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Last week, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals delivered two monumental rulings affirming the tribal sovereignty of the Chickasaw Nation and the Cherokee Nation. The cases are now part of five Oklahoma tribes effort to regain their reservations following a historic win in the U.S. Supreme Court.
In each case, the defendants challenged the state s ability to prosecute them based on the location of the crime and the fact that both involved citizens of tribal nations in Oklahoma. In siding with the defendants, the court found that the reservations for both the Chickasaw Nation and the Cherokee Nation were never disestablished.