Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
TULSA, Okla. — Days before the Fourth of July, U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, made a case for tribal sovereignty over trust lands before a natural resources subcommittee in Congress.
Cole, Chickasaw Nation, explained Wednesday that a 2009 Supreme Court decision uprooted “seventy years of precedent and turned the entire notion of tribal sovereignty on its head.”
The Carcieri v. Salazar (2009) decision ruled that the Indian Reorganization Act stripped the secretary of interior of its power to take land into trust, arguing that the IRA only applied to federally recognized tribes. The act is legislation that forcibly removed tribes from their lands and relocated them to unfamiliar territories.
Since the Carcieri decision, only federally recognized tribes have held land in trust. In Oklahoma, some tribes without federal recognition would include the Euchee Tribe of Indians in Sapulpa, as well as several unrecognized bands of Cherokees across the state, such as the Chickamauga Cherokee Nation White River Bands.
“This two-class system is truly detrimental to so many Native communities, as it makes it harder for them to manage and expand their territory, as well as puts millions of dollars’ worth of trust land in legal limbo,” Cole said.
His argument is that tribal trust land benefits the communities and states around it, as it produces energy, provides government services, health care, crops, builds schools, housing, hospitals and more. Without a right to trust land, much of this economic development would be lost.
The solution he suggested is to pass a bill amending the Indian Reorganization Act, reaffirming the authority of the interior secretary to take land into trust. This would give not only federally recognized tribes, but all tribes, the ability to hold their lands in trust.
“My legislation, H.R. 1208, will correct this egregious wrongdoing, and restore the sovereign rights of all federally recognized tribes to put land into trust. We must continue to move this bill through the legislative process in order to protect Tribal interests,” he said.
Since July 4 marks the independence of a nation at the cost of many Native ancestral lives, not all tribes feel comfortable celebrating the federal holiday in a traditional American way. Some Native people use the day to honor Native veterans. Some continue with their own traditional holidays, like the Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma, which holds their Gourd Clan ceremonies on July 4 because it’s the same day as their annual Sun Dance. This day is often a day for Native people to think about the land they have lost, and the land that they still hold and celebrate.
Cole’s address to the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs reminds them just before the Fourth of July of his H.R. 1208 legislation that aims to restore tribal sovereignty rights over land. Cole is a Republican congressman from Oklahoma who is enrolled in the Chickasaw 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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