1.8 million people now live in
While all eyes were on the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision granting New York prosecutors access to President Trump’s taxes, a ruling earlier in the day recognized roughly half of Oklahoma as an Indian reservation – in a move which could have wide-ranging legal implications for the 1.8 million people who now live in “Indian Country,” according to the New York Times.
The decision, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, holds the United States to an 1866 treaty that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation signed with the United States after the Civil War over land which was home to the “Five Civilized Tribes”; the Creek, Cherokee Nation, the Seminole, the Chickasaw Nation, and the Choctaw Nation, according to The New Republic.
“Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law,” wrote Gorsuch, a Trump appointee.
