Oklahoma Attorney General
Mike Hunter has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its decision recognizing the tribal sovereignty of the
Chickasaw Nation over crimes committed by or against Native Americans on Chickasaw Nation lands.
On March 11, 2021, applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 tribal sovereignty ruling in
McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Oklahoma appeals court ruled that the Chickasaw Nation Reservation created in a series of treaties between the United States and the tribe in the 1880s had never been disestablished and that the lands within the historical boundaries of the reservation constituted “Indian Country” within which crimes by or against Native Americans were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts. The court voided the conviction and death sentence imposed in state court on