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: That’s one of the biggest problems we have, is that most people don’t know very much about us.” The court’s decision means that Indigenous people who commit crimes on the eastern Oklahoma reservation, which includes much of Tulsa, cannot be prosecuted by state or local law enforcement, and must instead face justice in tribal or federal courts. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. warned in a dissenting opinion that the court’s decision would wreak havoc and confusion on Oklahoma’s criminal justice system. “The state’s ability to prosecute serious crimes will be hobbled and decades of past convictions could well be thrown out,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “ On top of that, the court has profoundly destabilized the governance of eastern Oklahoma.” Earlier, the Justice Department raised concerns about how federal prosecutors would cope with a new onslaught of cases they would be suddenly responsible for investigating. And lawyers were parsing whether the decision might affect taxes, adoption or environmental regulations on the reservation lands. But experts in Indian law said the decision’s effects would be more muted, and would change little for non-Natives who live in the three-million-acre swath of Oklahoma that the court declared to be a reservation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. “Not one inch of land changed hands today,” said Jonodev Chaudhuri, ambassador for the Creek Nation. “ All that happened was clarity was brought to potential prosecutions within Creek Nation.”