Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
After attempting to sue the Oklahoma attorney general and governor over documents she needed for her reporting, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle is launching her book that covers the Five Tribes’ fight for sovereignty leading up to a landmark legal decision.
In the McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) decision, the Supreme Court ruled that criminal cases involving tribal members on tribal lands fall under tribal jurisdiction rather than state jurisdiction, which led to federal recognition of Oklahoma reservations for the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole tribes.
“I’ve been covering the McGirt case since 2017, including articles for ICT,” Nagle told ICT and the Tulsa World. “This book is deeply reported. I interviewed over a hundred people, pulled together thousands of documents, even suing the attorney general and governor of Oklahoma to get documents.”
Nagle submitted records requests seeking emails between Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and various oil and gas leaders, both leading up to and after the McGirt decision.
After the decision, Stitt formed a commission staffed with oil and gas leaders that made recommendations to Congress. Their recommendations were not adopted, but they had recommended that Congress not regard Indian countries as reservations and that the McGirt decision should be overturned.
After not receiving her records, she contacted the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. The organization’s lawyer Kathryn E. Gardner filed a lawsuit on Nagle’s behalf against Stitt and Attorney General John M. O’Connor, claiming both officials’ withholding of documents she requested violated the Oklahoma Department of Libraries Open Records Act.
Nagle agreed to dismiss the lawsuit in 2023 after Stitt and O’Connor produced more than 700 pages of email communications with various leaders leading up to the McGirt decision, which helped fill in gaps she needed for her reporting.
Her first book, “By the Fire We Carry,” delves into the decades-long fight for tribal sovereignty after the Five Tribes were all relocated to Oklahoma.
The Sharp v. Murphy (2020) decision led to tribal sovereignty rights for Oklahoma tribes and to the famous McGirt decision, which confirmed the rights given to the Muscogee Nation in the Sharp v. Murphy case.
Nagle’s book closely explores the Sharp v. Murphy case, which involved the murder of Muscogee citizen George Jacobs by Muscogee citizen Patrick Murphy. Murphy was found guilty of second-degree murder in McIntosh County and sentenced to death in 2000. In 2020, the decision was overturned after a judge decided that since the crime happened on Indian territory, it should have gone to federal court under the Major Crimes Act. This was the first time the Muscogee Nation territory was federally recognized as a reservation.
The McGirt decision was issued with the same line-of-thinking June 9, 2020, the same day as the Sharp decision. Both criminals on trial were given the opportunity for retrial in a tribal court, as they were tribal citizens who committed their crimes on tribal lands, which the court considered reservation territory, confirming federal recognition of the Muscogee reservation.
Since these two decisions, eight other tribal reservations have been recognized in the state, and sovereignty was returned to all of the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, meaning they are only subject to tribal and federal law. Individual tribal members are also subject to tribal law if they committed their crime within their reservation boundaries, or federal law if their crime falls under the Major Crimes Act.
A main character in Nagle’s book is her own Cherokee ancestor, Major Ridge. Major was a title that he adopted as his first name. He was one of the tribal leaders who agreed to give up the Cherokee homeland in Georgia before being relocated to Oklahoma. He was later murdered for his perceived betrayal.
Nagle writes Ridge’s decision as one not of betrayal, but of survival, as her ancestor hoped relocation might save his people’s lives when U.S. president Andrew Jackson had been threatening them.
A Publisher’s Weekly review stated Nagle “interweaves the complex courtroom drama with an empathetic, harrowing recap of the 1999 murder. … Nagle’s narrative is lucid and moving, especially as she uses archival sources to recreate the mounting terror experienced by Native peoples in the Southeast as violent mobs of outsiders swarmed onto their land. It’s a showstopper.”
Nagle also hosts the podcast, This Land, on Crooked Media, which tells the story of custody battles of Native children that became a federal lawsuit, threatening tribal sovereignty.
Magic City Books will be hosting her book-launch Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. Muscogee Nation former chief James Floyd, who was in office during the McGirt decision, will be in attendance, as well as Muscogee elder Rosemary McCombs Maxey and Phlip Tinker, an Osage lawyer who worked on the McGirt case on behalf of the Muscogee Nation.
This story is co-published by the Tulsa World and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Oklahoma area.
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