"FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — A U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding state authority to prosecute some crimes on Native land is fracturing decades of law built around the hard-fought principle that tribes have the right to govern themselves on their own territory, legal experts say.
The Wednesday ruling is a marked departure from federal Indian law and veers from the push to increase tribes' ability to prosecute all crimes on reservations — regardless of who is involved. It also cast tribes as part of states, rather than the sovereign nations they are, infuriating many across Indian Country.
“The majority (opinion) is not firmly rooted in the law that I have dedicated my life to studying and the history as I know it to be true," said Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese, an assistant law professor at Stanford University who is enrolled at Nambé Pueblo in New Mexico. ”And that’s just really concerning,”"
Felicia Fonseca and Lindsay Whitehurst report for the Associated Press July 1, 2022.
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