US Supreme Court: The New Battleground for War on Indian Country

Centuries ago, the federal government used the U.S. Cavalry to strip us Native people of our lands, massacring us on horseback riding through the Great Plains.

In contemporary times, the throat slashing continues on a different kind of battlefield.  The incivility of the U.S. government against Native Americans continues in the courts, which aims to nullify the power and sovereignty of tribal nations.

That is what happened this week when the U.S. Supreme Court announced its 5-4 decision to allow the state of Oklahoma to have jurisdiction to prosecute or not prosecute non-Native people who commit crimes against Native Americans in Indian Country. 

Wednesday’s decision on the Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta case, which was argued before the Supreme Court in April, was brought by the state of Oklahoma following an earlier Supreme Court ruling that upset the state.

In the earlier July 2020 decision, the court affirmed that a large swath of eastern Oklahoma – three million acres, including most of the city of Tulsa – is on an Indian reservation, and that the land promised to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation by treaty remained rightfully theirs.

The country’s highest court ruled two years ago that Congress never “disestablished” the 1866 boundaries of the Muscogee Nation.

When the Supreme Court rendered its decision Wednesday in Castro-Huerta v. Oklahoma, it held that “the Federal Government and the State have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian Country.” 

This diminishes tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction to protect Tribal citizens. Failure to protect Tribal citizens is, in effect, the same as waging war against us.

“Unauthorized and unconsented intrusions on tribal sovereignty are antithetical to tribal sovereignty and tribal treaty rights,” said John Echohawk (Pawnee), executive director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), in a statement Wednesday.

Read more here.