Thursday, July 9, 2020

Oklahoma, the Sooner AND Later state.

Granted that nobody really knows what the Supreme Court ruling issued today regarding tribal reservation land within the Oklahoma state boundaries, at this point in time (hours after the SC ruling was published) the only change in the legal status quo appears to involve tribal members being charged and prosecuted for state law violations committed within tribal reservation territory as established when Oklahoma was made a US state. As with all tribal reservations recognized by the US government, federal law enforcement has the primary responsibility for investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by tribal members on tribal reservation lands.

Of course, the interwebs are going  ... what's the clinical term? Batshit Crazy, that's it!

This is certainly going to make the rest of 2020 much more interesting, but I don't think anything substantive will happen in the next several months. What needs to happen is that the Secretary of the Interior needs to immediately establish a commission to address the consequences of this latest SC ruling between the involved parties (the US .gov, Oklahoma state .gov, the various tribal interests involved, at the least - and hopefully most) to determine what they regard as an equitable resolution available under existing legal agreements. Only if that fails of an acceptable resolution should Congress be invited to finally complete Oklahoma's acceptance to statehood by declaring the resolution to the tribal reservation question that Congress failed to resolve at the time.

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