Class Details
The Future of Oklahoma After McGirt v. Oklahoma 140 S.Ct 2452 (2020)
On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court decided McGirt v. Oklahoma. The Court’s decision re-recognized the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation borders from its 1866 treaty with the United States. Overnight, the extent of Muscogee Nation recognized and governed lands went from about 135,000 acres to its 1866 reservation of three and a quarter million acres in eastern Oklahoma. The case has been described as a “bombshell.” Subsequently, Oklahoma state courts have followed the precedent of McGirt and have re-recognized the Nineteenth Century reservation borders of up to ten other Indian nations. The eastern part of the state is almost all now “Indian Country” under federal law and the tribal nations and the federal government have enormous obligations and powers to exercise sovereignty and jurisdiction over 43% of the state and the 1.8 million Oklahomans who live in those areas. This class will analyze this court case and its consequences. Students will read and discuss the McGirt decision, the 2023 book “A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma,” other relevant state and federal courts cases, news articles, and other materials.
Enrollment
- Enrollment through your home campus; contact your local OSLEP campus coordinator for information
- OSLEP provides all required reading materials at no additional cost-NO books to buy!
- Housing and meals provided
- In-person residential seminar
Scholar
Robert Miller
Arizona State University, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Robert J. Miller (Eastern Shawnee) has been a professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University since 2013. He is also the director of the Rosette LLP American Indian Economic Development Program and the Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar at ASU. Bob was elected to the American Law Institute in 2012 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2014 (which elected only 5,506 members from 1743-2014). He graduated in 1991 from Lewis & Clark Law School and then clerked for the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Bob worked for two law firms from 1992-99 and was then a full-time professor at Lewis & Clark Law School from 1999-2013. Bob is the Chief Justice for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals and an appellate judge for other tribes. He has written over fifty books, book chapters, articles, and editorials on Indian law issues, and spoken at conferences in over thirty-one states and in Australia, Canada, England, India, and New Zealand. He is the author and co-author of five books including Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark and Manifest Destiny (Praeger 2006) and Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies (Oxford University Press 2010). His latest book is A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma (University of Oklahoma Press 2023).