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Page Number: 11

8 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

Opinion of the Court 

diminish its boundaries.”  Solem, 465 U. S., at 470.  So it’s 
no matter how many other promises to a tribe the federal
government  has  already  broken.    If  Congress  wishes  to 
break  the  promise  of  a  reservation,  it  must  say  so. 
History shows that Congress knows how  to  withdraw a 
reservation when it can muster the will.  Sometimes, legis-
lation has provided an “[e]xplicit reference to cession” or an 
“unconditional  commitment  . . .  to  compensate  the  Indian
tribe for its opened land.”  Ibid.  Other times, Congress has
directed that tribal lands shall be “ ‘restored to the public
domain.’ ”    Hagen  v.  Utah,  510  U. S.  399,  412  (1994)  (em-
phasis deleted).  Likewise, Congress might speak of a res-
ervation  as  being  “ ‘discontinued,’ ”  “ ‘abolished,’ ”  or  “ ‘va-
cated.’ ”  Mattz  v.  Arnett,  412  U. S.  481,  504,  n. 22  (1973). 
Disestablishment has “never required any particular form
of words,” Hagen, 510 U. S., at 411.  But it does require that 
Congress  clearly  express  its  intent  to  do  so,  “[c]ommon[ly
with  an]  ‘[e]xplicit  reference  to  cession  or  other  language 
evidencing the present and total surrender of all tribal in-
terests.’ ”  Nebraska v. Parker, 577 U. S. 481, ___–___ (2016) 
(slip op., at 6). 

B 
In an effort to show Congress has done just that with the
Creek Reservation, Oklahoma points to events during the
so-called “allotment era.”  Starting in the 1880s, Congress
sought to pressure many tribes to abandon their communal
lifestyles and parcel their lands into smaller lots owned by
individual  tribe  members.  See  1  F.  Cohen,  Handbook  of 
Federal Indian Law §1.04 (2012) (Cohen), discussing Gen-
eral Allotment Act of 1887, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388.  Some al-
lotment  advocates  hoped  that  the  policy  would  create  a
class  of  assimilated,  landowning,  agrarian  Native  Ameri-
cans.  See  Cohen  §1.04;  F.  Hoxie,  A  Final  Promise:  The 
Campaign  To  Assimilate  18–19  (2001).    Others  may  have 
hoped that, with lands in individual hands and (eventually)