THE U.S. SUPREME Court issued a decision last week that altered the map of Oklahoma. The eastern half of the state, including much of Tulsa, is now, for legal purposes, Indian country. The Supreme Court decision was uncommon — Indigenous people have seen few victories so sweeping in the high court — but treaty violations like those that occurred in Oklahoma are not.
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“As important and right on as this decision is, it does not give tribes anything new,” Sarah Krakoff, a law professor at the University of Colorado, told The Intercept. “There are these treaty promises and treaty rights, but tribes have to litigate to make them real, especially in the modern era, because from the time the treaties were negotiated until now, federal Indian policies abandoned commitment to treaties.”
Rulings like the one in Oklahoma, she added, affirm a reality that has been routinely ignored: “Treaties are the law of the land.”
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