PostEverything • Perspective

Half the land in Oklahoma could be returned to Native Americans. It should be.

A Supreme Court case about jurisdiction in an obscure murder has huge implications for tribes.

By Rebecca Nagle
Rebecca Nagle is a writer, advocate and citizen of Cherokee Nation living in Tahlequah, Okla.
November 28 at 12:20 PM
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Land loss for Native Americans is framed as a historic phenomenon, but for tribes in Oklahoma, it never stopped. Through allotment, the Cherokee Nation lost 74 percent of our treaty territory. Today, we still lose land every time an acre is sold to a non-Indian, inherited by someone less than half blood quantum, or even when an owner lifts restrictions to qualify for a mortgage. After a century of the legal status quo, the Cherokee Nation has jurisdiction of only 2 percent of our land left after allotment. While the initial hemorrhage of land loss occurred in previous centuries, we are still bleeding.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could make the bleeding stop.

On Aug. 28, 1999, on a rural road outside Henryetta, Okla., Patrick Murphy murdered fellow Creek citizen George Jacobs. He was tried and sentenced to death. In 2004, Murphy’s public defender argued that the crime occurred within Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation and — because only tribes and the federal government can prosecute crimes on Indian land — the state of Oklahoma did not have jurisdiction to try the case. In 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed. Oklahoma appealed, and now the outcome of Murphy v. Carpenter affects not only the fate of one man but the treaty territory of five tribes and nearly half the land in Oklahoma.
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Rebecca Nagle is a writer, advocate and citizen of Cherokee Nation living in Tahlequah, Okla. Follow https://twitter.com/rebeccanagle