WASHINGTON — President Bush’s first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court worked as a contract attorney for the state of Alaska on several high profile legal cases during the 1990s, including a successful bid to deny “Indian country” status to lands owned by the Venetie tribal government.

Bush announced Tuesday night that he nominated Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

This is the second time Bush has offered Roberts a judicial position. In 2001, the president nominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, one step down from the nation’s high court.

At that time, Roberts drew praise from officials in the administration of Alaska’s then-governor, Democrat Tony Knowles. Knowles’ administration had hired Roberts as a contract attorney for several cases. The White House even put Knowles’ attorney general, Bruce Botelho, on a list of references when it announced Roberts nomination in 2001.

“It’s probably helpful just because I’m a ‘D,’” Botelho said at the time.

Roberts’ first contract with the state was on the Venetie case, when the state went looking for the best Supreme Court litigator it could find.

“Our interview with John was the most collegial,” Botelho recalled at the time of Robert’s appeals court nomination. “He exuded a warmth as a person, clearly signaled to us that he understood the Supreme Court quite well and had a good preliminary instinct about the case we intended to bring.”

Venetie’s government had claimed authority to levy $161,000 in taxes on a state contractor that built a local school for the Yukon Flats village. The tribe argued that its lands were Indian country and therefore companies working there were subject to its governmental powers.

The state said no. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed in early 1998, overturning a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision. The high court said Congress, in passage of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, had turned away from its traditional relationship with other Native American tribes and largely ended the Indian country concept in Alaska.

Roberts also represented the state before the 9th Circuit as it defended its authority over navigable waters in the subsistence fishing case brought by Katie John. John said the federal government had a ownership interest in the waters and thus was bound by the federal subsistence preference law to manage the waters to provide for her traditional Native fish camp on the Copper River.

In May of 2001, just before Bush nominated Roberts to the D.C. court, the final appeals court panel ruled in favor of John, 8-3. Knowles declined to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, saying he had had a change of heart.

Roberts hasn’t always opposed Native American groups in the courts, though. He defended a long-standing election system in Hawaii that allowed only Native Hawaiians to vote for trustees of a state agency that serves Native Hawaiians. Roberts argued that the Constitution allows such differential treatment of Indian tribal members. The court, in 2000, disagreed, 7-2.

A reporter asked Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., at a news conference Tuesday night what Roberts’ nomination meant to Native Americans.

“It’s too early to tell,” said Schumer. Schumer noted that most of Roberts’ career has been spent working for others, so it’s hard to say what his personal views might be.

Sen. Ted Stevens said Tuesday night that he knows Roberts professionally. They have met a number of times, he said, including during the Venetie case.

Stevens said he had spoken with Bush about the upcoming nomination. “Judge Roberts apparently has the qualifications I suggested to the president in a nomineee, in terms of academic accomplishment, public service and general practice,” Stevens said in a statement relayed through his spokeswoman.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also issued a brief statement about Roberts Tuesday night. Her spokesman, Elliott Bundy, said the senator did not know Roberts personally.

“Judge John Roberts has the qualifications and experience to be an excellent Supreme Court Justice,” Murkowski stated. “He has been written about as a judge who fairly and equally applies the law, and I look forward to the confirmation process.”

Roberts, before his appeals court appointment, was also the state’s initial attorney on a Supreme Court dispute over ownership of lands in Southeast Alaska that began early in the decade and just concluded in June. The state lost its claim to the waters within Glacier Bay National Park and the “doughnut hole” waters more than three miles on all sides from islands in Southeast Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago.

Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached via e-mail at sbishop@news miner.com.