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Page Number: 75

30 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

at 6, 10); see Solem, 465 U. S., at 471.  Each of the indicia 
from  our  precedents—subsequent  treatment  by  Congress,
the State’s unquestioned exercise of jurisdiction, and demo-
graphic evidence—confirms that the Creek reservation did
not survive statehood. 

First,  “Congress’  own  treatment  of  the  affected  areas” 
strongly  supports  disestablishment.    Id.,  at  471.  After 
statehood, Congress enacted several statutes progressively 
eliminating  restrictions  on  the  alienation  and  taxation  of
Creek  allotments,  and  Congress  subjected  even  restricted
lands to state jurisdiction.  Since Congress had already de-
stroyed nearly all tribal authority, these statutes rendered 
Creek parcels little different from other plots of land in the
State.  See Act of May 27, 1908, 35 Stat. 312; Act of June 
14, 1918, 40 Stat. 606; Act of Apr. 10, 1926, 44 Stat. 239.
This is not a scenario where Congress merely opened land
for “purchase . . . by non-Indians” while allowing the Tribe 
to “continue to exercise governmental functions over [the] 
land,”  ante,  at  11,  and  n. 3;  rather,  Congress  eliminated
both restrictions on the lands here and the Creek Nation’s 
authority over them.  Such developments would be surpris-
ing if Congress intended for all of the former Indian Terri-
tory to be reservation land insulated from state jurisdiction
in significant ways.  The simpler and more likely explana-
tion is that they reflect Congress’s understanding through
the years that “all Indian reservations as such have ceased
to  exist”  in  Oklahoma,  S.  Rep.  No.  1232,  74th  Cong.,  1st 
Sess., 6 (1935), and that “Indian reservations [in the Indian
Territory]  were  destroyed”  when  “Oklahoma  entered  the 
union,” S. Rep. No. 101–216, p. 47 (1989).

That understanding is now woven throughout the U. S.
Code, which applies numerous statutes to the land here by 
extending  them  to  the  “former  reservation[s]”  “in  Okla-
homa”—underscoring that no reservation exists today.  25 
U. S. C. §2719(a)(2)(A)(i) (emphasis added) (Indian Gaming