The 800 Pound Gorilla of 2020
All of My Life, I Now Think I Underestimated Racism.
Nobody chooses their ethnicity was what I thought as a child from the very first time I was ridiculed for being Indian. I did not yet know about Oklahoma as Indian Territory, about the bogus treaties that were forced upon the Five Tribes and then violated to make half a state from Indian Territory in 1907.
When I got old enough to understand the historical raw deal, the story of Oklahoma Territory — the other half of the state — seemed somehow more pure and honest. The tribes on the reservations in Oklahoma Territory were mostly Plains Indians brought there at gunpoint after hot wars. The reservations were gussied up POW camps. There is just something about the moral bankruptcy of entering treaties you have no plans to honor that stuck in my throat before I ever considered studying law.
I was a grown man, graduated from a first rate law school, when the perfect description of Indian Territory came from a dissenting opinion written by Justice Hugo Black. It lives to this day among Indian lawyers as “the all-purpose federal Indian law dissent.” Justice Black opined that,
Great nations, like great men, should keep their word.
Justice Black came from Alabama where, like many if not most politicians, he was a…
