes committed by nonmember indians within the tribes reservation holding the icra not to abrogate tribal sovereign immunity because nothing on the face of title i of the icra purports to subject tribes to the jurisdiction of the federal courts in civil actions for injunctive or declaratory relief