July Editorial Winner

What a mess

By Wayne Trotter, Countywide & Sun 

Thank you, Supreme Court, we suppose. Thank you for waiting 113 years to conclude that after Oklahoma was granted statehood back in 1907, nobody ever bothered to “disestablish” the 1907 boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Indian Nation. That failure, which has lasted between 41,000 and 42,000 days if you exclude Leap Years and various other Gregorian inaccuracies, has potentially put Eastern Oklahoma including Tulsa in the middle of a heck of a muddle. 
To boil down that a little more sensibly (if that is possible), please try to follow the next few paragraphs closely. Read them twice if you have to. Oh, heck! Go on and try for three or four times. There’s no one keeping score. 
Here goes: 
Last Friday, July 10, Tulsa police answered a call to Philpott Park, 1114 W. 37th Place. Upon arriving, they found Crystal Bradley with a gunshot wound. Emergency responders pronounced her dead at the scene. Ms. Bradley was a member of the Cherokee Nation. 
Only one day prior to that, the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld challenges from two Indians who maintained that criminal cases brought against them in state court should have been tried in federal courts because Congress had never disestablished ... or “wiped out,” if like us you would prefer that ... the 19th Century boundaries of the Muscogee or Creek Nation. 
That decision by this country’s highest court left a great deal of Eastern Oklahoma, including the state’s second largest city, technically inside an Indian reservation. It also blew up the authority of Oklahoma prosecutors in that much of Eastern Oklahoma to pursue charges against Native Americans. 
Since statehood, state courts have handled criminal cases when the location of an alleged crime was considered to be on non-tribal property. Federal courts would take up “major crimes” that happened on tribal property (or “Indian Country,” if you prefer). That was relatively simple and more to the point, it has worked for more than a century. 
To many, this newspaper included, that all sounds like another unnecessary government mess. Still, it is something that cannot and should not be ignored for long. A Supreme Court decision is something that can never be ignored, even if the high court had little knowledge of the trouble it was about to launch. Maybe a prerequisite for appointment to this country’s highest court ought to be spending two weeks in the Tulsa area studying the potential circumstances that can tie up everything in today’s Indian Country and areas adjacent to that growing city. If nothing else, that ought to be attractive to Oklahoma’s travel industry. Those folks would have to sleep and eat somewhere, wouldn’t they? 
In the meantime, residents of residents of this state, whether Indian or otherwise, can do what officials in Tulsa tried to do last week — work as hard as you can to make everything fit together and hope the feds don’t blow that completely apart. It’s just something you learn in Oklahoma government. And most of the time, of the time, what results is something that works for everybody.
Now. Can the feds say that? Tell the truth and you might be okay ... at least until the High Court comes to some different conclusion in hopefully another 42,000 days or so.
Right? You betchum, Red Ryder.