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The Cherokee Nation announced Tuesday it will allow the Oklahoma flag to fly on its properties after Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. reversed his decision to remove the flag due to negative feedback from within the tribe.
“I was particularly moved by concerns of some members of the Council that my executive order created unnecessary division at a time when I have called for cooperation,” Hoskin wrote in a press statement Tuesday.
The state flag’s removal was particularly notable due to disagreements between Oklahoma and the tribe regarding a 2020 Supreme Court decision that voided the state’s criminal jurisdiction in a significant portion of the eastern part of Oklahoma when a case involves a member of a federally recognized tribe.
NATIVE AMERICAN LEADERS BLAST OKLAHOMA HOUSE HOPEFUL FOR ‘ANTI-TRIBAL ARGUMENTS’
Still, Hoskin said the June 3 executive order that aimed to remove the state flag from tribal properties was not in response to any action by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is also a member of the Cherokee Nation.
Rather, the initial move was done because he believed it was inherently wrong to fly the Oklahoma flag because tribal governments predate the state. “Flying the flag of the state of Oklahoma on par with the Cherokee Nation flags strikes me as wholly inconsistent with tribal sovereignty,” Hoskin wrote in the statement.
Hoskin’s order to remove the Oklahoma flag from the tribe’s properties was not slated to go into full effect until September.
A primary point of contention between Oklahoma and the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes, which includes the Cherokee Nation, is the two-year-old high court decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma.
Tribal leaders see the ruling as a major validation of their governmental rights, while Stitt and Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor see McGirt as one of the biggest issues facing the state. The 2020 decision deemed more than 40% of the state’s territory “Indian Country” and gave tribes the jurisdiction to prosecute criminal cases in tribal courts.
“Since the Federal court ruling in the McGirt case, the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office has managed thousands of Indian Country cases, whereas previously the field office investigated approximately 50 criminal cases a year involving Native Americans,” the Justice Department told Congress in April budget submissions for fiscal year 2023.
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Oklahoma previously petitioned to have the high court reexamine the 2020 decision but was denied by the justices. A ruling has yet to be handed down in a separate legal challenge brought by the state asking the Supreme Court to determine whether the state has jurisdiction over crimes committed by nontribal members against tribal members.
The case in question, Castro-Huerta v. Oklahoma, will be decided sometime between now and the end of the present Supreme Court term slated to conclude in early July.
