The Supreme Court ruled today that state and county laws do not apply to members of the Creek Nation within the boundaries of the original Creek lands ceded to them when they were forced to move across the Mississippi River in the 1830s. The ruling recognizes that the federal treaty with the Creek Nation still applies, and the treaty said that no state or county laws could supercede tribal laws within the boundaries of the ceded land.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/supreme-court-oklahoma-mcgirt-creek-nation.html?
“Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law,” Gorsuch wrote.
“Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word."
Strictly speaking, all they held today was that the state of Oklahoma does not have authority to prosecute Native Americans (belonging to those particular tribes) for crimes occurring on the land held to be reservations (much of eastern Oklahoma, including Tulsa). Thus, the petitioner’s conviction for raping his wife’s four-year-old granddaughter was thrown out. He might get retried by a tribal court, but the crime occurred in 1996, so there may be problems with a statute of limitations or the preservation of evidence.
More broadly, every other Native American convicted by the state for crimes in those areas is probably going to have his conviction thrown out. There are on the order of 2000 Native Americans in Oklahoma State prisons, but I don’t know how many of those involved crimes on tribal land.
It’s not clear yet what this means for other legal actions by the state of Oklahoma in connection with Native Americans, but I suspect that the validity of every state marriage or divorce involving a Native American may be in question. Every property tax assessment by the state in that area and potentially every real estate transaction in that area might be challenged as illegal.
Sounds like everyone should sit down and discuss matters.
Yea, I am really curious to see how this will all play out. It could be a real non-issue (for most people) or a disaster.
This is the part I would be most concerned about. If the Tribes were unlawfully disestablished, it looks like their title over their lands (including mineral rights, rents from pipelines crossing said land, etc…) was wrongfully extinguished. I can see this decision instantly putting a cloud over every single real property transaction within the affected region for over the past 110 years.
EDIT: I’m pretty sure the Cushing hub, one of the major oil and gas distribution and pricing nodes, is within the affected area. 110 years of back rents, royalties…unwinding this will be impressive.
Yes, well, this is why you really should uphold your end of a treaty instead of crapping on it for the better part of two centuries.
It does seem that the major parties involved are willing to work something out to prevent complete chaos. That just leaves self-entitled individuals and the occasional victim of collateral damage to sort out.
Not only crap on it, but also scam them out of their oil rights on their land and murder them if they don’t go along with it. If you haven’t read it, Killers of the Flower Moon paints a pretty graphic picture.
Interesting to see how this plays out.
I used to be stationed at Fort Sill (Lawton OK), and on base they have the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark and Museum. My wife and I visited a few years back and a gentleman named Towana Spivey was giving a private tour to another gentleman. Mr. Spivey asked if we’d like to join them, and we did. It was excellent.
I would think a guy like Towana Spivey would be active in these discussions. But I just did a news search and he does not appear to be.
https://www.google.com/search?q=towana+spivey&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS895US895&sxsrf=ALeKk01YLwB84PQHWonPmd5gzxpONMserw:1594414159921&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjAzYHNx8PqAhXrCTQIHZGeBmcQ_AUoAnoECAsQBA&biw=1434&bih=940
Indeed. Ultimately it comes down to how far does Gorsuch want to carry this out. Is it only for criminal charges against Native Americans in East Oklahoma or does he expand it? I can imagine some folks in Eastern Oklahoma are prepping some law suits.
The ruling is more that the reservation was never dis-established, rather than that it was dis-established unlawfully. I.e., that Congress could have done so but didn’t. Not sure if that makes a difference.
My mention of private real estate transactions may be overblown. I saw somewhere that Congress did pass a law specifically allowing tribe members to own land individually and to sell it if they chose. So it may not be the case that the tribes had collective ownership rights that got improperly overridden.