Property, Then Policy: The Markwayne Mullin Record in Indian Country

The deed outlasted the business. Then came the legislation. By Troy Littledeer | Special thanks to Suzette Brewer

There is a vacant building on North Second Street that tells you everything you need to know about how power works in America.

The former IGA Warehouse Market sits empty — paint peeling, parking lot cracked, no customers, no sign of reopening. The people who used to shop there have fewer options now.

That is not a policy abstraction. That is Tuesday in Adair County, Oklahoma, where 21.5% of residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey.

Here is what happened to it.

In early 2024, companies tied to the immediate family of U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin sold that building — and a restaurant nearby — to the Cherokee Nation for an estimated $2.1 million. Within months, draft federal language from Mullin’s office surfaced that would give the Cherokee Nation veto power over the land rights of a smaller, rival tribe — a restriction federal courts had already rejected.

The property transfer and the legislation are not legally connected.

This piece does not claim they are. What public records do show is the sequence: the senator’s family sold property to one tribal government, and months later language from his office moved to benefit that same government at the expense of another. Without a hearing. Without a vote. Without a phone call to the tribe it would affect most.

The documents are public record. The sequence does not require interpretation. It requires attention.

The money trail

On Feb. 28, 2024, a warranty deed from Mullin Properties LLC to the Cherokee Nation was recorded with the Adair County Clerk — Christie Mullin, the senator’s wife, signing as Authorized Signer. On April 8, 2024, Stilwell IGA Warehouse Market Inc., with Christie Mullin’s father Larry Rowan signing as president, recorded a second deed transferring property in original-town Stilwell to the Cherokee Nation. Both transactions closed through Green Country Title & Closing, LLC.

The deed outlasted the business. The land changed hands. So did the leverage.

Transaction values are estimated using Oklahoma’s documentary stamp rate ($0.75 per $500 of consideration — the standard method property reporters and county assessors use, because Oklahoma law requires stamps calculated on actual consideration paid). The restaurant property: approximately $1.5 million. The IGA: approximately $600,000. Together, an estimated $2.1 million transferred to the Cherokee Nation within five weeks.

In a county where $2.1 million represents more than 56 average household incomes, that transaction warrants a second look. The question is not whether the sales were legal. Their transfers appear legal. What happened next is the point.

The legislation nobody voted on

Months after those deeds were recorded, draft legislative language from Mullin’s office arrived at the Interior Department — not through a floor debate, not through a committee vote, but through an internal email chain that the public would never have seen if not for a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the affected tribe.

“We got the bill language below from Senate approps,” Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management Jason Freihage wrote to attorneys in the Interior Department’s Solicitor’s Office on June 2, 2025, according to the FOIA-obtained email. Portions were redacted under the federal deliberative process exemption.

Here is what the language would have done: two distinct federally recognized tribal governments exist within the Cherokee Nation reservation in northeastern Oklahoma — the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. They are separate sovereigns. When either tribe places land into federal trust, that land moves out of state and county jurisdiction and under tribal control — determining who governs, who taxes, who enforces the law.

Mullin’s language would have required Cherokee Nation consent before the UKB could take any land into trust. One tribal government holding veto power over another’s sovereignty on shared territory. Courts had already ruled against that position. The rider would have reversed those rulings through a spending bill.

The Keetoowah Cherokees have a 76-acre parcel near Tahlequah that they purchased in 2000. Their land-into-trust application has been pending since 2004, according to UKB officials — 20 years of waiting for housing, healthcare, economic development, and basic tribal services for their members. The rider would have permanently halted those efforts.

UKB Tribal Council Attorney Victoria Holland told NewsOn6 in Tulsa that the tribe was not consulted before the language was introduced. “Since he is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation,” Holland said, “it’s concerning whether or not he can be unbiased when it comes to matters that affect the United Keetoowah Band.”

The legal record he was trying to undo

This didn’t come out of nowhere. Congress required Cherokee Nation consent for UKB land-into-trust applications in 1992. In 1999, Congress softened that to consultation. In 2019, the Tenth Circuit ruled in Cherokee Nation v. Bernhardt that Interior has authority to take UKB land into trust without Cherokee Nation consent. The Supreme Court declined review in 2020.

Then in January 2025, Solicitor’s Opinion M-37084 concluded the UKB holds a legal ownership interest in the Cherokee reservation under the Treaty of 1846. Forty-two days later, that opinion was placed under Suspension Review. Mullin’s language would have made the suspension permanent.

“Senator Mullin is now trying to circumvent that legal process,” UKB Attorney General Klint Cowan told Oklahoma NPR outlet, KOSU.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. has defended the proposal as an exercise of his government’s sovereignty. He is doing his job. But the attempt to keep this out of public view — and out of the courts — did not stay quiet.

The Muscogee Nation took up Tribal Resolution TR 25-079 in August 2025, formally opposing the congressional language. It passed committee. Then Hoskin appeared before the Muscogee National Council and warned that supporting the UKB would do “irreparable harm” to the Cherokee-Muscogee relationship. The council voted 9-4 to shelve the resolution. The Cherokee Nation’s delegation left immediately after the vote. The UKB delegation stayed.

Muscogee National Council Representative Sandra Golden, who voted to postpone, said what she saw plainly: “That congressman in Washington, DC, is trying to get us to fight each other. When we fight each other, we lose our sovereignty.”

Dode Barnett, who sponsored the resolution, put it even more directly: “This right now is happening to another tribe. Tomorrow, it can be Muscogee Nation.”

The identity problem

Mullin is an enrolled Cherokee Nation citizen. He identifies as a descendant of the Old Settlers — Western Cherokees who relocated voluntarily before the Trail of Tears. That is a documented historical category. His enrollment traces through Dawes enrollee Bert Morris, Roll No. 1613.

During an Oct. 16, 2018 appearance on Fox & Friends, Mullin described his family’s land as where they “literally stopped walking on the volunteer walk.”

The Cherokee Phoenix reported on Nov. 2, 2018 that a Sept. 12 press release on his congressional website — stating his ancestors “ended their walk on the Trail of Tears” — had been edited that same day to remove the reference. As of publication of the Phoenix report, Mullin had not responded to questions about the discrepancy or provided his ancestors’ names. No correction was issued.

Here is the part that matters beyond the history: the United Keetoowah Band claims the same Old Settler ancestry. They also identify as successors-in-interest to the Western Cherokees. The same Interior Department opinion Mullin’s office tried to reverse — M-37084 — concluded the UKB holds its reservation rights under the Treaty of 1846, the same treaty that consolidated Mullin’s claimed ancestors into the broader Cherokee Nation.

What Mullin uses as a heritage claim, the UKB uses as a legal foundation for sovereignty. He didn’t just move language against a rival tribe.

According to the UKB’s legal position, he moved it against his own family’s historical government.

The enrollment office is in Tahlequah. The records go back to 1906. The line starts on the left.

The confirmation hearing that didn’t ask

On March 23, 2026, the Senate confirmed Mullin as Secretary of Homeland Security on a 54-45 vote. He now runs ICE.

In January 2026, Peter Yazzie, an enrolled Navajo Nation citizen, was stopped by ICE agents in Arizona and presented his tribal ID — a federally recognized document from a sovereign nation with treaty obligations to the United States. He was held for four hours before release. That same month in Minneapolis, Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez, a Red Lake Band descendant, was pulled from his vehicle and detained before being released without charges. The Red Lake Nation reported three enrolled citizens detained. Standing Rock reported one. Tribal governments across the country began issuing advisories telling their citizens to carry their identification at all times, because the cards weren’t being recognized.

In a Feb. 12, 2026 letter to tribal leaders, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called the claims of enrolled tribal citizens being detained “false” and characterized them as “misrepresenting facts and spreading misinformation.” Noem wrote that ICE “does not target, and will not target, Native Americans or any U.S. citizens based on appearance, ethnicity, or community affiliation.” The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Red Lake Nation, and Navajo Nation have not walked back their statements.

The man whose office moved language restricting one tribe’s land rights without a hearing, without a vote, without a phone call, now runs the agency with the most direct enforcement authority over Indigenous communities in America.

No senator asked about the $2.1 million at the confirmation hearing. No one asked about the rider. No one asked about the language that disappeared from his website when a reporter asked who his ancestors were. No one asked what the UKB members waiting on that 76-acre parcel are supposed to do now.

He answered the questions he was asked. The record raises the ones he was not.

The former restaurant property on Division Street now operates as a Cherokee Nation elder nutrition center, serving meals to elders and running a Head Start next door. The land changed hands. The use changed with it. Those are real services for real people.

The former IGA on North Second Street sits empty. The building continues to decay as Mullin begins his new job.

The title is new.

The record is not.

This commentary original ran in the Tahlequah Daily Press on March 22, 2026.

Troy Littledeer is an award-winning Indigenous journalist and member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. A lifetime member of the Indigenous Journalists Association, his reporting on sports, tribal sovereignty and governance has appeared in the Stilwell Democrat Journal, NDNSports.com, and Osage News. Follow him @kituwahpunk.