There Are Many Repercussions of the McGirt Outcome
Video Transcribed:
Oklahoma Attorney General, Mike Hunter, not conceding the existence of reservations in Oklahoma for the purposes of McGirt. I’m Tulsa attorney, James Wirth, and we’re talking about the repercussions of McGirt.
That’s the United States Supreme Court case that decided that most of Northeast Oklahoma is reservation land still because the tribes reservations were never disestablished through statehood.
And that all of these cases that the States have prosecuted against native Americans over the last 100 years, well, they never have the authority to do that.
That case, the McGirt case itself involved the Muskogee Creek Nation.
And that’s one of the five civilized tribes, and it is widely believed that because of the circumstances of the creation of the state of Oklahoma versus the possible disestablishment of the Muskogee Creek Nation is going to be the same as that for the other five civilized tribes, because they had similar circumstances at the time.
We’re seeing a lot of cases for Muskogee Creek being dismissed, old cases being filed to get those vacated and the prosecutors at the AG’s office were putting up certain roadblocks here and there and they’re kind of falling one by one.
But this quote that we have from the Attorney General in a recent article, September 27th of 2020, says, “We’re not going to stipulate to the existence of a reservation.” That’s what Mike Hunter said. Essentially what that means is that even though the United States Supreme Court has decided the Muskogee Creek Nation was never disestablished, they’re still fighting it for the Cherokee Nation and the Choctaw Nation and the Seminal Nation. All of the other four civilized tribes. And they’re working on procedural arguments.
And ultimately, this is an issue of subject matter jurisdiction. These procedural arguments that they’re trying to come up with and they’re fighting every little bit that they can, I think they’re going to fall one by one, just like these tribes.
The issues that they’re fighting on each individual tribe is going to fall one by one. So far in Muskogee Creek Nation, we’ve got obviously the highest court in the land says it wasn’t disestablished. For other ones, we have trial courts that have said they haven’t been disestablished, but now they’re up on appeal.
And Attorney General, Mike Hunter, is not giving up. He’s not willing to stipulate. He’s going to make them go through the battle to show they haven’t been disestablished.
Even though I think everybody knows that those are going to be lost and that ultimately the tribes are going to prevail, that those were not disestablished based on the precedent in McGirt v Oklahoma.
If you are dealing with a case that’s in any of those tribes, what’s being prosecuted in state court, or you have an old one, or you just have a question, you’re going to want to talk to a McGirt attorney about it, about your specific circumstances. To do that, you can go to makelaweasy.com to talk to somebody at my office.
