Oklahoman by blood: indigenous land tenure from Indian Territory to McGirt

Abstract

After the McGirt v. Oklahoma decision in 2020, Oklahoma’s statehood became the subject of intense legal scrutiny regarding the supposed “disestablishment” of American Indian reservations. The State’s position follows a playbook all too familiar to citizens of Indian Country, resurfacing antiquated beliefs about what it means to be a tribal citizen and misrepresenting the historical forces that animate Oklahoma’s statehood movements. Writing with historians, Indigenous people, and interdisciplinary scholarship, this thesis will incorporate the analytical tools of Critical Indigenous Studies alongside archival and empirical methodologies. This thesis contextualizes Oklahoma’s tribal-state governance dynamic as a contest for land, resources, and life made possible by the logic of settler colonialism and white nationalism instrumental in both contemporary and historic struggles for American Indian legal and political recognition. To do this, I look at the contested history of Indigenous land tenure in Oklahoma beginning with Charles Page and the establishment of Sand Springs in chapter two, followed by the enmeshment of blood politics and internalized colonialism in chapter three, and ending chapter four with an analysis of three distinct statehood movements preceding Oklahoma’s entrance to the United States.