Justices rule swath of Okla. remains tribal land

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains an American Indian reservation, a decision that state and federal officials have warned could throw Oklahoma into chaos.

The court’s 5-4 decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, means that Oklahoma prosecutors lack the authority to pursue criminal cases against American Indian defendants in parts of Oklahoma that include most of Tulsa, the state’s secondlargest city.

“On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. … Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word,” Gorsuch wrote in a decision joined by the court’s liberal members.

The court’s ruling casts doubt on hundreds of convictions won by local prosecutors. But Gorsuch suggested optimism.

Oklahoma’s three U.S. attorneys quickly released a joint statement expressing confidence that “tribal, state, local and federal law enforcement will work together to continue providing exceptional public safety “under the ruling. “The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation congratulates the Muscogee Creek Nation on today’s historic ruling by the Supreme Court. We have fought our own battles here to reclaim homelands taken illegally by the state of Connecticut and we join in celebrating a historic ruling that holds the federal government to its word,” said Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.

“We continue to work in mutual respect with state and federal governments. But today’s ruling makes clear what was established in agreements signed generations ago, that Tribes were granted sovereign rights to treaty-defined lands forever,” Butler said.

Associated Press file photo A detail of the 1790 Treaty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nations and the United States on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations” in Washington.