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STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: A lawsuit is proceeding in the state of Oklahoma. The Cherokee Nation and other tribes are suing the state for enforcing its hunting and fishing laws in what is legally called Indian country. This is one of many battles that touch on the historic sovereign rights of Native nations that long ago were swept into the expanding United States. Governor Kevin Stitt is fighting the tribes, even though he is a member of the Cherokee Nation himself. He discussed this in a recent NPR video interview.
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KEVIN STITT: Yeah. I'm very proud of my heritage. But I would differ in the fact that a lot of people think that Indians are owed something or they need special treatment, or - you know, if you read anything about me in Oklahoma, I'm in a little bit of a conflict with some of the tribes because I don't believe we should be divided based on race.
INSKEEP: The full interview with Governor Stitt is available on YouTube, and it encouraged us to take a deeper look. We invited over Chuck Hoskin Jr., who's the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
CHUCK HOSKIN JR: We have the right to govern ourselves. We have the right to a reservation that was established long ago by treaty.
INSKEEP: As long ago as the 1830s. That's when Cherokees were forced out of the eastern U.S. and were given a new homeland in what is now eastern Oklahoma. Tribal rights are the subject of many lawsuits, one of which reached the Supreme Court in 2020. The court found that Oklahoma had no right to enforce its laws against tribal members on tribal land and set aside the criminal conviction of a man named McGirt.
HOSKIN: So 7,000 square miles of northeast Oklahoma, including a part of Tulsa, a major urban area in northeast Oklahoma, remains our jurisdiction. Now, in the 21st century, jurisdiction can be complicated when it comes to Indian tribes.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
HOSKIN: And when it comes to criminal jurisdiction, which was the focus of the McGirt case...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
HOSKIN: ...We have jurisdiction over that entire area, depending on the person, and then sometimes depending on the crime.
INSKEEP: This person, McGirt, who was convicted of a sex crime...
HOSKIN: He was.
INSKEEP: ...With a minor years ago, had this Supreme Court ruling in his favor that he had been improperly prosecuted by the state. What happened to him after he won his Supreme Court case?
HOSKIN: After he won his Supreme Court case, he was subject to prosecution by the federal government, actually.
INSKEEP: Because the federal government does have authority [inaudible].
HOSKIN: The federal government does have authority. And as with so many landmark Supreme Court cases involving criminal law, McGirt was not a good guy. And the question was never whether McGirt should be held accountable. The question was who should hold him accountable.
INSKEEP: The governor has also been pressing the Cherokee Nation and other tribes for a larger share of casino revenues, saying the state provides services in eastern Oklahoma, such as building roads and so forth, and therefore the state needs a share of the money.
HOSKIN: Yeah. Well, the state gets a share of the money. I mean, the state of Oklahoma gets anywhere from 4- to 10%. But if you look at what the compact has done over now more than 15 years, going on 20 years, it has been a problem solver for the state. It's been an economic boon, not only for the tribes but all these rural communities that he expresses concern about, and I agree with his concern, which is why we're building roads. We're putting in water lines. I mean, we opened up a ballpark in a little community in Adair County, a little community called Greasy that no one else was the champion for, but Cherokee Nation was.
INSKEEP: Because we're just talking about a percentage here. You already pay a percentage. He wants some more.
HOSKIN: He wants some more.
INSKEEP: Is there a compromise there? Are you willing to go up a couple percent?
HOSKIN: Well, we - the compact is working. Why would we change it? No one else in the state virtually believed that the state was getting such a bad deal that it needed more revenue.
INSKEEP: Governor Stitt views this as a fundamental problem in that you have this competing sovereignty within the state. And he said in our interview, If you take this too far, it tears the state apart. Is that where the logic of this goes, you pull apart in some way the state of Oklahoma?
HOSKIN: You might think that, in theory, if you viewed the world as Kevin Stitt views it, but it doesn't jive with reality. If people come to the state of Oklahoma, they don't see an us-versus-them society. They see tribes as the folks that are helping fund the public schools because our kids go there. They see tribes as creating large health systems that, yes, is caring for our citizens, but turns out to be great for the local economy when we build multimillion-dollar health centers. He does not want us exercising authority. He thinks it's based in race, and it's ultimately going to divide the state. That just doesn't align with reality.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about this in a larger sense because all across the country, there are former tribal lands. There are people who will do land acknowledgments at the beginnings of public events and say, we are on such and such a tribe's land. There might be a logic to that, which says, ultimately, the United States itself is fundamentally illegitimate, and there is this other sovereign nation that should be taking the land back at some point. Do you believe that?
HOSKIN: Well, I think that obscures a lot of history. So when you look at the Cherokee Nation, we certainly had a homeland in the southeastern part of the United States. I...
INSKEEP: Big part of Georgia and a bunch of other states.
HOSKIN: A big part of Georgia. But I'm not going back to Georgia today to say, give us our land back. What I'm saying is we have a treaty. The treaty is the supreme law of the land, and we want that enforced. And if that is enforced, then the homeland that our people have known since...
INSKEEP: In Oklahoma.
HOSKIN: ...1839 in northeast Oklahoma will be protected. Governor Kevin Stitt sees a zero-sum game. Any increase for the Cherokee Nation is a decrease for the state. The problem with that is you have to not believe what you see and hear back home to believe in the zero-sum game. No one else is buying it.
INSKEEP: What does it mean to you that he also claims dissent? He is himself an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.
HOSKIN: He's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and early on, I was actually counting on that. I mean, everybody is exploring their own ancestry and who they are in the world. And I was counting on the fact that he would explore it, become a little more enlightened. I think he's become somehow shallower on the subject than he was when he took office. I always say, I hope Governor Kevin Stitt will listen to his chief. I'm his chief. He probably wishes that I would listen to my governor.
INSKEEP: He says he's your chief.
HOSKIN: He says he's my chief. But he's a citizen of our nation. I will tell you that I get this question probably more than anything else, which is, can you kick Kevin Stitt out of the tribe? We don't have any interest in that. What we have an interest in is working with someone who's the chief executive of the state of Oklahoma. And we've had a great relationship with his predecessors. He just doesn't see a world in which we should exist as a tribe.
INSKEEP: Chief Hoskin, it's a pleasure to see you again. Thank you so much.
HOSKIN: Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: By the way, in his recent State of the State speech, Governor Kevin Stitt did not argue that the Cherokee should not exist, but did argue, as we have heard, that he feels Oklahoma's laws should apply equally to everyone.
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