People's World
All of Indian Country is waiting on the U.S. Supreme Court to do what is morally and legally right and return to reservation status the lands of the forcibly removed southern nations, the “Five Civilized Tribes”—Cherokees, Muscogee Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, and Chickasaws—in Eastern Oklahoma. These are lands that were illegally taken from those nations in 1907 when Oklahoma attained statehood. Raw coercion was used by the federal government in the theft of this vast area from the tribal domains of those five nations. This was in the most flagrant violation of sacred treaties with the United States.
The legal impetus for the restoration of the eastern half of the state to the Indigenous entities is spearheaded by the case of Carpenter v. Murphy. A short history of this case was reviewed previously in People’s World, so I will just add some additional facts in this regard and append a further legal analysis.
In 2000, an Oklahoma jury sentenced a Muscogee Creek Nation (MCN) citizen Patrick Murphy to death for the murder of another MCN member, George Jacobs. The case made its way through the state appeals process and Murphy subsequently filed a federal habeas corpus petition and was assigned federal public defender Lisa McCalmont, who was also a geologist and well versed in land title law. She thought that Oklahoma may not have jurisdiction over this matter due to federal Indian law defining “Indian Country.”
Albert Bender is a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance reporter for Native and Non-Native publications. He was an organizer and delegate to the First and Second Intercontinental Indian Conferences held in Quito, Ecuador and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Recently, he has been an active participant and reporter in the Standing Rock struggle in North Dakota. He is an attorney and is currently writing a legal treatise on Native American sovereignty. He is also writing a book on the war crimes committed by the U.S. against the Maya people in the Guatemalan civil war of the late 20th century. He is also the recipient of several Eagle Awards by the Tennessee Native American Eagle Organization and a former Director of Native American Legal Departments and a Tribal Public Defender.
Note: This article originally appeared on People's World. It is published under a Creative Commons license.
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Indian Country Briefs in Carpenter v.
Murphy
Muscogee
(Creek) Nation
Chickasaw
Nation, Choctaw Nation and Oklahomans
Former
U.S. Attorneys
National
Indigenous Women's Resource Center and Tribes
National
Congress of American Indians
Historians,
Legal Scholars, and Cherokee Nation
Supplemental Briefs in Carpenter v.
Murphy
Supplemental
Brief of State of Oklahoma
Supplemental
Brief of Patrick Dwayne Murphy
Supplemental
Brief of Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Supplemental
Brief of United States
Reply
Brief of Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Reply
Brief of Patrick Dwayne Murphy
Reply
Brief of the United States
Reply
Brief of Oklahoma
10th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision
Murphy v.
Royal [Revised] (November 9, 2017) Murphy v. Royal [Original] (August 8, 2017)
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Over eight episodes, Rebecca Nagle, a journalist and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, discussed the history of the Murphy case, from removal and treaties to allotment and the ongoing appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, on her groundbreaking podcast This Land. Nagle also took a look at another high-profile Indian law dispute headed to the high court.
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