The long struggle for Oklahoma's tribal sovereignty | People

After attempting to sue the Oklahoma Attorney General and Governor for the documents she needed for her reporting, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle is now releasing her book documenting the Five Tribes' struggle for sovereignty that led to a groundbreaking legal decision.

In the McGirt vs. Oklahoma (2020), the Supreme Court ruled that criminal cases involving tribal members on tribal lands are tribal, not state, jurisdiction, leading to federal recognition of Oklahoma reservations for the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole tribes.

“I have been covering the McGirt case since 2017 and have also written articles for ICT,” Nagle told ICT and the Tulsa World. “This book is very thoroughly researched. I interviewed over a hundred people, collected thousands of documents and even sued the Attorney General and the Governor of Oklahoma to get the documents.”

Nagle filed a records request seeking emails between Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and various oil and gas industry leaders both before and after the McGirt decision.

After the decision, Stitt formed a commission of oil and gas experts to make recommendations to Congress. Their recommendations were not adopted, but they did recommend that Congress not consider Indian lands as reservations and overturn the McGirt decision.

After not receiving her records, she contacted the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press. The organization's attorney, Kathryn E. Gardner, filed a lawsuit on Nagle's behalf against Stitt and Attorney General John M. O'Connor, alleging that both officials' withholding of the documents she requested violated the Oklahoma Department of Libraries' Open Records Act.

Nagle agreed to dismiss the lawsuit in 2023 after Stitt and O'Connor produced more than 700 pages of email communications with various executives leading up to the McGirt decision, helping her fill in gaps she needed in her reporting.

Her first book, By the Fire We Carry, examines the decades-long struggle for tribal sovereignty after all Five Tribes were relocated to Oklahoma.

The Sharp vs Murphy (2020) led to tribal sovereignty rights for Oklahoma tribes and the famous McGirt decision, which upheld the Muscogee Nation’s Sharp vs Murphy Case.

Nagle's book examines in depth the Sharp vs Murphy Case involving the murder of Muscogee citizen George Jacobs by Muscogee citizen Patrick Murphy. Murphy was convicted of second-degree murder in McIntosh County and sentenced to death in 2000. In 2020, the conviction was overturned after a judge ruled that because the crime occurred on Indian territory, it should have been tried in federal court under the Major Crimes Act. This was the first time that Muscogee Nation territory was recognized as a reservation by the federal government.

The McGirt decision was made using the same reasoning on June 9, 2020, the same day as the Sharp decision. Both accused criminals were given the opportunity for a retrial in tribal court because they were tribal members who committed their crimes on tribal lands that the court considered a reservation, thus affirming federal recognition of the Muscogee reservation.

Since those two decisions, eight more tribal reservations in the state have been recognized and sovereignty has been returned to all of the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, meaning they are now subject only to tribal and federal law. Individual tribal members are also subject to tribal law if they committed their crime within the boundaries of their reservation, or federal law if their crime falls under the Major Crimes Act.

A major character in Nagle's book is her own Cherokee ancestor, Major Ridge. Major was a title he adopted as a first name. He was one of the tribal leaders who agreed to give up the Cherokee homeland in Georgia before they were relocated to Oklahoma. He was later murdered for his supposed treason.

Nagle describes Ridge's decision not as a betrayal but as a choice of survival, as her ancestor had hoped that the relocation would save the lives of his people when U.S. President Andrew Jackson threatened them.

A review in Publisher's Weekly said Nagle “weaves the complex courtroom drama with a sensitive, harrowing summary of the 1999 murder. … Nagle's narrative is clear and moving, especially as she uses archival sources to recreate the growing terror experienced by Native peoples in the Southeast as violent mobs of strangers invaded their land. It's a real stunner.”

Nagle also hosts the podcast, This country, on Crooked Media, which tells the story of custody battles over indigenous children that led to a federal court case and threatened tribal sovereignty.

Magic City Books will host their book launch on September 10 at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. Former Muscogee Nation Chief James Floyd, who was in office during the McGirt decision, attended, as did Muscogee elder Rosemary McCombs Maxey and Phlip Tinker, an Osage attorney who worked on the McGirt case on behalf of the Muscogee Nation.

This story was originally published by ICT and is republished with permission. To read the original story, visit https://ictnews.org/news/the-long-fight-for-oklahoma-tribal-sovereignty.