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Delegates from 34 Native
tribes at the Creek Council House in Indian Territory, now
called Oklahoma, 1880. National Archives
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Some Oklahomans are expressing
trepidation about the Supreme Courts recent
ruling that much of the eastern part of the state belongs to
the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. They wonder whether they must now pay
taxes to or be governed by the Muscogee.
In alarmist language, Sen.
Ted Cruz of neighboring Texas tweeted that the Supreme Court
just gave away half of Oklahoma, literally. Manhattan is next.
In fact, the landmark
July 9 decision applies only to criminal law. It gives federal
and tribal courts jurisdiction over felonies committed by tribal
citizens within the Creek reservation, not the state of Oklahoma.
Any shock that tribal nations have
sovereignty over their own land reflects a serious misunderstanding
of American history. For Oklahoma indeed, all of North America
has always been, for lack of a better term, Indian Country.
Indian Country
As both an educator
and scholar,
I work to correct the erasure of Indigenous histories through my
research and teaching.
North America was not a vast, unpopulated wilderness when white
colonizers arrived in 1620. Up to 100
million people of more than 1,000 sovereign Indigenous nations
occupied the area that would become the United States. At the time,
fewer than 80 million people lived in Europe.
Americas Indigenous nations were incredibly advanced, with
extensive trade networks and economic centers, superior agricultural
cultivation, well developed metalwork, pottery and weaving practices,
as historian Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz has comprehensively detailed.
Unlike Europe, with its periodic epidemics, North America had little
disease, Dunbar-Ortiz says. People used herbal medicines, dentistry,
surgery and daily hygienic bathing to salubrious effect.
Historically, Indigenous nations emphasized
equity, consensus and community. Though individualism would
come to define the United States, my research
finds that Native Americans retain these values today, along with
our guiding principles of respect, responsibility and reciprocity.
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The US has violated every
treaty it has made with Indian Tribes. Public.Resource.Org
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European and American colonizers did
not hold these same values. From 1492 to 1900, they pushed inexorably
westward across the North American continent, burning
Native villages, destroying
crops, committing
sexual assaults, enslaving
people and perpetrating
massacres. The government did not punish these atrocities against
Indigenous Nations and their citizens.
Citing the so-called Doctrine
of Discovery and Manifest
Destiny, U.S. policymakers argued that the federal government
had a divine duty to fully develop the region. Racist in language
and logic, they contended that Indians
did not know how to work or to care for the land because they
were inferior to whites.
Oklahoma was born of this institutionalized
racism.
Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Cherokee, Chickasaw,
Choctaw, Creek and Seminole nations known as the Five Tribes
were forced from their ancestral homelands in the southeast
and relocated to Indian Territory, as Oklahoma was then
designated. Half of the Muscogee and Cherokee populations died from
brutal and inhumane treatment as they were forcibly marched 2,200
miles across nine states to their new homelands in what most Americans
call the Trail of Tears.
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A 1951 painting by artist
Blackbear Bosin of people on the Trail of Tears. Al Moldvay/The
Denver Post via Getty Images
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Indian
Territory, which occupied all Oklahoma minus the panhandle,
was almost 44 million acres of fertile rolling prairies, rivers
and groves of enormous trees. Several Indian nations already lived
in the area, including the Apache, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Osage
and Wichita.
Legally, Indian Territory was
to belong to the tribal nations forever, and trespass by settlers
was forbidden. But over the next two centuries, Congress would violate
every one of the 375 treaties it made with Indian tribes as well
as numerous statutory acts, according
the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
By 1890, only about 25 million acres of Indian Territory remained.
The Muscogee lost nearly half their lands in an 1866 Reconstruction-era
treaty. And in 1889, almost
2 million acres in western Oklahoma were redesignated as Unassigned
Lands and opened to white settlement. By 1890,
the U.S. Census showed that only 28% of people in Indian Territory
were actually Indian.
With statehood in 1907, Oklahoma assumed jurisdiction over all
its territory, ultimately denying
that the Muscogee had ever had a reservation there. That is
the historic injustice corrected by the Supreme Court on July 9.
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Eastern Oklahoma was
granted by Congress to Native tribes in the 19th century.
Kmusser/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
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Respect, responsibility and reciprocity
Despite all the brutality and broken promises, the Five Tribes
have contributed socially, culturally and economically to Oklahoma
far beyond the shrinking bounds of their territories, in ways that
benefit all residents.
The public school system created by the Choctaws shortly after
their arrival became the model for Oklahoma schools that exists
today. Last year, Oklahoma
tribes contributed over US$130 million to Oklahoma public schools.
Oklahoma tribes also enrich
Oklahomas economy, employing over 96,000 people most
of them non-Native and attracting tourists with their cultural
events. In 2017, Oklahoma tribes produced almost $13 billion in
goods and services and paid out $4.6 billion in wages and benefits.
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, in particular, invests
heavily in the state, creating businesses, building roads and
providing jobs, health care and social services in 11 Oklahoma counties.
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A 2012 exhibition on
Muscogee achievement at the Smithsonian Institutes National
Museum of the American Indian. Tim Evanson/flickr, CC BY
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Still our homelands
Citizens of the Five Tribes have also contributed to broader American
society.
Before the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, the Choctaw
Code Talkers used their language as code for the United States
in World War I. Lt. Col Ernest
Childers, a Muscogee, won the Medal of Honor for his service
in World War II. U.S. Poet Laureate Joy
Harjo, also a Muscogee, is the first Indigenous poet laureate.
Mary Ross,
a Cherokee, was the first known Indigenous woman engineer. And John
Herrington, Chickasaw, was a NASA astronaut. These are but a
few examples.
The strong collaborative leadership of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation
was apparent
after the Supreme Courts ruling in Principal Chief David
Hills official response.
Todays decision will allow the Nation to honor our
ancestors by maintaining our established sovereignty and territorial
boundaries, Hill said, adding: We will continue to work
with federal and state law enforcement agencies to ensure that public
safety will be maintained.
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