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Page Number: 46.0

18 

OKLAHOMA v. CASTRO-HUERTA 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

2 
When  Congress  enacted  the  MCA  in  1885,  it  proceeded 
once more against the “backdrop” rule that only tribal crim-
inal law applies on tribal lands, that States enjoy no inher-
ent  authority  to  prosecute  cases  on  tribal  lands,  and  that 
only Congress may displace tribal power.  Nor, once more, 
did  Congress’s  new  legislation  purport  to  allow  States  to 
prosecute crimes on tribal lands.  In response to concerns 
with  how  tribal  authorities  were  handling  major  crimes 
committed by tribal members, in the MCA Congress took a 
step beyond the GCA and instructed that, in the future, the 
federal  government  would  have  “exclusive  jurisdiction”  to
prosecute  certain  crimes  by  Indian  defendants  on  tribal
lands.  18 U. S. C. § 1153(a); see also Part I–B, supra.  Here 
again, Congress’s work hardly would have been necessary 
or made sense if States already possessed jurisdiction to try
crimes by or against Indians on tribal reservations.  Plainly,
Congress’s “purpose” in adopting the MCA was to answer 
the  “objection”  that  major  crimes  by  tribal  members  on
tribal  lands  would  otherwise  be  subject  to  prosecution  by 
tribal  authorities  alone.    See  Kagama,  118  U. S.,  at  383– 
385. 

3 
Consider  next  the  Treaty  of  New  Echota  and  the  Okla-
homa Enabling Act.  In 1835, the United States entered into 
a  treaty  with  the  Cherokee.    In  that  treaty,  the  Nation 
promised that, within a new reservation in what was to be-
come Oklahoma, the Tribe would enjoy the right to govern
itself  and  remain  forever  free  from  “State  sovereignties”
and “the jurisdiction of any State.”  Treaty with the Chero-
kee, Preamble, 7 Stat. 478.  This Court has instructed that 
tribal treaties must be interpreted as they “would naturally
be  understood  by  the  Indians”  at  ratification.    Herrera  v. 
Wyoming, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 19) (internal