Bond: McGirt has changed in three years

In 2016, in testimony to Congress, Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation, stated, “there are no reservations in Oklahoma.”

Gov. Anoatubby verbalized what most Oklahomans living in the 21st Century had always recognized as reality: With few exceptions, the historic tribal reservations in Oklahoma had been disestablished in the 1860s following the Civil War and no longer existed.

Oklahoma is not New Mexico or the Dakotas or upstate New York. For better or worse, Oklahoma and the Native American tribes within its borders had a different arrangement.

Then,in2020,McGirthappened. McGirt v. Oklahoma, a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, involved a man named Jimcy McGirt, a member of the Seminole Nation living in Broken Arrow— which, over a century earlier, had been located on the Creek Nation reservation.

In 1997, Jimcy McGirt was convicted in state court of raping his wife’s four-year-old granddaughter. He later petitioned that his conviction be tossed because, he claimed, the Creek reservation was never properly disestablished, so Oklahoma had no jurisdiction over him.

Shockingly, Justice Neil Gorsuch and the Court’s four liberals agreed with McGirt, overturning his conviction and effectively declaring roughly half of Oklahoma to be—Presto!—an Indian reservation, despite what Gov. Anoatubby and most of Oklahoma’s other four million citizens knew to be true.

Justice Gorsuch said the ruling applied most directly to major crimes—like murder, rape and kidnapping— involving Native Americans within the revived reservation boundaries.

But he also said the ruling could “create conflict around jurisdictional boundaries” regarding whether state and local laws still applied to tribal members—in criminal or civil matters—in the more than 40 Oklahoma counties now constituting “Indian Country.”

SinceMcGirt,easternOklahoma has become a hotbed of uncertainty, as law enforcement, public officials and citizens adapt to the new, Court-imposed reality.

Fortunately, in its decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta last year, the U.S. Supreme Court constrained the damage, clarifying that McGirt applies only to major crimes and nothing else.

And yet ... Despite Castro, some are still attempting to exploit the McGirt reservation boundaries and apply them to taxes and other economic issues.

For instance, Gov. Anoatubby’s Chickasaw Nation, along with the Choctaw and Cherokee nations, filed a brief with the Oklahoma Supreme Court asserting that members of their tribes in McGirt counties shouldn’t have to pay state income taxes.

Some McGirt tribes are openly ignoring state, county and municipal tax laws. Others want to bypass laws on licensing, land use, property rights and mineral rights.

To his credit, Gov. Kevin Stitt is working to focus people on the concept of all Oklahomans living and working under the same set of rules. The Legislature and state Supreme Court have trended the other direction.

Undoubtedly, since the McGirt ruling three years ago, we’ve been in the midst of a key turning point in Oklahoma’s history. We must stay united around the ideas of certainty and fairness for all Oklahomans.

Bond is vice president for advocacy at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (www.ocpathink. org) and a member of the Choctaw Nation.