Macon Magazine

DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | maconmagazine.com 63 already been opened. Oklahoma had become known as the "Sooner State." The term "Sooner" before statehood was used to describe settlers who broke the law and settled in "Indian Territory" before the land was opened for general settlement by the 1889 act. It's no secret that most of the wealth that was and is created in the Tulsa area came at Native Americans' expense. Oil was discovered in "Indian Territory" in 1901, and Tulsa became known as the "Oil Capitol of the World." Today, Oklahoma is ranked "sixth among states in oil production and fifth in natural gas production," according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration … and the crude oil and natural gas generated in Oklahoma was worth $17.4 billion in 2022, according to the Oklahoma State Treasurer. The city of Tulsa sits on the lands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation (MCN), Cherokee Nation, and Osage Nation. But those nations have no say in Tulsa's governance, nor does Tulsa have any jurisdiction on Native American lands. In 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in the McGirt v. Oklahoma case, that about half of the state, including the city of Tulsa, is Native American land. Each nation has its own governmental structure and provides varying levels of services for its citizens from health care to education. The MCN provides its own hospitals and K-12 schools and operates the College of the Muscogee Nation. "One of the eye-openers for me," Robby Redmond with Oconee State Bank said, "was the current state of "disagreement or lack of cohesion between the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Tulsa. On the surface, it appeared that all parties were in sync, but only until we dug a little deeper, and ultimately peeled back the layers of the onion, did I learn how much tension really exists." "What a tragedy,' remarked Corrie Hall, an attorney with James Bates Brannen Groover, "that even now we're still having to figure out whose is whose and what is what. The fact that equality is still something to be grasped. It's incredibly sobering." Another dark chapter Aside from the treatment of Indigenous people, Oklahoma is also known for another terrible period in American history. One of the first acts of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1907, immediately after being admitted as the 46th state, was its first Jim Crow law strictly segregating every aspect of life in the state. Black people were prohibited from working in the booming oil industry and could only work in menial jobs for white people. Despite the roadblocks, Black Oklahomans built a prosperous district of Tulsa called Greenwood, where all the businesses — hotels, restaurants, banks, cafes, schools, and churches — and fine homes populated a 35-block area of the city, all Black-owned and operated. Greenwood was titled "Black Wall Street" by Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, after he visited the area. On May 31, 1921, what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre began when heavily armed white residents, including the chief of police, attacked Greenwood, ostensibly over reports that armed Black men from Greenwood had gone to the courthouse to protect a suspect accused of accosting a This photo by Gano Perez, Jr. (LEFT) shows the MCN Tribal Supreme Court and District Court in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, a modern iteration of traditional architecture such as the Earth Lodge council chamber at Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon - a structure which carbon dates to the year 1015 C.E (RIGHT). Photo by Mac Stone/ Open Space Institute.

• Cover