Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Page Number: 31

28 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

Opinion of the Court 

in discerning the law’s meaning and much potential for mis-
chief.  If anything, the persistent if unspoken message here
seems to be that we should be taken by the “practical ad-
vantages” of ignoring the written law.  How much easier it 
would be, after all, to let the State proceed as it has always
assumed it might.  But just imagine what it would mean to 
indulge that path.  A State exercises jurisdiction over Na-
tive  Americans  with  such  persistence  that  the  practice 
seems normal.  Indian landowners lose their titles by fraud 
or  otherwise  in  sufficient  volume  that  no  one  remembers 
whose land it once was.  All this continues for long enough
that  a  reservation  that  was  once  beyond  doubt  becomes
questionable, and then even farfetched.  Sprinkle in a few 
predictions here, some contestable commentary there, and
the  job  is  done,  a  reservation  is  disestablished.    None  of 
these moves would be permitted in any other area of statu-
tory interpretation, and there is no reason why they should 
be permitted here.  That would be the rule of the strong, not 
the rule of law. 

IV 

Unable to show that Congress disestablished the Creek 
Reservation,  Oklahoma  next  tries  to  turn  the  tables  in  a 
completely different way.  Now, it contends, Congress never 
established  a  reservation  in  the  first  place.    Over  all  the 
years,  from  the  federal  government’s  first  guarantees  of 
land and self-government in 1832 and through the litany of
promises that followed, the Tribe never received a reserva-
tion.  Instead, what the Tribe has had all this time qualifies
only as a “dependent Indian community.” 

Even if we were to accept Oklahoma’s bold feat of reclas-
sification,  however,  it’s  hardly  clear  the  State  would  win
this case.  “Reservation[s]” and “Indian allotments, the In-
dian titles to which have not been extinguished,” qualify as
Indian country under subsections (a) and (c) of §1151.  But 
“dependent  Indian  communities”  also  qualify  as  Indian