1.5 million acres of Navajo land from any type of development, including paving roadways and even roof repair. This was meant to be a temporary incentive to push tribe negotiations but lasted over forty years until 2009 when President Obama lifted the moratorium. Still, the legacy of the Bennett Freeze looms over the region as seen by the nearly third-world conditions on the reservation – seventy-five percent of people do not have access to electricity and housing situations are poor. Eastern Oklahoma Much of what is now Oklahoma was considered Indian Territory from the 1830s. The tribes in the area attempted to join the union as the native State of Sequoyah in 1905 as a means of retaining control of their lands, but this was unsuccessful and the lands were merged into Oklahoma with the Enabling Act of 1906. This act had been taken to disestablish the reservation in order for the foundation of the state to proceed. In July 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the eastern area- about half of the modern state- never lost its status as a native reservation. This includes the city of Tulsa. The area includes lands of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee and Seminole. The ruling is based on an 1832 treaty, which the court ruled was still in force, adding that "Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word." Life and culture Many Native Americans who live on reservations deal with the federal government through two agencies: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service. The standard of living on some reservations is comparable to that in the developing world, with problems of infant mortality, low life expectancy, poor nutrition, poverty, and alcohol and drug abuse. The two poorest counties in the United States are Buffalo County, South Dakota, home of the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, and Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, according to data compiled by the 2000 census. This disparity in living standards can partly be explained by centuries long instances of settler colonialism which have systematically harmed indigenous people’s relations with land, and have attempted to erase their cultural ways of life. Potawatomi scholar Kyle Powys Whyte has stated,“While Indigenous peoples, as any society, have long histories of adapting to change, colonialism caused changes at such a rapid pace that many