Who should control the land of Oklahoma?

Oklahoma is a living monument to the wars between Native people on this continent and the white invaders from Europe.

Like nearly half of the 50 states, its name comes from the people who lived on this land before Columbus arrived: Kansas, Missouri, Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, and more.

The Supreme Court ruled on July 9 that Oklahoma has no jurisdiction over the Cherokee Nation, the Muscogee Nation, the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation, nor the Seminole Nation.  These nations govern their own people and their own land--though they do have to obey federal law.  The Navajo Nation in Arizona has a similar status.

Two years ago I drove from Georgia through Alabama, Missouri, and Oklahoma on my way back to California.  I was surprised to encounter all the Native American reservations in eastern Oklahoma.  As a westerner, I was only familiar with Navajos, Southern Utes, Hopis, Arapahoes, and other nations in California, Washington, and Alaska.

More things I learned: 

1. the Muscogee tribe was renamed "Creek" by white invaders.
2. the Muscogee today are the fourth largest indigenous group in the US.  

As Jack Healy explains in the New York Times:
"The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, which has 86,100 enrolled members, stretches across three million acres of rolling hills, grasslands, small towns and cities across 11 counties in eastern Oklahoma. Sprinkled across that land are more than a dozen ceremonial grounds where citizens meet to tend sacred fires and participate in stomp-dance ceremonies."

To understand the huge significance of the Supreme Court ruling, you have to go back in history to 1507 and 1832.

In 1507 two German mapmakers named the newly known part of the world for the Italian merchant and explorer Amerigo Vespucci.  That's how these continents got the name "America."  Why the people who lived there were called "Indians" is another story, but many of the original people's place names remained, becoming the names of cities and states.

In the early 1800s, European settlers in several southeastern states wanted to have the native people removed to west of the Mississippi. Here's how Wikipedia summarizes the situation: 

"At the turn of the century, the Cherokee still possessed about 53,000 square miles (140,000 km²) of land in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.^[13] In the meantime, white settlers eager for new lands urged the removal of the Cherokee and the opening of their remaining lands to settlement, pursuant to the promise made by the United States in 1802 to the State of Georgia.^[14]"

The Cherokee sued the state of Georgia for removing their rights and passing laws that would "annihilate them as a society." The case went to the Supreme Court, which declined to rule in 1831 and then ruled in favor of the Cherokees in 1832:

"...in Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was sovereign. According to the decision rendered by Chief Justice John Marshall, this meant that Georgia had no rights to enforce state laws in its territory.^[33]"

Unfortunately for the Cherokee, however, the US president at the time, Andrew Jackson, decided to ignore the Supreme Court:

Historical signs near Madrid, MO, marking place
where barges took Cherokees across Mississippi River

"President Andrew Jackson decided not to uphold the ruling of this case, and directed the expulsion of the Cherokee Nation. U.S. Army forces were used in some cases to round them up. Their expulsion and subsequent route is called "The Trail of Tears." Of the 15,000 who left, 4,000 died on the journey to "Indian Territory" in the present-day U.S. state of Oklahoma.^[34]"

These banished people were sent west of the Mississippi, and treaties promised them that the "Oklahoma Territory" would be theirs forever.  That lasted until white men wanted the land.  (The US had bought this land from France in 1802--the Louisiana Purchase.)

During the Civil War, the Muscogee, Cherokee, and other first nations tried to remain neutral but their citizens ended up fighting for both sides.  Things got worse after the war, according to Healy:

The Muscogee lost nearly half their lands in an 1866 Reconstruction treaty, and over the following decades saw them splintered off and sold to private owners. State officials began denying that there had ever been a Creek reservation on land that became Oklahoma.  

Another historical footnote: Freed slaves, formerly owned by Muscogee, settled in the city founded by those who walked the Trail of Tears (Tulasi now called Tulsa).  The slaves prospered and their business center became known as the Black Wall Street--burned down by white men in 1921.

Yes, there's a lot of history in Oklahoma.

Healy applauds the Supreme Court decision: "The history of treaties between tribes and the United States is rife with coercion and broken promises, and activists said the court's decision was remarkable for doing something seemingly simple: Holding the United States to the promises it had made to tribal nations."

Practically, The court’s decision means that Indigenous people who commit crimes on the eastern Oklahoma reservation, which includes much of Tulsa, cannot be prosecuted by state or local law enforcement, and must instead face justice in tribal or federal courts.

I applaud the Supreme Court decision too, though it does invalidate the Oklahoma sentencing of a Native American man for child sexual abuse.  From now on, the Muscogee will prosecute cases that occur on their land, or federal prosecutors will take the cases. 

The US president has broken promises and treaties with Native people so many times.  

As a child, I learned the name "Indian giver" for someone who gave me something and then took it back.  But now I know that my government is the entity that has set aside land for native people and then taken it back many times.  Somehow that label got stuck on the victims whose land was grabbed, not on the true perpetrator.