Before McGirt, however, the Court falsely assumed that “he notion that reservation status of Indian lands might not be coextensive with tribal ownership was unfamiliar at the turn of the century,” and so justified relying on state violations of tribal sovereignty as “evidence” of congressional intent. States, however, regularly broke the law, asserting jurisdiction in violation of federal Indian law rules. As to the past, I show that the allotment-era Congress knew that reservations did not depend on land tenure, and that its statutes distinguished between allotment acts that diminished reservations and those that did not. It then corrects the false assumptions about the past and present of reservation boundaries that led the Court to turn lawbreaking into law. This Article first places McGirt in the context of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s century long fight to restore sovereign rights illegally denied after allotment, and the even longer fight by the Muscogee Nation and others to survive a trail of broken treaty promises. But before McGirt, courts often rewarded unlawful acts with reservation diminishment. Oklahoma, the most important reservation boundary case in the history of the Supreme Court. “Unlawful acts, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor, are never enough to amend the law.” So reads McGirt v.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |