Native American rights affirmed.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that much of eastern Oklahoma falls within an Indian reservation, a decision that could reshape the criminal justice system by preventing state authorities from prosecuting offenses there that involve Native Americans.
The 5-to-4 decision, potentially one of the most consequential legal victories for Native Americans in decades, could have farreaching implications for the people who live across what the court affirmed was Indian Country. The lands include much of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s second-biggest city.
The case was steeped in the U.S. government’s long history of brutal removals and broken treaties with Indigenous tribes and grappled with whether lands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had remained a reservation after Oklahoma became a state.
The decision puts in doubt hundreds of state convictions of Native Americans and could change the handling of prosecutions across a vast swath of the state. Lawyers also were examining whether it had broader implications for taxing, zoning and other government functions. But many of the specific impacts will be determined by negotiations between state and federal authorities and five Native American tribes in Oklahoma.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Westerner who has sided with tribes in previous cases and joined the court’s more liberal members to form the majority, said that Congress had granted the Creek a reservation and that the United States needed to abide by its promises.
“Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.”
Muscogee leaders hailed the decision as a hardfought victory that clarified the status of their lands. The tribe said it would work with state and federal law enforcement authorities to coordinate public safety within the reservation.
“This is a historic day,” Principal Chief David Hill said in an interview. “This is amazing. It’s never too late to make things right.”
On social media, people celebrated Thursday’s decision with the declaration Native Lives Matter.
“This brings these issues into public consciousness a little bit more,” said John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit organization that has spent five decades fighting for issues like tribal sovereignty and recognition. “That’s one of the biggest problems we have, is that most people don’t know very much about us.”