The nation descends from the historic Muscogee Confederacy, a large group of indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands.

The Muscogee Nation is headquartered in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and serves as the seat of tribal government.

The Muscogee Nation's Reservation status was affirmed in 2020 by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Sharp v. Murphy, which held that the allotted Muscogee Nation reservation in Oklahoma has not been disestablished and therefore retains jurisdiction over tribal citizens in Creek, Hughes, Okfuskee, Okmulgee, McIntosh, Muskogee, Tulsa, and Wagoner counties in Oklahoma.

[8] The eight districts include: Creek, Tulsa, Wagoner, Okfuskee, Muskogee, Okmulgee, McIntosh, and Tukvpvtce (Hughes).

The Court consists of seven justices who serve six-year terms after nomination by the Principal Chief and confirmation by the National Council.

[11] The criteria for Citizenship are to be Creek by Blood and trace back to a direct ancestor listed on the 1906 Dawes Roll by issuance of birth and/or death certificates.

It educates and encourages tribal members to grow their own traditional foods for health, environmental sustainability, economic development, and sharing of knowledge and community between generations.

The Creek National Capitol, also known as the Council House, was built in 1878 and is located on a landscaped city block in downtown Okmulgee.

Exterior walls of the symmetrical Italianate building are constructed of rough-faced sandstone in a coarse ashlar pattern with paired brackets at the cornice.

A bracketed porch with a balcony above covers each entrance and 6-over-6, double-hung sash windows line the exterior walls.

The hipped roof is crowned with a square wooden cupola, which originally housed bells to call tribal leaders to meetings.

The inside of the building is centrally divided by a stair hall, creating an east and west side.

The capitol served as a meeting place for the legislative branches of the Muscogee Nation until 1907, when Oklahoma became a state.

CMN is a two-year institution, offering associate degrees in Tribal Services, Police Science, Gaming, and Native American Studies.

It offers Mvskoke language, Native American History, Tribal Government, and Indian Land Issue classes as well.

A needs assessment survey revealed that a majority of Muscogee citizens were interested in attending the tribal college.

[24] The nation includes the Muscogee people and descendants of their African-descended slaves[25] who were forced by the US government to relocate from their ancestral homes in the Southeast to Indian Territory in the 1830s, during the Trail of Tears.

[28] After defeating the Confederacy, the Union required new peace treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes, which had allied with that insurrection.

The Treaty of 1866 required the Creek to abolish slavery within their territory and to grant tribal citizenship to those Creek Freedmen who chose to stay in the territory; this citizenship was to include voting rights and shares of annuities and land allotments.

During the prosperous final decades of the 19th century, when the tribe had autonomy and minimal interference from the federal government, the Nation built schools, churches, and public houses.

In the hasty process of registration, the Dawes Commission registered tribal members in three categories: they distinguished among "Creek by Blood" and "Creek Freedmen," a category where they listed anyone with visible African ancestry, regardless of their proportion of Muscogee ancestry; and "Intermarried Whites."

The 1906 Five Civilized Tribes Act (April 26, 1906) was passed by the US Congress in anticipation of approving statehood for Oklahoma in 1907.

In 1979 the Muscogee Nation Constitutional Convention voted to limit citizenship in the Nation to persons who could prove descent by blood, meaning that members had to be able to document direct descent from an ancestor listed on the Dawes Commission roll in the category of "Creek by Blood".

The 1893 registry was established to identify citizens of the nation at the time of allotment of communal lands and dissolution of the reservation system and tribal government.

[31] The 1979 vote on citizenship excluded descendants of persons recorded only as Creek Freedmen in the Dawes Rolls.