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The scope of their dispute is limited; nothing we might say today could unsettle Oklahoma’s authority to try non-Indians for crimes against nonIndians on the lands in question
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Still, the stakes are not insignificant. If Mr. McGirt and the Tribe are right, the State has no right to prosecute Indians for crimes committed in a portion of Northeastern Oklahoma that includes most of the city of Tulsa. Responsibility to try these matters would fall instead to the federal government and Tribe.
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It isn’t so hard to see why. The federal government issued its own land patents to many homesteaders throughout the West. These patents transferred legal title and are the basis for much of the private land ownership in a number of States today. But no one thinks any of this diminished the
United States’s claim to sovereignty over any land. To accomplish that would require an act of cession, the transfer of a sovereign claim from one nation to another
United States’s claim to sovereignty over any land. To accomplish that would require an act of cession, the transfer of a sovereign claim from one nation to another
Lots of pages that ultimately state that who owns the land is immaterial to that land being subject to federal criminal jurisdiction. Also the status of a piece of land as being a judicial reservation doesn't remove it from being part of the USA.
