Indianz.Com > News > Albert Bender: U.S. Supreme Court takes Indian Country back in time
Rogue Supreme Court’s latest Indian law decision a huge step back in time
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
People's World
As the retrograde Supreme Court has taken steps back in time on abortion rights, blurring the time-enshrined separation between church and state, limiting the authority of the EPA to control carbon emissions, lowering restrictions on the carrying of firearms, and restricting Miranda rights, it has now also struck a reactionary blow against the tribal sovereignty of this land’s Indigenous nations.
The court is imposing Trump’s vision, through his appointees, on the U.S. which is out of touch with the vast majority of the nation’s people. This is the rule of right-wing tyranny.
On Wednesday, June 29, the rogue court ruled in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta that states have concurrent jurisdiction, with the federal government, in cases of non-Indians committing crimes against Indians on Native American reservations.
This granting of states’ rights to intrude onto Native lands reverses over 200 years of one of the most enshrined tenets of federal Indian law, beginning with the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 and proclaimed in the decision of Worcester v. Georgia issued by the John Marshall court in 1832.
- “To begin with, the Constitution allows a state to exercise jurisdiction in Indian Country. Indian Country is part of the state, not separate from the state.”
- The astonishing decision continues: “…as a matter of sovereignty, a state has jurisdiction over all of its territory, including Indian Country.”
Albert Bender is a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance reporter for Native and Non-Native publications. He is currently writing a legal treatise on Native American sovereignty and working on a book on the war crimes committed by the U.S. against the Maya people in the Guatemalan civil war He is a consulting attorney on Indigenous sovereignty, land restoration, and Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) issues and a former staff attorney with Legal Services of Eastern Oklahoma (LSEO) in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
This article originally appeared on People's World. It is published under a Creative Commons license.

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