Today the courts ruled that since Congress never actually acted to end our change the boundaries of the Muscogee Reservation, the reservation remains interact and the State of Oklahoma does not have jurisdiction to try cases between tribal members for crimes committed on reservation lands.

The argument against focused on the number of cases this ruling could overturn, and the potential legal chaos involved. In the majority opinion, Justice Gorsich wrote, “The federal government promised the (Muscogee Creek Nation) a reservation in perpetuity,” adding that while Congress has “diminished” the sanctuary over time, lawmakers had “never withdrawn the promised reservation.”

The State cannot claim authority over the reservation unless Congress explicitly gives that authority to the State.

The scope is the ruling is limited to legal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes, but there is a broader message. Promises made in the past to Native Americans cannot now be ignored because it would be too difficult to rectify. In the words of Justice Gorsich, “many of the arguments before us today follow a sadly familiar pattern. Yes, promises were made, but the price of keeping them has become too great, so now we should just cast a blind eye. We reject that thinking.”

I’m going to ask a favor of you. Imagine the best storyteller you know. The one who can sit and wait her turn, knowing full well that nothing is going to top what she is about to bring to the table. The one who makes cellphone batteries cry for mercy as a 10-minute check-in becomes a three-hour call you hope will never end.

You’ve just imagined my Great Aunt Janice.

Everyone in my family can tell a story, but Aunt Janice was the Shanachie. She kept our family history and lore, and her version of any story was the definitive one. She knew where all the family skeletons were hidden, having hidden a fair number of them herself.

She sang opera, she balanced a till for the bank, and she kept the family home through some 60 years of parties. The one time I remember her being disappointed in me was when I called her early on a Sunday morning. It wasn’t that I should have been at church, mind, it was that she knew that Shannon and I had thrown a party the night before, and it was WAY too early in Alaska for anyone to have recovered from a McClear party.

“Don’t worry, Aunt Janice, it was an early party. The last guest left at 3, and I have to get up to let the dogs out anyhow.” She was dubious, but she still wanted the blow-by-blow.

Aunt Janice grew up in the Great Depression. She lost a brother in the final days of the Second World War. She went through a hard patch that even she, the consummate storyteller, does not talk about. Se saw the family through the passing of her siblings and parents. She watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center, telling our stories all the while. She traveled a bit, but mostly, family Shanachie that she was, the world came to her. At the end of the day, it was a worldwide pandemic that did her in. So, the great storyteller died today in isolation.

Still, a weird twist of fate gave her a storybook ending. Across the river, New York City residents held a city-wide sing-along. At 2 minutes past 7, the skyline that Aunt Janice has been watching all these years sang her spirit home with Sinatra.

McLuhan came up with the idea when he was a graduate student, helping Harold Innis write “Fur Trade in Canada.” The book noted that the entire fur trade was defined by the breadth and width of the Voyager’s canoe and the range that one Voyager could reach in a season. The travel medium of the canoe established the economic base of Western Canada. McLuhan expanded the scope of that canoe to the breadth and width of an evening newscast.

There was nothing romantic about a ship at sea. The ship relied on men to be the workings of the machine at the direction of the captain. The only way through a bad storm was to follow the Captain’s orders. Individualism meant possible death for the crew.

The ships themselves would go out for years with provisions for months. For anyone to make it home, the ship must find provisions along the way. To not take what was needed meant death in a faraway land.

The crew? They knew the score. Mortality rates for an extended cruise meant there was no certainty of seeing family again. A lack of any form of pension and a risky job meant if they did make it home, it was to a future of scraping and a family that had moved on.

And the Captian? Everything about this scenario self-selects for someone who could expect a godlike following, and put himself above those inferior to him, commanding them to their deaths if it meant saving the ship. The astonishing thing about the tales of mutiny that survive is just how much a crew would put up with, just how inhumane a captain could be before the mutiny happened.

So how does the medium of travel direct the message of colonialism? We sent out ships that could not survive on their own provisions. We crewed them with men who needed to be dehumanized for the ship to survive. They sailed under the command of a captain who was used to dictating to those he felt were his inferiors.

That sounds like the message of colonization in a nutshell.

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