Title: Landmark Supreme Court Ruling Affirms Native American Rights in Oklahoma - The New York Times
Headings: Landmark Supreme Court Ruling Affirms Native American Rights in Oklahoma
Landmark Supreme Court Ruling Affirms Native American Rights in Oklahoma
A New Map of Oklahoma
How the court ruled

Content: The court was faced with the question of whether lands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had remained a reservation after Oklahoma became a state and the tribe’s lands were fractured and sold off and its powers of self-governance were attacked by Congress. Some Indigenous activists and lawyers said they were not surprised that Justice Gorsuch had broken with his fellow conservatives. On the court, he had provided the pivotal vote in favor of Indigenous rights in cases dealing with a Native American cited for illegal hunting in Wyoming, and about fuel taxes imposed on a business owned by a member of the Yakama Nation. “Reading it, the understanding of what has happened to our people was nice to see acknowledged at this level of the government,” said Sarah Deer, a lawyer and a professor at the University of Kansas, who is also a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. “ It’s not something we’ve seen from the court very often. It has a lot of meaning.” Some legal scholars said that Justice Gorsuch did not favor the tribes, but had simply adhered to the language of the treaties. For generations, tribes have been asking the United States to honor the written agreements they made. Lindsay Robertson, who teaches federal Indian law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, said Justice Gorsuch did just that: “ It doesn’t matter that a million-plus non-Indians live there now.