From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a case that will decide whether nearly

half of Oklahoma is legally an Indian reservation.

The court's decision could have massive implications for tribal sovereignty.

Our guest this week is Rebecca Nagel, an activist, writer, artist, and citizen of the Cherokee

nation, whose narrative podcast, This Land,

explains the process by which native people in Oklahoma lost their land and the court case that

could help restore it. Sovereignty is at the core of many native issues today, the epidemic of

missing and murdered indigenous women, efforts to protect the environment from oil pipelines,

and the preservation of native languages and cultures.

We talked about all this and what it means to be a Native American today.

This live discussion took place at the Brooklyn Public Library's Night of Philosophy and Ideas.

I hope you enjoy this thought-provoking conversation.

This is a great honor and a great pleasure to welcome Rebecca Nagel to Brooklyn.

You may know Rebecca from a variety of different places, but she most recently put together a podcast called

This Land. And the podcast, This Land, talks about a particular court case. There is the tie-in

with the ACLU. So a lot has happened in the case. But let's start with the original case.

Yeah, so much has happened. What was the basic question that was before the court? What was going on in the original case. Yeah, so much has happened. What was the basic

question that was before the court? What was going on in the original case? Yeah, so this court case

about treaty rights in Oklahoma started with a small town murder in the late 90s. So a Creek

citizen named Patrick Murphy murdered another Creek citizen, George Jacobs, and he was sentenced to death by the state of

...