The COVID-19 Pandemic

By March 2020 COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic. It disrupted daily life and caused millions of people to lose their lives. The pandemic was similar in many ways to the flu epidemic that happened one hundred years ago during the First World War. In the United States alone, COVID-19 has resulted in over one million deaths. By 2023, Oklahoma had the seventh-highest death toll from the virus among states. COVID-19 has affected all population groups, but it has disproportionately targeted low-income communities, women, and people of color. In addition, COVID-19 has resulted in the loss of life of Native people and Black people at a higher rate than for any other group in the United States.

In Oklahoma, Native nations led the vaccine effort. Within days of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation declared a state of emergency. Days later the Chickasaw Nation and Cherokee Nation also declared a state of emergency. They closed schools and shifted to remote learning. They also closed most businesses and asked people to isolate themselves at home to stop the spread of the virus. Protecting the health of elders by administering the vaccine as soon as it became available was a priority for Native nations. They also encouraged tribal members, especially the elderly, to wear masks and practice social distancing. When the Cherokee Nation began administering the first doses of the vaccine, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. said, “We put Cherokee-fluent speakers at the front of the line. Saving the language is in our national interest.” In addition, within the first months of vaccines becoming available, the Cherokee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, Muscogee Nation, and Osage Nation offered vaccines to eligible groups, including educators, outside of their nations and ahead of other vaccine efforts in the state.

The vaccine rollout was a success in Oklahoma due in large part to the leadership of Native nations working in partnership with the Oklahoma State Department of Health and the Indian Health Service. Oklahoma was the sixth state to reach one million administered doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. It is worth noting that several states with the highest vaccinations rates in the United States, including Oklahoma, Alaska, and South Dakota, are states with large Native populations.

Community health and taking care of one another are key priorities during pandemics. Dr. Henrietta Mann, the endowed chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University and a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, said pandemics throughout history have affected Native Americans more than other populations. Perhaps as many as 90–95 percent of the Indigenous population died within the first 150 years of contact with Europeans due to the introduction of new diseases such as smallpox and whooping cough. “As each tribe was relocated into Oklahoma, each added the vibrancy of their respective cultures and languages to the others which they had devotedly carried with them to their new homelands,” Mann said.

FIG. 16.15

Representative Cyndi Munson

When Representative Cyndi Munson was first elected in 2015, she became the first Asian American woman to be elected to the Oklahoma legislature. Representative Munson is passionate about criminal justice reform because of her experiences working with the Girl Scouts and the Office of Juvenile Affairs, and she wants to encourage young people to find a cause they are passionate about so that they too can seek to make a positive change in their communities.

Courtesy of Cyndi Munson.

Representative Cyndi Munson

Representative Cyndi Munson has served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives since 2015. She represents District 85, which includes The Village and Nichols Hills areas of Oklahoma City. She was the first Asian American woman elected to the Oklahoma legislature. She hopes to show others that they too can make an impact on their communities.

Munson’s father is a veteran. His military service inspired her interest in politics and public service. A native of Lawton, Munson has always been fascinated by women in politics. She began her career by pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Central Oklahoma. She was a first-generation college student. She earned the Presidential Gold Medal for Leadership and Public Service while there. In her senior year at UCO, Munson volunteered with the Girl Scouts. She helped develop programming for students from lower-income backgrounds. Her work with the organization made her want to continue working in the nonprofit sector.

After graduating from UCO, Munson received her Master of Science in Leadership Education at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Then she returned to work with the Girl Scouts in Oklahoma. Her work focused on community programming and training troops. During her time with the Girl Scouts, Munson worked with schools in thirty-nine different counties in western Oklahoma. This experience opened her eyes to the shortage of counselors in public schools. Another eye-opening part of her job was working with the Office of Juvenile Affairs (OJA). She says, “That is where my eyes were really opened to generational incarceration.” She learned about what incarceration does to families. She related to the young girls she worked with at the OJA. She grew up with a mom who was not present, so she could relate to their struggles. “I could have gone down all these different roads,” she says. In her role as Girl Scout leader, she was able to show girls from all different backgrounds that they could be leaders. Munson stresses the significance of incarceration and its impact on families, saying, “Kids don’t go to juvenile centers because they’re bad. Kids go to juvenile centers because systems have failed them and adults have failed them. So I started to get very vocal about that.”

Munson decided to run for office in 2014. She won election to the state house in 2015. During her time in office, Representative Munson has prioritized certain issues. One is criminal justice reform. Another is funding for higher education. A third is election reform. A fourth is protections for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. And a fifth is the expansion of veteran’s benefits. Overall, Munson has proven she cares about helping working families in Oklahoma.

In 2018, she won the election for House Democratic Caucus Chair. In this role, she represents the minority Democratic party in Oklahoma’s legislature. In 2022, Munson worked with other representatives to create the first ever Asian American and Pacific Islander caucus in Oklahoma.

For those who are interested in getting involved in public service or politics, Munson advises, “Absolutely get involved. First is voting. It is so easy for us to feel like our voice doesn’t matter, when it really does. Find causes you feel passionate about and reach out to them. Don’t hold back, and consider all different levels of government.” Munson hopes to continue to see changes in Oklahoma politics. She encourages young people from all backgrounds to change the status quo and fight for the causes they care about the most.

Changes to Reproductive Rights

Among other things, the pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout highlighted the unique role of Native nations in relation to public health in Oklahoma. This would also be the case with discussions of reproductive rights in the state. The COVID-19 pandemic led to divisions in Oklahoma over personal rights and public health, but as heated as debates became over vaccines and mask-wearing, these were not the only public health issues that divided Oklahomans—and the entire country—in the 2020s. In June 2022 the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision protecting women’s constitutional right to access abortion. Roe had ensured the legality of abortion in the United States for almost fifty years. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and said that it was returning decisions about abortion to the people and their representatives. Now it would be up to individual states to decide whether or not abortion should be legally protected. Governor Kevin Stitt and other social conservatives in Oklahoma strongly supported the Dobbs decision. Most abortions in the state quickly became illegal. Those who supported abortion access voiced concerns about the consequences these changes would have on women’s health. It was not immediately clear how the Dobbs decision would affect health services provided by Native nations. Even two years after the 2022 Dobbs decision, it remains uncertain whether Native nations will adopt laws to either ban or protect abortion access. As with the pandemic response, debates over abortion illustrate, among other things, the complex intersection of tribal, federal, and state power over public health in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma constitution does not provide protection for the right to abortion. In fact, Oklahoma and eleven other states including Arkansas and Missouri had already passed state “trigger laws” to outlaw abortion rights in anticipation of the overturning of Roe v. Wade and of a related case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). Even prior to the Dobbs decision, Oklahoma restricted young people’s access to abortion services by requiring parental notice and consent. The legal age of consent for sexual activity in Oklahoma is 16 years old. This means it is illegal for a minor who is 15 years old or younger to have consensual sex with an adult who is 18 years old or older. At present, Oklahoma schools are not required to teach sexual health and gender education as part of their curriculum. However, schools are required to teach HIV/AIDS prevention. The overall emphasis of the health education curriculum appears to be on abstinence. The curriculum, however, must include instruction on rules governing consent.

FIG. 16.17

Midge Dellinger

In her role as historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Oral History Project, Midge Dellinger, shown here in 2021 at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Council House, began interviewing tribal members in 2021 to record how they managed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dellinger’s passion is to pass along the oral history, knowledge, and experiences of her people to future generations, and through the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Oral History Project she is helping to preserve valuable primary sources.

Photograph by John Beaver.

Midge Dellinger and Muscogee (Creek) Nation Oral History Project

Midge Dellinger is an oral historian in the Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Oral traditions take many forms. These include storytelling, songs, and prayers. Through these practices, Native peoples have passed down tribal knowledge. “Oral traditions and histories are what have sustained Indigenous peoples since time immemorial,” she stated.

In 2021, Dellinger began doing oral history interviews. She talked to forty members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation about the impact of COVID-19. She spoke with people of all ages and backgrounds. She talked to people from both urban and rural communities. The nation received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to create a digital archive. The archive includes the oral history interviews Dellinger conducted. “We know as Muscogee people that our ancestors experienced pandemics in their lifetimes,” Dellinger said. “They experienced them, they suffered them, they endured them and thank goodness they survived them. With this history project, now we have in our historical record how our people of 2020 dealt with COVID-19 and everything it brought into our lives. At the core of who I am as an Indigenous person, our Muscogee people, our ancestors, our people today, our future generations are who I work for.” Dellinger’s interviews hold important lessons. More information about the oral history interviews is available on the website Mvskoke National Library and Archives (mvskokenationallibraryarchive.org).

The McGirt Decision

The case McGirt v. Oklahoma centered around Jimcy McGirt, a citizen of Seminole Nation who was found guilty in 1997 of crimes on Muscogee Nation lands. In response to the original verdict, McGirt’s legal team appealed, arguing that the state of Oklahoma did not have jurisdiction, or the legal power, to prosecute him. They maintained that because McGirt was a Seminole tribal member and his offenses took place on Muscogee Nation lands, only the federal government, not the state government, could prosecute the case. When the case went to the Supreme Court in 2020, the justices ruled 5–4 in McGirt’s favor. The Court maintained that the state of Oklahoma did not have criminal jurisdiction over Jimcy McGirt because he was a tribal citizen on tribal land. In other words, the state of Oklahoma has no criminal jurisdiction on Native land.

The McGirt decision granted tribal jurisdiction over much of eastern Oklahoma as Indian Country and offers another glimpse into the tensions between state and tribal authority in Oklahoma. By establishing the state’s lack of jurisdiction over McGirt’s case, the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the Muscogee Nation’s 1866 treaty with the United States with respect to reservation boundaries.

MAP 16.2

The McGirt Decision

The McGirt decision is a landmark Supreme Court ruling that affirms tribal sovereignty, and, more specifically, the existence of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Reservation in eastern Oklahoma with regard to criminal jurisdiction. As a result of McGirt, 43 percent of Oklahoma is now “Indian Country” as defined by federal law, including most of Tulsa. Since the McGirt decision, Oklahoma courts have affirmed at least nine other Native nation reservations: the Cherokee Nation, the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation, the Seminole Nation, the Miami Tribe, the Ottawa Tribe, the Peoria Tribe, the Wyandotte Nation, and the Quapaw Tribe.

Courtesy of Brad Watkins, PhD.

In summary, the McGirt decision meant that the state of Oklahoma had no criminal jurisdiction on Five Tribes land, meaning land belonging to the Muscogee, Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw Nations. The Five Tribes had been forcibly removed to Indian Territory, what is now eastern Oklahoma, in the 1820s and 1830s. And the 1866 Reconstruction Treaties following the Civil War defined the reservation boundaries of the respective Five Tribal Nations.

Two years later, in 2022, the Supreme Court clarified or complicated its position, depending on one’s perspective, in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta. In a 5–4 decision, the Court maintained that the federal government and the state have concurrent (co-existing) criminal jurisdiction and the right to prosecute nontribal members when the victim is a tribal member and the crime is committed on tribal land or Indian Country (the eastern part of Oklahoma). Taken together, the McGirt and Castro-Huerta decisions magnified the complexities of criminal jurisdiction and tribal sovereignty in Oklahoma. The Supreme Court affirmed that the state of Oklahoma has no criminal jurisdiction on Native land. Tribal courts can prosecute most crimes involving Native Americans. Major crimes involving Native Americans, including murder, manslaughter, and kidnapping, are federal crimes. The Supreme Court also clarified that the McGirt decision could not apply to cases that came before this ruling.

Another important outcome of the McGirt decision is that it changed the identification of Oklahoma as a non-reservation state. Ever since Oklahoma opted out of the original Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (discussed in chapter 9), the state had been defined by policy-makers and scholars as a non-reservation state. The Dawes Act in 1887 had ended the collective ownership of tribal land. As an extended version of the Dawes Act, the Curtis Act one year later had called for the abolishment of tribal governments and reservations. However, the Supreme Court ruling in McGirt overturned those earlier federal laws by recognizing that the eastern half of Oklahoma is in fact reservation land.

Doctrine of Discovery Revisited

As we learned in chapter 2, the Doctrine of Discovery became the legal basis or justification for taking away Indigenous land. This doctrine lasted for five hundred years, but in March 2023, the Vatican issued a repudiation (rejection) of it. The statement from the Vatican said that the “Catholic Church repudiates those concepts which fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery.’” Pope Francis warned that “never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected with the idea that one culture is superior to another.” The rejection of the Doctrine of Discovery by Pope Francis and the Catholic Church does not necessarily reflect a change in American law. For two hundred years the 1823 Supreme Court ruling in Johnson v. McIntosh, which relied on the Doctrine of Discovery, has remained in place. That 1823 ruling used the Doctrine of Discovery as the basis for stating that Indigenous people had the right to occupy but not own land on which they had lived for centuries. However, as we have seen, sometimes the Supreme Court rejects precedent and reverses earlier decisions. It remains to be seen whether the Vatican’s rejection of the doctrine will influence court decisions or legislation in the United States. However, the ruling from Rome marks a major shift in the way that the dispossession of Indigenous land is understood and justified.