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Page Number: 2.0

2 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

Syllabus 

“would ever be embraced or included within, or annexed to, any Terri-
tory or State,” 11 Stat. 700, and that the Creeks would have the “un-
restricted  right  of  self-government,”  with  “full  jurisdiction”  over  en-
rolled Tribe members and their property, id., at 704.  Pp. 3–6.

(b) Congress has since broken more than a few promises to the Tribe. 

Nevertheless, the Creek Reservation persists today.  Pp. 6–28. 

(1) Once  a  federal  reservation  is  established,  only  Congress  can 
diminish or disestablish it.  Doing so requires a clear expression of con-
gressional intent.  Pp. 6–8.

(2) Oklahoma claims that Congress ended the Creek Reservation 
during the so-called “allotment era”—a period when Congress sought
to pressure many tribes to abandon their communal lifestyles and par-
cel their lands into smaller lots owned by individual tribal members. 
Missing from the allotment-era agreement with the Creek, see 31 Stat. 
862–864, however, is any statute evincing anything like the “present
and total surrender of all tribal interests” in the affected lands.  And 
this Court has already rejected the argument that allotments automat-
ically ended reservations.  Pp. 8–13.

(3) Oklahoma  points  to  other  ways  Congress  intruded  on  the 
Creeks’ promised right to self-governance during the allotment era, in-
cluding abolishing the Creeks’ tribal courts, 30 Stat. 504–505, and re-
quiring  Presidential  approval  for  certain  tribal  ordinances,  31  Stat. 
872.  But these laws fall short of eliminating all tribal interest in the
contested lands.  Pp. 13–17.

(4) Oklahoma  ultimately  claims  that  historical  practice  and  de-
mographics are enough by themselves to prove disestablishment.  This 
Court has consulted contemporaneous usages, customs, and practices 
to the extent they shed light on the meaning of ambiguous statutory 
terms, but Oklahoma points to no ambiguous language in any of the 
relevant  statutes  that  could  plausibly  be  read  as  an  act  of  cession. 
Such extratextual considerations are of “ ‘limited interpretive value,’ ” 
Nebraska v. Parker, 577 U. S. 481, ___, and the “least compelling” form 
of evidence, South Dakota v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 522 U. S. 329, 356. 
In the end, Oklahoma resorts to the State’s long historical practice of 
prosecuting Indians in state court for serious crimes on the contested 
lands,  various  statements  made  during  the  allotment  era,  and  the 
speedy and persistent movement of white settlers into the area.  But 
these supply little help with the law’s meaning and much potential for
mischief.  Pp. 17–28.

(c) In the alternative, Oklahoma contends that Congress never es-
tablished a reservation but instead created a “dependent Indian com-
munity.”  To hold that the Creek never had a reservation would require 
willful blindness to the statutory language and a belief that the land