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Page Number: 65.0

20 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

parcels.  Contrary to the Court’s portrayal, this is not a sce-
nario in which Congress allowed a tribe to “continue to ex-
ercise governmental functions over land” that it “no longer
own[ed]  communally.”  Ante,  at  11.   From  top  to  bottom,
these  statutes,  which  divested  the  Tribes  and  the  United 
States of their interests while displacing tribal governance,
“strongly  suggest[ ]  that  Congress  meant  to  divest”  the 
lands of reservation status.  Solem, 465 U. S., at 470. 

Finally, having stripped the Creek Nation of its laws, its 
powers of self-governance, and its land, Congress incorpo-
rated the Nation’s members into a new political community.
Congress made “every Indian” in the Oklahoma territory a
citizen of the United States in 1901—decades before confer-
ring citizenship on all native born Indians elsewhere in the 
country.  Act of Mar. 3, 1901, ch. 868, 31 Stat. 1447.  In the 
Oklahoma  Enabling  Act  of  1906—the  gateway  to  state-
hood—Congress confirmed that members of the Five Tribes 
would participate in equal measure alongside non-Indians
in the choice regarding statehood.  The Act gave Indians the 
right to vote on delegates to a constitutional convention and 
ultimately on the state constitution that the delegates pro-
posed.  §§2, 4, 34 Stat. 268, 271.  Fifteen members of the 
Five Tribes were elected as convention delegates, many of
them  served  on  significant  committees,  and  a  member  of 
the Chickasaw Nation even served as president of the con-
vention.  See Brief for Seventeen Oklahoma District Attor-
neys et al. as Amici Curiae 9–13. 

The Enabling Act also ensured that Indians and non-In-
dians would be subject to uniform laws and courts.  It re-
placed Arkansas law, which had applied to all persons “ir-
respective of race,” 1897 Act, 30 Stat. 83, with the laws of 
the adjacent Oklahoma Territory until the new state legis-
lature  provided  otherwise.  Enabling  Act  §§2,  13,  21,  34
Stat.  268–269,  275,  277–278;  see  Jefferson  v.  Fink,  247 
U. S. 288, 294 (1918).  All of the pending cases in the terri-
torial courts arising under federal law were transferred to