WEBVTT - The Ranch Bid 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:05.880 So you were part of the government that did the 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:12.719 Bluesterm acquisition. That's correct. What was that process like? Fast? 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:22.360 Really really fast. This is Raymond Redcorn. He's retired now, 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.760 but until recently he was assistant Principal Chief of the 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:30.360 os Age Nation. That was his title in when the 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.960 rumors started, we'd only heard them for about a week 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.839 that that ranch, Ted Turner's Bluestem Ranch might come up 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:43.360 for sale. Ted Turner's Bluestem Ranch more than forty acres 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.600 of land in os Age County, owned by the billionaire 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.600 founder of CNN land he might be selling that could 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:52.920 be up for grabs for the first time in years. 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.520 And then a cowboy out there called Chief and told 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.480 him that it was true, and they were going to 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:06.880 be on a really tight timeline and successful bidders would 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.040 have to get pretty much everything together for a purchase 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:19.720 worth tens of millions of dollars in thirty days. This 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.520 was land made up of so many original os Age allotments, 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:26.880 a huge chunk of land that the Osage Nation had 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.840 bought more than a century ago, that the tribe had 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.679 held the property title too before the US government privatized it. 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.600 This ranch had been built up in the decades after allotment, 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.200 long before Ted Turner bought it in the early two thousand's, 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.160 and before Ted Turner held title to this land, another 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:49.080 big rancher had it, a man named Chuck Drummond. He's 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:51.720 the grandson of one of the Drummond brothers who started 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:56.840 the family's cattle business, Cecil Drummond. Some of the parcels 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.720 that made up Turner's ranch were deedd to Cecil along 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.480 time him ago, including a section William Hale owned before 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:06.800 he went to prison. That land passed to another white 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:11.760 man who later sold it to Cecil in other sections 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.399 the Drummond spot more recently, but in two thousand one, 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:19.640 Chuck Drummond did something his family really did. He sold 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.720 the sprawling piece of land. Ted Turner was the buyer, 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.200 and some fifteen years later Turner was putting it on 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:33.200 the market again. All of us who have lived here 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:40.160 our entire lives understood that this represented an opportunity to 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:44.320 buy one of the biggest chunks of mos Age County 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:50.000 that would come on the market in our lifetime. And 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:56.800 it was he just took a deep breath and let's go. 0:02:57.840 --> 0:02:59.440 I don't know how it's going to turn out, but 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.000 we're gonna swing for the fans and see we can 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:08.200 see if we can get this done. Swing for the fence. 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:11.079 That's what the O st Age Nation had to do 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:14.200 if it wanted a chance to own this land again. 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:23.240 So they swung hard. This isn't trust. I'm Rachel Adams 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:28.640 heard Raymond Redcorn and other O Sage government leaders spent 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.800 a pretty tent several weeks trying to buy Ted Turner's 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.200 Blue Stem ranch. We'll get to that, but the story 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:38.240 of that moment the Osage Nations chanced to buy the 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.000 biggest piece of os Age County coming on the market 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.800 in Raymond's lifetime. It couldn't have happened without something else, 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:49.320 something that happened a decade earlier. This was when Jim 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.280 Gray was chief. You heard him in the first episode. 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.440 What I remember from that night was it, why has 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.680 it taken so long? It doesn't normally take this long, doesn't. 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:06.160 This is June of two thousand two, election night. Jim's 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.280 on the ballot, He's running for chief. He and his 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:13.080 family and supporters are waiting on the results. He has 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.280 it always done this point, No, no, what they're doing 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:17.720 a difference this year. What are they doing difference this year? Oh, 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:21.640 they're they're they're They're not doing it by hand, They're 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:23.600 running it through a machine. I said, we shouldn't. That 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:28.279 supposed to make it quicker. So it was after midnight, 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:31.120 probably twelve thirty or something like that, and everyone's getting tired. 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:33.480 A lot of people left, you know, but the die 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.240 hards are still hanging out, you know. And next thing 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:38.599 you know, boom, they put the final results on there 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.680 and there was a couple of my supporters were in 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:44.160 front of me and I was standing behind him and 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.760 I said, what is it? What is it? I think 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:48.760 My cousin turned around, looked at me and he goes, 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:55.440 you would And it was just like, oh my god. 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:03.480 I was just blown away. I mean, my whole family came. 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:05.400 We had a big group hug and there was just 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:10.359 screaming in Holleran and no one saw that coming. It 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:15.799 was I didn't see it coming. Jim didn't see it coming, 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:17.880 in part because he was pretty young as far as 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.440 political candidates go. He was also running on something kind 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:25.800 of radical. He wanted to completely reform the stage nation's government, 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:31.040 write a new constitution, build a new nation. Because When 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.479 the n Act allotted the reservation, it also dismantled the 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:39.919 Stage Nation's existing government appointed a whole new governing body 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:44.000 called the O Stage Tribal Council, But Jim says that 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.080 new government was limited in power and that left the 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:52.240 Stage Nation vulnerable. We didn't have the power to do 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.960 anything except meat once a month to prove oil leasas 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:58.920 go about your business. That was it. So it was 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.320 a very minimal role. But when people started getting killed, 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:05.400 people were looking to the Council for leadership, but by 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:09.240 that time they were powerless. They didn't really have any 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.919 power to do anything. This whole time, under the rules 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:16.120 of the Act, the only O s Ages who could 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.520 vote in tribal elections were oth ages who had head rates, 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.320 meaning a lot of people were disenfranchised from their own government. 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.040 They couldn't vote until an older relative passed away and 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.720 they inherited their head right share. I mean, when you 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:34.040 lost your ability to govern yourself, and then you see 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.600 what happens when you're not able to govern yourself and 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:41.320 you get exploited, it's easy to see why something had 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.719 to change. And it wasn't going to change from the outside, 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:46.040 and it was going to have to change from the 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:50.039 inside out. Efforts to reform the O s Age government 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:53.360 had gone on for decades. In the early nineties, the 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:55.840 group of O s Age citizens brought a lawsuit that 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.520 resulted in a court ordered government reform. O s Age 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:03.600 voters approved a new constitution, one that opened up citizenship 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.120 beyond just os Ages who had had rights. But within 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:11.800 a few years another court decision reversed that. So we 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.840 got a taste of what democracy was like, and then 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.960 it was taken away from us, and that government that 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:20.800 was there for just maybe a couple of years had 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.880 disappeared and it was replaced by the tribal council again. 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.160 By the time Jim ran for Chief, conversations about reforming 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.840 the os Age government, we're taking on new urgency. There 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:33.880 was a real concern that because of the way the 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.760 nineteen of six Act was word in, the US government 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.200 could decide the Osage nation no longer existed once the 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:44.200 last original latt died. There were some people at the 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:46.960 Solicitor's office in d C that felt like that was 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.080 the basis of the trust if you don't have any 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.480 original lattis. Because they closed the roles in nineteen O 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:55.880 six didn't make any more oth Sages in the eyes 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.679 of the law. Then do we still have a trust 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.360 relationship to the oth Age. That was a question that 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:04.760 no one really had a clear answer to. And in 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.800 two thousand two, almost a hundred years after allotment, there 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:11.760 weren't many original a lot teas left. A lot of 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.640 discussions were happening in oth Age country about how long 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.840 can we keep doing this? Knowing that the population of 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:22.040 oth Sages without a head right is starting to out 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.080 number the o Sages with head rights. How long can 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.800 we keep doing this? We're losing original lot tease every year. 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.720 So Jim runs for chief on reforming the government for good, 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:35.920 coming up with the government that served all oath Ages, 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.240 whether or not they had a head right. Mostly, he 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:41.960 told me he didn't think he'd went He just thought 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.880 he was forcing the issue into the spotlight again, getting 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:46.880 people to talk about it, to come up with a 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.679 path forward for the Osage Nation. But as Jim campaigned, 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:54.120 a sort of coalition formed, and on that night in 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.400 June of two thousand two, it wasn't just Jim who 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.160 want on the idea that the oth Age Nation did 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:05.199 a new constitution. Everybody who ran and won on that 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:10.679 council ran on that issue as well. It was the 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.240 biggest wipe out in a tribal council election since it started. 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:18.079 I think we all knew it was time. I think 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.679 we all felt it. I mean one member of the 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:25.520 council in particular. Really, we were at one of those 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:27.520 political events where everyone got a chanced to speak for 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.719 a few minutes and sit down, you know. And this 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.600 gentleman was probably in his late seventies and his mom 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:38.760 lived into her nineties and he took care of her. 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:40.719 She was in a nursing home and all that, you know, 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.040 and when she finally passed on, he finally got to 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:48.800 vote at the age of seventy seven. If there ever 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:52.360 was a poster child for government reform, he was it. 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:55.640 He was a living, breathing an example of what's wrong. 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:58.200 That should never have been the case. He should never 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:02.240 happen to wait that long to consider himself O Sage. 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:08.360 And his talk at these events was so emotional you 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.559 couldn't help but draw tier just hearing him talk about it. 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.480 Because the oth Age Nation's existing government was established under 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:19.680 the nineteen o six Act, the os Age Nation wouldn't 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:23.439 be able to reform its own government without the US government, 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.559 without an Act of Congress. Jim says this was the 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:31.640 only federally recognized tribe with this kind of arrangement. Other 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.199 tribal nations were able to determine who is the citizen themselves, 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.679 but the os Age Nation needed to get federal lawmakers 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:41.959 on board to change those rules. So that was the 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:46.839 first step, simple an Act of Congress. I was under 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:49.679 no illusion that when I campaigned in two thousand two, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.880 I was going to get a federal law passed. I 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:58.559 know how sketchy politics is in Washington, and I wasn't 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:01.559 that naive to think that, oh, yeah, I'll do this, 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:03.520 I'll knock it out. In two years, we'll be back 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:08.439 in business. You know. That's that's that's crazy talk. Even 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.319 though it seemed like a long shot, Jim and other 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.240 O s Age leaders got to work. They lobbied the U. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.839 S Congress, made their case. They brought lawmakers down to 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:20.760 Oklahoma to hear from O s Ages who were unable 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.640 to participate in their own government. And sure enough, in 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:28.560 two thousand four, Mr Speaker, I'm here today to bring 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:34.319 my strong support HR twelve to reaffirm the inherent sovereign 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.680 rights of the O Sage tribe to determine their membership 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.920 and form of government. Because of the law created in 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:44.520 nineteen o six by this Congress, the O Sage tribe 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.760 have not been afforded the same rights as every other 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.120 federally recognized tribe does. Is taped from the House floor 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:53.959 as U s lawmakers are about to pass the O 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:58.320 c Age Reform Act. The bill is simple short. They 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:03.560 are basically two key lines. The First Congress hereby reaffirms 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:06.440 the inherent sovereign right of the O s Age tribe 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:09.760 to determine its own membership, provided that the rights of 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.120 any person to O Sage mineral estate shares are not diminished. 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:18.880 Thereby in the Second Congress hereby reaffirms the inherent sovereign 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:21.719 rights of the O Sage tribe to determine its own 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.160 form of government. The question is, well the House suspend 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:29.960 the rules and pass HR so many as are in favor, 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.520 say I, those opposed No. In the opinion of the Chair, 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:35.880 two thirds of those present having voted in the affirmative, 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.320 the rules are suspended to the bill is passed without objection. 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:42.080 The bill passed the House in June two thousand four, 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.480 and a few months later it passed the Senate. It 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:47.760 was unanimous from both houses. You know how they do 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.280 those list of bills that are in controversial, like naming 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.559 a street or something, or post office, you know. So 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.000 the House did their version, the Senate did their version, 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.319 and it went to the President's desk for siting mature. 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.599 In December third, two thousand four, he signed it. The 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:08.160 oth Age nation could decide who its citizens were, and 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:11.880 it could create whatever kind of government it wanted. This 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.040 is also when the real work began because the oath 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:19.160 Age Nation it needed a new constitution. It was just, 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.840 oh gosh, it was kind of scary. This is Priscilla Iba. 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:25.240 She was on the commission that was in charge of 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:29.160 writing the new constitution of ice chair. She helped lead 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.079 listening sessions as they tried to figure out what people 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.040 wanted from this process, what they wanted from their government. 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.800 But I think people did say I'm ost age before, 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.760 but there was always that feeling that all, I guess, 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:45.000 I'm really not. I can't vote on anything, I can't 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:48.599 I don't have any say in what goes on. So 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.360 I think it was truly just having to say and 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.520 that just obviously makes you feel like that government is yours, 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.520 is tribe is yours. Priscilla told me, these meetings went 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.600 about how you'd expect them to. People have different ideas, 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.920 didn't always agree. They wanted to know what would happen 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.280 to the mineral estate, how the O s Age nation 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:13.240 would decide citizenship. Even establishing the process for coming up 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.320 with those answers was challenging. No one on the Commission 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.240 had ever written a constitution for a sovereign nation before. 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.960 Priscilla said, it was rocky. At first. We were just 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.320 glassy eyed, you know, we didn't know what we were doing, 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.280 but we were ready to be trying. We learned a 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:33.000 lot and talked to a lot of people, and there 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:37.200 were some rough moments early on because we didn't know 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.080 each other and we didn't trust each other. We didn't 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.960 have the same politics, we didn't have we were all 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:46.720 very different. A year into the process, Priscilla tells me, 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.560 the Commission was still finding its feet. The commissioners consulted 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.880 a dozen O Sage lawyers and hired a program coordinator, 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.080 a woman named Hepsy Burnett, who would later serve as 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:01.280 the new government's chief of staff. Was that mission that 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:05.320 that I can't stress enough that must have just held 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:10.440 us together truly to have a constitution that reflected what 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.640 the old Sage people wanted and what were you hearing 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:18.080 from people they were confused to? They were confused to. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.920 So they had questions for us that, you know, what's 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:24.480 dis government going to look like. We kept telling them 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:26.640 that's going to be for you to decide. And so 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.960 we had questionnaires and we had all kinds of things 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:31.720 that went out in the mail. But then we still 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.920 had town meetings. The Commission worked for two years. They 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.000 held meetings in oath Age County, but also in Texas 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:43.200 in California. Jean Dennison, a citizen of the oath Age 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.080 Nation and an Indigenous studies scholar who wrote a book 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.480 about the government reform, counted more than forty meetings in all, 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:54.160 each about two hours. Then, in January two thousand and six, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.720 the Commission and its staff and consultants gathered for a 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:01.120 three day writing retreat at a hotel and holsa. It 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.760 was time to write the oth Age Nation's new constitution. 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:10.400 Over the next several weeks, the constitution took shape. On 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.760 March eleventh, two thousand and six, there was one final 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.840 vote whether or not the O s Age people would 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:21.240 adopt this constitution. We were all in Pahuska and then 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:23.200 we had a little kind of a little party, I 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.680 guess with the commission. We were all nervous. We were 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:35.080 all really nervous. While we were talking, Priscilla's husband's skip 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.880 pulled something from a cabinet, a scrapbook Priscilla made from 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:49.080 that night over photos votos Jim. Alongside those photos, Priscilla 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:51.400 had a copy of the election results from that night. 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:57.800 Let's see, shall the constitution be approved? So yes? Was 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:01.360 a total of one thou and fordered in fifty four, 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:12.159 which was sixty six. The only thing I remember is 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:15.440 signing it. It was very special and I just I 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:18.080 have a nice handwriting, and I look at that and 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.000 I think that doesn't even look very good because I 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:25.160 was just nervous. It was a wonderful feeling and very proud. 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:42.640 Oh my gosh, we were so proud. All that work 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.080 paid off. Later that year, members of the Commission in 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.159 the Youth Age Tribal Council formally signed the constitution in 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:53.680 transition to the new government. This is cape from that night. 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.320 It took a lot of people to make the constitution happen, 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:03.560 not just Jim or Priscilla, put an entire community. In 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.840 the video of the ceremony, the room is packed, every 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:10.120 seat is filled, people are standing in rows looking over 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.560 each other. That night in two thousand and six, I've 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.760 been told, was a big celebration. Almost exactly a hundred 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.000 years after the n Act, the O s Age Nation 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.600 was creating the government it wanted on its own terms. 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:30.320 Jim Gray started off the signatures, the ceremonies, polidation, hours 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.760 and years and generations of hard work. We all had 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:39.960 a constitution, big heavy leather bound copies of it, and 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.840 we all signed our signature on. Each one of us 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:47.040 put our names a signature on there. But I didn't. 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:51.720 And so we had this big moment where all the 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.639 councilmen and me and the commissioners were all in this 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.480 one big line and we were signing these documents and 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:00.119 handed to each other, and it was just going back 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:01.960 and forth, back and forth until we got them all bed, 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:07.119 you know, and then I launched into my version of history. 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.119 But before we talk about moving forward, and I do 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:13.680 want to get into that a little bit today. I 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:19.960 want to talk about the past. Our people were never many, 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:25.520 but they were fierce, and they were proud, and they 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:31.760 were self sufficient, and they exercised their own sovereign And 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:33.760 as we look back at that period of time leading 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:37.440 up into t o A, when after a visit with 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:41.920 President Jefferson Ball, they will says nation entered its first 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.680 treaty with the United States. So I'm going through this 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:49.720 history of telling everyone how the treaties that the tribe 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:54.359 entered into resulted in a loss of huge amounts of 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:58.960 our territory and our land, but worse, a loss of 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:03.920 who we were. Our culture, our customs are oral traditions, 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.760 the things that we would only pass down from one 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:09.280 elder to a younger person. And it was during that 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:13.840 period of time that we we reached within ourselves to 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:19.879 find a new definition of Osage and it took leaders 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.879 at the time like the Chief Bigheart would initiated and 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:26.760 lead an effort to draft a constitution of the So 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:31.880 they started a constitutional form of government that tried its 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.400 best to capture what they could from that old way 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:37.480 and bring it up to a new way under a 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:41.080 document that was voted on by the o s Age 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:45.879 people that they that governed them. You know, and we 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:50.000 used that to build up our tribe again, slowly but 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:53.160 surely start building it up. In nineteen one, we lost 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:58.480 that constitution the Secretary of Interior, and that's when federal 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:03.359 policies started hitting us, like the Allotment Act. But Congress 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:08.440 went a step further. They not only decided who was 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:12.080 an Oth s Age, they also decided how the O 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:13.960 s Age government was going to be run and what 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.760 their functions were going. This was the government of the 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.560 O s Age people's design. It's not what they wanted. 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:23.840 They already decided what they wanted, but in the phase 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.600 of the political winds of the day, the O s 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:31.680 Ages took the congressionally created Oth Sage Tribal Council with 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:35.320 the Chief and Assistant Chief and tried to make this 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:39.040 work for the betterment of the people. It was impacted 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:41.560 even further by the boarding school era. They were taking 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:44.800 kids out of their communities and sending him to boarding 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:49.280 schools to you know, destroyed that cultural part of who 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:52.440 they were and tried to make them little white people 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:57.959 that had no knowledge of being Indian. And it devastated 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:00.640 a generation of O s Ages because of the policies, 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:04.119 But through the success of our ceremonies, the fact that 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:08.000 many O stage families who retained their wealth, they were 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.320 able to preserve our language and our culture in homes 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:15.480 in the villages. They were able to protect our ceremonies, 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.720 the lunch. They were able to make sure that that 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:21.280 drum was going to continue to beat every year in June. 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:24.440 They took care of that drum. They took care of 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.680 the people. They took care of those ceremonies and celebrations 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:30.720 that defined us who we were. All this at a 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:36.840 time when federal policy was doing everything it could to 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.920 de tribalize Indian people, to separate us from our God, 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:44.879 to separate us from our traditions and our language. And 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:48.600 at that point, I could just say, here's I say 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:53.359 all of this history to say this, at no point 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:58.200 since our first interaction with the United States government did 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:01.840 we ever stop fighting for our people or sovereignty. And 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.879 as I go on, I wanted to I want to 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:07.600 do something right now because it's something I think is important. 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:11.240 Because what I'm talking about is how the Old Station 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:15.359 nation has survived. Even though they had a governing document 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:18.239 that was not of their creation, they tried to make 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:21.840 it work as best they could. And I would like 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:26.880 to ask everybody in this audience who has a relative 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:30.560 or as descendant of a relative, who has ever served 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:43.119 on the Old States Tribal Council, please stand, Thank you, 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:46.880 thank you very much. You saw it in those early treaties. 0:23:47.600 --> 0:23:49.680 You saw it in those removals. You saw it in 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.679 us buying this land here. You saw how we preserved 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:57.119 the mineral state in the nineteen Act. You saw it 0:23:57.320 --> 0:24:02.280 in our commitment to Heck, we declared war on Japan 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:05.280 and Germany through a Tribal Council resolution after in World 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:08.920 War Two, after Pearl Harbor, a resolution, i might add, 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:14.359 has never been rescinded. We're stubborn folks, you know. O 0:24:14.520 --> 0:24:18.320 Sages had never given up the notion of sovereignty. It 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:21.119 didn't just happen on my watch. It has been the 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:30.440 accumulation of generations of oh Ages. A year after the 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:33.720 new constitution was adopted, Jim sent out a survey to 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:36.680 oth Age citizens. He wanted to know what they wanted 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:38.960 from their new government, what they thought should be the 0:24:39.040 --> 0:24:43.080 top priorities, and survey after survey came back with the 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:49.720 same answer. Land, or more specifically, buying back land expanding 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:54.440 the O s Age Nation's reservation base because finally the 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:57.000 O s Age people had a government that was theirs. 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:01.199 Finally they had the ability to take back what had 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:05.679 belonged to them a century ago. But if there's anything 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:09.040 that you can you hopefully learn from all this is 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:13.040 that host I just never gave up. They never gave 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:16.399 up trying to retain the things that made us who 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:19.720 we were. And I think the same attitude that drove 0:25:20.440 --> 0:25:23.280 the O Sages to come to this land here and 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:27.560 buy it outright so that we would never move again, 0:25:28.240 --> 0:25:32.159 is the same attitude that drew the O Sages to 0:25:32.240 --> 0:25:35.120 buy the Turner ranch. It's part of who we are 0:25:44.840 --> 0:25:56.960 when we come back the Blue Stemac position. After the 0:25:57.040 --> 0:25:59.680 O s Age government reform, there was still a long 0:25:59.760 --> 0:26:01.800