Speaker 1: So you were part of the government that did the
Speaker 1: Bluesterm acquisition. That's correct. What was that process like? Fast?
Speaker 1: Really really fast. This is Raymond Redcorn. He's retired now,
Speaker 1: but until recently he was assistant Principal Chief of the
Speaker 1: os Age Nation. That was his title in when the
Speaker 1: rumors started, we'd only heard them for about a week
Speaker 1: that that ranch, Ted Turner's Bluestem Ranch might come up
Speaker 1: for sale. Ted Turner's Bluestem Ranch more than forty acres
Speaker 1: of land in os Age County, owned by the billionaire
Speaker 1: founder of CNN land he might be selling that could
Speaker 1: be up for grabs for the first time in years.
Speaker 1: And then a cowboy out there called Chief and told
Speaker 1: him that it was true, and they were going to
Speaker 1: be on a really tight timeline and successful bidders would
Speaker 1: have to get pretty much everything together for a purchase
Speaker 1: worth tens of millions of dollars in thirty days. This
Speaker 1: was land made up of so many original os Age allotments,
Speaker 1: a huge chunk of land that the Osage Nation had
Speaker 1: bought more than a century ago, that the tribe had
Speaker 1: held the property title too before the US government privatized it.
Speaker 1: This ranch had been built up in the decades after allotment,
Speaker 1: long before Ted Turner bought it in the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: and before Ted Turner held title to this land, another
Speaker 1: big rancher had it, a man named Chuck Drummond. He's
Speaker 1: the grandson of one of the Drummond brothers who started
Speaker 1: the family's cattle business, Cecil Drummond. Some of the parcels
Speaker 1: that made up Turner's ranch were deedd to Cecil along
Speaker 1: time him ago, including a section William Hale owned before
Speaker 1: he went to prison. That land passed to another white
Speaker 1: man who later sold it to Cecil in other sections
Speaker 1: the Drummond spot more recently, but in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Chuck Drummond did something his family really did. He sold
Speaker 1: the sprawling piece of land. Ted Turner was the buyer,
Speaker 1: and some fifteen years later Turner was putting it on
Speaker 1: the market again. All of us who have lived here
Speaker 1: our entire lives understood that this represented an opportunity to
Speaker 1: buy one of the biggest chunks of mos Age County
Speaker 1: that would come on the market in our lifetime. And
Speaker 1: it was he just took a deep breath and let's go.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's going to turn out, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna swing for the fans and see we can
Speaker 1: see if we can get this done. Swing for the fence.
Speaker 1: That's what the O st Age Nation had to do
Speaker 1: if it wanted a chance to own this land again.
Speaker 1: So they swung hard. This isn't trust. I'm Rachel Adams
Speaker 1: heard Raymond Redcorn and other O Sage government leaders spent
Speaker 1: a pretty tent several weeks trying to buy Ted Turner's
Speaker 1: Blue Stem ranch. We'll get to that, but the story
Speaker 1: of that moment the Osage Nations chanced to buy the
Speaker 1: biggest piece of os Age County coming on the market
Speaker 1: in Raymond's lifetime. It couldn't have happened without something else,
Speaker 1: something that happened a decade earlier. This was when Jim
Speaker 1: Gray was chief. You heard him in the first episode.
Speaker 1: What I remember from that night was it, why has
Speaker 1: it taken so long? It doesn't normally take this long, doesn't.
Speaker 1: This is June of two thousand two, election night. Jim's
Speaker 1: on the ballot, He's running for chief. He and his
Speaker 1: family and supporters are waiting on the results. He has
Speaker 1: it always done this point, No, no, what they're doing
Speaker 1: a difference this year. What are they doing difference this year? Oh,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're They're not doing it by hand, They're
Speaker 1: running it through a machine. I said, we shouldn't. That
Speaker 1: supposed to make it quicker. So it was after midnight,
Speaker 1: probably twelve thirty or something like that, and everyone's getting tired.
Speaker 1: A lot of people left, you know, but the die
Speaker 1: hards are still hanging out, you know. And next thing
Speaker 1: you know, boom, they put the final results on there
Speaker 1: and there was a couple of my supporters were in
Speaker 1: front of me and I was standing behind him and
Speaker 1: I said, what is it? What is it? I think
Speaker 1: My cousin turned around, looked at me and he goes,
Speaker 1: you would And it was just like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I was just blown away. I mean, my whole family came.
Speaker 1: We had a big group hug and there was just
Speaker 1: screaming in Holleran and no one saw that coming. It
Speaker 1: was I didn't see it coming. Jim didn't see it coming,
Speaker 1: in part because he was pretty young as far as
Speaker 1: political candidates go. He was also running on something kind
Speaker 1: of radical. He wanted to completely reform the stage nation's government,
Speaker 1: write a new constitution, build a new nation. Because When
Speaker 1: the n Act allotted the reservation, it also dismantled the
Speaker 1: Stage Nation's existing government appointed a whole new governing body
Speaker 1: called the O Stage Tribal Council, But Jim says that
Speaker 1: new government was limited in power and that left the
Speaker 1: Stage Nation vulnerable. We didn't have the power to do
Speaker 1: anything except meat once a month to prove oil leasas
Speaker 1: go about your business. That was it. So it was
Speaker 1: a very minimal role. But when people started getting killed,
Speaker 1: people were looking to the Council for leadership, but by
Speaker 1: that time they were powerless. They didn't really have any
Speaker 1: power to do anything. This whole time, under the rules
Speaker 1: of the Act, the only O s Ages who could
Speaker 1: vote in tribal elections were oth ages who had head rates,
Speaker 1: meaning a lot of people were disenfranchised from their own government.
Speaker 1: They couldn't vote until an older relative passed away and
Speaker 1: they inherited their head right share. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: lost your ability to govern yourself, and then you see
Speaker 1: what happens when you're not able to govern yourself and
Speaker 1: you get exploited, it's easy to see why something had
Speaker 1: to change. And it wasn't going to change from the outside,
Speaker 1: and it was going to have to change from the
Speaker 1: inside out. Efforts to reform the O s Age government
Speaker 1: had gone on for decades. In the early nineties, the
Speaker 1: group of O s Age citizens brought a lawsuit that
Speaker 1: resulted in a court ordered government reform. O s Age
Speaker 1: voters approved a new constitution, one that opened up citizenship
Speaker 1: beyond just os Ages who had had rights. But within
Speaker 1: a few years another court decision reversed that. So we
Speaker 1: got a taste of what democracy was like, and then
Speaker 1: it was taken away from us, and that government that
Speaker 1: was there for just maybe a couple of years had
Speaker 1: disappeared and it was replaced by the tribal council again.
Speaker 1: By the time Jim ran for Chief, conversations about reforming
Speaker 1: the os Age government, we're taking on new urgency. There
Speaker 1: was a real concern that because of the way the
Speaker 1: nineteen of six Act was word in, the US government
Speaker 1: could decide the Osage nation no longer existed once the
Speaker 1: last original latt died. There were some people at the
Speaker 1: Solicitor's office in d C that felt like that was
Speaker 1: the basis of the trust if you don't have any
Speaker 1: original lattis. Because they closed the roles in nineteen O
Speaker 1: six didn't make any more oth Sages in the eyes
Speaker 1: of the law. Then do we still have a trust
Speaker 1: relationship to the oth Age. That was a question that
Speaker 1: no one really had a clear answer to. And in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, almost a hundred years after allotment, there
Speaker 1: weren't many original a lot teas left. A lot of
Speaker 1: discussions were happening in oth Age country about how long
Speaker 1: can we keep doing this? Knowing that the population of
Speaker 1: oth Sages without a head right is starting to out
Speaker 1: number the o Sages with head rights. How long can
Speaker 1: we keep doing this? We're losing original lot tease every year.
Speaker 1: So Jim runs for chief on reforming the government for good,
Speaker 1: coming up with the government that served all oath Ages,
Speaker 1: whether or not they had a head right. Mostly, he
Speaker 1: told me he didn't think he'd went He just thought
Speaker 1: he was forcing the issue into the spotlight again, getting
Speaker 1: people to talk about it, to come up with a
Speaker 1: path forward for the Osage Nation. But as Jim campaigned,
Speaker 1: a sort of coalition formed, and on that night in
Speaker 1: June of two thousand two, it wasn't just Jim who
Speaker 1: want on the idea that the oth Age Nation did
Speaker 1: a new constitution. Everybody who ran and won on that
Speaker 1: council ran on that issue as well. It was the
Speaker 1: biggest wipe out in a tribal council election since it started.
Speaker 1: I think we all knew it was time. I think
Speaker 1: we all felt it. I mean one member of the
Speaker 1: council in particular. Really, we were at one of those
Speaker 1: political events where everyone got a chanced to speak for
Speaker 1: a few minutes and sit down, you know. And this
Speaker 1: gentleman was probably in his late seventies and his mom
Speaker 1: lived into her nineties and he took care of her.
Speaker 1: She was in a nursing home and all that, you know,
Speaker 1: and when she finally passed on, he finally got to
Speaker 1: vote at the age of seventy seven. If there ever
Speaker 1: was a poster child for government reform, he was it.
Speaker 1: He was a living, breathing an example of what's wrong.
Speaker 1: That should never have been the case. He should never
Speaker 1: happen to wait that long to consider himself O Sage.
Speaker 1: And his talk at these events was so emotional you
Speaker 1: couldn't help but draw tier just hearing him talk about it.
Speaker 1: Because the oth Age Nation's existing government was established under
Speaker 1: the nineteen o six Act, the os Age Nation wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to reform its own government without the US government,
Speaker 1: without an Act of Congress. Jim says this was the
Speaker 1: only federally recognized tribe with this kind of arrangement. Other
Speaker 1: tribal nations were able to determine who is the citizen themselves,
Speaker 1: but the os Age Nation needed to get federal lawmakers
Speaker 1: on board to change those rules. So that was the
Speaker 1: first step, simple an Act of Congress. I was under
Speaker 1: no illusion that when I campaigned in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: I was going to get a federal law passed. I
Speaker 1: know how sketchy politics is in Washington, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: that naive to think that, oh, yeah, I'll do this,
Speaker 1: I'll knock it out. In two years, we'll be back
Speaker 1: in business. You know. That's that's that's crazy talk. Even
Speaker 1: though it seemed like a long shot, Jim and other
Speaker 1: O s Age leaders got to work. They lobbied the U.
Speaker 1: S Congress, made their case. They brought lawmakers down to
Speaker 1: Oklahoma to hear from O s Ages who were unable
Speaker 1: to participate in their own government. And sure enough, in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, Mr Speaker, I'm here today to bring
Speaker 1: my strong support HR twelve to reaffirm the inherent sovereign
Speaker 1: rights of the O Sage tribe to determine their membership
Speaker 1: and form of government. Because of the law created in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six by this Congress, the O Sage tribe
Speaker 1: have not been afforded the same rights as every other
Speaker 1: federally recognized tribe does. Is taped from the House floor
Speaker 1: as U s lawmakers are about to pass the O
Speaker 1: c Age Reform Act. The bill is simple short. They
Speaker 1: are basically two key lines. The First Congress hereby reaffirms
Speaker 1: the inherent sovereign right of the O s Age tribe
Speaker 1: to determine its own membership, provided that the rights of
Speaker 1: any person to O Sage mineral estate shares are not diminished.
Speaker 1: Thereby in the Second Congress hereby reaffirms the inherent sovereign
Speaker 1: rights of the O Sage tribe to determine its own
Speaker 1: form of government. The question is, well the House suspend
Speaker 1: the rules and pass HR so many as are in favor,
Speaker 1: say I, those opposed No. In the opinion of the Chair,
Speaker 1: two thirds of those present having voted in the affirmative,
Speaker 1: the rules are suspended to the bill is passed without objection.
Speaker 1: The bill passed the House in June two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and a few months later it passed the Senate. It
Speaker 1: was unanimous from both houses. You know how they do
Speaker 1: those list of bills that are in controversial, like naming
Speaker 1: a street or something, or post office, you know. So
Speaker 1: the House did their version, the Senate did their version,
Speaker 1: and it went to the President's desk for siting mature.
Speaker 1: In December third, two thousand four, he signed it. The
Speaker 1: oth Age nation could decide who its citizens were, and
Speaker 1: it could create whatever kind of government it wanted. This
Speaker 1: is also when the real work began because the oath
Speaker 1: Age Nation it needed a new constitution. It was just,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, it was kind of scary. This is Priscilla Iba.
Speaker 1: She was on the commission that was in charge of
Speaker 1: writing the new constitution of ice chair. She helped lead
Speaker 1: listening sessions as they tried to figure out what people
Speaker 1: wanted from this process, what they wanted from their government.
Speaker 1: But I think people did say I'm ost age before,
Speaker 1: but there was always that feeling that all, I guess,
Speaker 1: I'm really not. I can't vote on anything, I can't
Speaker 1: I don't have any say in what goes on. So
Speaker 1: I think it was truly just having to say and
Speaker 1: that just obviously makes you feel like that government is yours,
Speaker 1: is tribe is yours. Priscilla told me, these meetings went
Speaker 1: about how you'd expect them to. People have different ideas,
Speaker 1: didn't always agree. They wanted to know what would happen
Speaker 1: to the mineral estate, how the O s Age nation
Speaker 1: would decide citizenship. Even establishing the process for coming up
Speaker 1: with those answers was challenging. No one on the Commission
Speaker 1: had ever written a constitution for a sovereign nation before.
Speaker 1: Priscilla said, it was rocky. At first. We were just
Speaker 1: glassy eyed, you know, we didn't know what we were doing,
Speaker 1: but we were ready to be trying. We learned a
Speaker 1: lot and talked to a lot of people, and there
Speaker 1: were some rough moments early on because we didn't know
Speaker 1: each other and we didn't trust each other. We didn't
Speaker 1: have the same politics, we didn't have we were all
Speaker 1: very different. A year into the process, Priscilla tells me,
Speaker 1: the Commission was still finding its feet. The commissioners consulted
Speaker 1: a dozen O Sage lawyers and hired a program coordinator,
Speaker 1: a woman named Hepsy Burnett, who would later serve as
Speaker 1: the new government's chief of staff. Was that mission that
Speaker 1: that I can't stress enough that must have just held
Speaker 1: us together truly to have a constitution that reflected what
Speaker 1: the old Sage people wanted and what were you hearing
Speaker 1: from people they were confused to? They were confused to.
Speaker 1: So they had questions for us that, you know, what's
Speaker 1: dis government going to look like. We kept telling them
Speaker 1: that's going to be for you to decide. And so
Speaker 1: we had questionnaires and we had all kinds of things
Speaker 1: that went out in the mail. But then we still
Speaker 1: had town meetings. The Commission worked for two years. They
Speaker 1: held meetings in oath Age County, but also in Texas
Speaker 1: in California. Jean Dennison, a citizen of the oath Age
Speaker 1: Nation and an Indigenous studies scholar who wrote a book
Speaker 1: about the government reform, counted more than forty meetings in all,
Speaker 1: each about two hours. Then, in January two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the Commission and its staff and consultants gathered for a
Speaker 1: three day writing retreat at a hotel and holsa. It
Speaker 1: was time to write the oth Age Nation's new constitution.
Speaker 1: Over the next several weeks, the constitution took shape. On
Speaker 1: March eleventh, two thousand and six, there was one final
Speaker 1: vote whether or not the O s Age people would
Speaker 1: adopt this constitution. We were all in Pahuska and then
Speaker 1: we had a little kind of a little party, I
Speaker 1: guess with the commission. We were all nervous. We were
Speaker 1: all really nervous. While we were talking, Priscilla's husband's skip
Speaker 1: pulled something from a cabinet, a scrapbook Priscilla made from
Speaker 1: that night over photos votos Jim. Alongside those photos, Priscilla
Speaker 1: had a copy of the election results from that night.
Speaker 1: Let's see, shall the constitution be approved? So yes? Was
Speaker 1: a total of one thou and fordered in fifty four,
Speaker 1: which was sixty six. The only thing I remember is
Speaker 1: signing it. It was very special and I just I
Speaker 1: have a nice handwriting, and I look at that and
Speaker 1: I think that doesn't even look very good because I
Speaker 1: was just nervous. It was a wonderful feeling and very proud.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we were so proud. All that work
Speaker 1: paid off. Later that year, members of the Commission in
Speaker 1: the Youth Age Tribal Council formally signed the constitution in
Speaker 1: transition to the new government. This is cape from that night.
Speaker 1: It took a lot of people to make the constitution happen,
Speaker 1: not just Jim or Priscilla, put an entire community. In
Speaker 1: the video of the ceremony, the room is packed, every
Speaker 1: seat is filled, people are standing in rows looking over
Speaker 1: each other. That night in two thousand and six, I've
Speaker 1: been told, was a big celebration. Almost exactly a hundred
Speaker 1: years after the n Act, the O s Age Nation
Speaker 1: was creating the government it wanted on its own terms.
Speaker 1: Jim Gray started off the signatures, the ceremonies, polidation, hours
Speaker 1: and years and generations of hard work. We all had
Speaker 1: a constitution, big heavy leather bound copies of it, and
Speaker 1: we all signed our signature on. Each one of us
Speaker 1: put our names a signature on there. But I didn't.
Speaker 1: And so we had this big moment where all the
Speaker 1: councilmen and me and the commissioners were all in this
Speaker 1: one big line and we were signing these documents and
Speaker 1: handed to each other, and it was just going back
Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth until we got them all bed,
Speaker 1: you know, and then I launched into my version of history.
Speaker 1: But before we talk about moving forward, and I do
Speaker 1: want to get into that a little bit today. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the past. Our people were never many,
Speaker 1: but they were fierce, and they were proud, and they
Speaker 1: were self sufficient, and they exercised their own sovereign And
Speaker 1: as we look back at that period of time leading
Speaker 1: up into t o A, when after a visit with
Speaker 1: President Jefferson Ball, they will says nation entered its first
Speaker 1: treaty with the United States. So I'm going through this
Speaker 1: history of telling everyone how the treaties that the tribe
Speaker 1: entered into resulted in a loss of huge amounts of
Speaker 1: our territory and our land, but worse, a loss of
Speaker 1: who we were. Our culture, our customs are oral traditions,
Speaker 1: the things that we would only pass down from one
Speaker 1: elder to a younger person. And it was during that
Speaker 1: period of time that we we reached within ourselves to
Speaker 1: find a new definition of Osage and it took leaders
Speaker 1: at the time like the Chief Bigheart would initiated and
Speaker 1: lead an effort to draft a constitution of the So
Speaker 1: they started a constitutional form of government that tried its
Speaker 1: best to capture what they could from that old way
Speaker 1: and bring it up to a new way under a
Speaker 1: document that was voted on by the o s Age
Speaker 1: people that they that governed them. You know, and we
Speaker 1: used that to build up our tribe again, slowly but
Speaker 1: surely start building it up. In nineteen one, we lost
Speaker 1: that constitution the Secretary of Interior, and that's when federal
Speaker 1: policies started hitting us, like the Allotment Act. But Congress
Speaker 1: went a step further. They not only decided who was
Speaker 1: an Oth s Age, they also decided how the O
Speaker 1: s Age government was going to be run and what
Speaker 1: their functions were going. This was the government of the
Speaker 1: O s Age people's design. It's not what they wanted.
Speaker 1: They already decided what they wanted, but in the phase
Speaker 1: of the political winds of the day, the O s
Speaker 1: Ages took the congressionally created Oth Sage Tribal Council with
Speaker 1: the Chief and Assistant Chief and tried to make this
Speaker 1: work for the betterment of the people. It was impacted
Speaker 1: even further by the boarding school era. They were taking
Speaker 1: kids out of their communities and sending him to boarding
Speaker 1: schools to you know, destroyed that cultural part of who
Speaker 1: they were and tried to make them little white people
Speaker 1: that had no knowledge of being Indian. And it devastated
Speaker 1: a generation of O s Ages because of the policies,
Speaker 1: But through the success of our ceremonies, the fact that
Speaker 1: many O stage families who retained their wealth, they were
Speaker 1: able to preserve our language and our culture in homes
Speaker 1: in the villages. They were able to protect our ceremonies,
Speaker 1: the lunch. They were able to make sure that that
Speaker 1: drum was going to continue to beat every year in June.
Speaker 1: They took care of that drum. They took care of
Speaker 1: the people. They took care of those ceremonies and celebrations
Speaker 1: that defined us who we were. All this at a
Speaker 1: time when federal policy was doing everything it could to
Speaker 1: de tribalize Indian people, to separate us from our God,
Speaker 1: to separate us from our traditions and our language. And
Speaker 1: at that point, I could just say, here's I say
Speaker 1: all of this history to say this, at no point
Speaker 1: since our first interaction with the United States government did
Speaker 1: we ever stop fighting for our people or sovereignty. And
Speaker 1: as I go on, I wanted to I want to
Speaker 1: do something right now because it's something I think is important.
Speaker 1: Because what I'm talking about is how the Old Station
Speaker 1: nation has survived. Even though they had a governing document
Speaker 1: that was not of their creation, they tried to make
Speaker 1: it work as best they could. And I would like
Speaker 1: to ask everybody in this audience who has a relative
Speaker 1: or as descendant of a relative, who has ever served
Speaker 1: on the Old States Tribal Council, please stand, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. You saw it in those early treaties.
Speaker 1: You saw it in those removals. You saw it in
Speaker 1: us buying this land here. You saw how we preserved
Speaker 1: the mineral state in the nineteen Act. You saw it
Speaker 1: in our commitment to Heck, we declared war on Japan
Speaker 1: and Germany through a Tribal Council resolution after in World
Speaker 1: War Two, after Pearl Harbor, a resolution, i might add,
Speaker 1: has never been rescinded. We're stubborn folks, you know. O
Speaker 1: Sages had never given up the notion of sovereignty. It
Speaker 1: didn't just happen on my watch. It has been the
Speaker 1: accumulation of generations of oh Ages. A year after the
Speaker 1: new constitution was adopted, Jim sent out a survey to
Speaker 1: oth Age citizens. He wanted to know what they wanted
Speaker 1: from their new government, what they thought should be the
Speaker 1: top priorities, and survey after survey came back with the
Speaker 1: same answer. Land, or more specifically, buying back land expanding
Speaker 1: the O s Age Nation's reservation base because finally the
Speaker 1: O s Age people had a government that was theirs.
Speaker 1: Finally they had the ability to take back what had
Speaker 1: belonged to them a century ago. But if there's anything
Speaker 1: that you can you hopefully learn from all this is
Speaker 1: that host I just never gave up. They never gave
Speaker 1: up trying to retain the things that made us who
Speaker 1: we were. And I think the same attitude that drove
Speaker 1: the O Sages to come to this land here and
Speaker 1: buy it outright so that we would never move again,
Speaker 1: is the same attitude that drew the O Sages to
Speaker 1: buy the Turner ranch. It's part of who we are
Speaker 1: when we come back the Blue Stemac position. After the
Speaker 1: O s Age government reform, there was still a long
Speaker 1: way to go to make good on O s Age
Speaker 1: citizens desire to buy back land and expand the reservation base.
Speaker 1: Federal policies over the last hundred years had worked to
Speaker 1: strip land away from the os Age Nation and its citizens.
Speaker 1: So when those rumors made their way to Raymond when
Speaker 1: he was Assistant Principal Chief, the rumors that Ted Turner
Speaker 1: was selling his ranch, Raymond didn't waste any time he
Speaker 1: started working the phone, spent his Christmas holiday talking to bankers, lawyers,
Speaker 1: other stage government officials. We were simply trying to map
Speaker 1: out a path from point A to point B, having
Speaker 1: never done anything like this before. Ever, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit hard for me to not get emotional at this point.
Speaker 1: We all understood that it was and historical inflection point
Speaker 1: for the os Age nation, and we all carry with
Speaker 1: us our ideas about the future and our ideas about
Speaker 1: the past. Mine can be summed up very easily. With
Speaker 1: the purchase of this ranch, we would be able to
Speaker 1: do something we had not done for two years if
Speaker 1: we needed to, and that was feed ourselves. That represents,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, even in the modern context,
Speaker 1: that represents an enormous amount of sovereignty and independence. To me,
Speaker 1: it's the ultimate safety net socially, economically, and certainly from
Speaker 1: just the simple aspect of food, shelter and clothing. That's
Speaker 1: how it looked at me, and that was my motivation.
Speaker 1: The stakes were clear to Raymond, to the Chief to
Speaker 1: Chief Jeffrey. Standing there, Raymond told me a lot of
Speaker 1: people were supportive of the purchase, but others were skeptical
Speaker 1: it was going to cost a lot of money. Land
Speaker 1: in O s Age County is valuable. This was a huge,
Speaker 1: contiguous ranch with prime grass for ranchers to graze cattle
Speaker 1: or bison or horses. Raymond knew they'd have competition. The
Speaker 1: Osage Nation was going to have to bid high if
Speaker 1: they wanted to win. The Nation was in a better
Speaker 1: financial position than before, thanks in large parts revenue from
Speaker 1: the casino businesses it started opening in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: but spending so much of it at once made a
Speaker 1: lot of O s Age citizens nervous. My responsibility was
Speaker 1: to work Congress because I sit with him as assistant chief,
Speaker 1: spent eight years on the Congress prior to that, and
Speaker 1: so I knew the rules and it was lobbying, pure
Speaker 1: and simple. The primary goal of the lobbying was to
Speaker 1: get the Congress to get the price up as high
Speaker 1: as we could get it. Freeman told me he could
Speaker 1: feel the pressure. They didn't want to lose the bid.
Speaker 1: The Nation also had to secure the financing for the land,
Speaker 1: and they had to do all this in thirty days
Speaker 1: when the bids were due, or they'd miss out. Raymond
Speaker 1: went back and forth with members of the O. S
Speaker 1: h Congress they had emergency meetings narrative on a number.
Speaker 1: The highest bid they'd let Raymond and Chief Standing Bears submit.
Speaker 1: The Congress has met for the final time, they've established
Speaker 1: the maximum number. I've been advising Chief all along on
Speaker 1: general strategies related to a bidding and auctioneering. And he
Speaker 1: always sits at one end of the conference table. Want
Speaker 1: I always sit on the other. And that's exactly where
Speaker 1: we were the morning after Congress gave us the number.
Speaker 1: So he sat down and he said, you go first.
Speaker 1: I said, okay, well, I think the number needs to
Speaker 1: be this, and the way I arrived at that is
Speaker 1: is man, you know. And I explained my rationale of
Speaker 1: how I ended up with this number, which was blow
Speaker 1: that of the Congress. He said, no, that's not what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. He said, We're just gonna bid the max.
Speaker 1: And I lean back in my chair and I said really.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, we're just gonna big the max. I'll
Speaker 1: be fully responsible for it. And he said, I can.
Speaker 1: It's really easy for me to tell you why we're
Speaker 1: gonna bid the max. I said, why is that? He said,
Speaker 1: because there's only two outcomes, we win or we don't win.
Speaker 1: And I will take the heat from Congress all day
Speaker 1: for maximizing the bid for their maximum appropriation, but that
Speaker 1: will fade over time. And what will never fade is
Speaker 1: if we swing for the fence and miss because we
Speaker 1: did not maximize our bid. And as soon as he
Speaker 1: said that, the political wisdom of it occurred to me immediately,
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm I'm, I'm good with that because
Speaker 1: it made since it wasn't It wasn't a financial decision
Speaker 1: or a business decision. It was a really simple thing
Speaker 1: about how history was going to view what we did.
Speaker 1: The amount. Chief Standing Bear told Raymond the oc Eage
Speaker 1: Nation would bid the maximount with seventy four million dollars.
Speaker 1: It was a closed bidding process. Raymond would have to
Speaker 1: deliver the bid in person to an office in Kansas
Speaker 1: where the land broker was. Raymond brought company a man
Speaker 1: named r. J. Walker. R J was on the Sage
Speaker 1: Congress at the time. Now he's the assistant Principal Chief.
Speaker 1: I've talked to him about this day too. He called
Speaker 1: it fateful. Raymond showed me a picture of that morning,
Speaker 1: the morning they drove a seventy four million dollar bid
Speaker 1: to Kansas. Oh wow, so yeah, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: so it's Scott confidential and red ink all over its
Speaker 1: Age Nation Executive branch. And at this point Congress doesn't
Speaker 1: now that we put the whole number in there either.
Speaker 1: The broker was in a town called Hutchinson, Kansas, almost
Speaker 1: three hours away from Pahaska. They had until four thirty
Speaker 1: that afternoon to submit their bid, but Raymond and r
Speaker 1: J weren't taking any chances. They left Osage County first
Speaker 1: thing that morning. And oh, Stage police have been notified.
Speaker 1: We checked in from time to time and if for
Speaker 1: any reason we were in an auto accident or anything else,
Speaker 1: and we joked about is they would send the o
Speaker 1: Stage Nation police up, they would pick up. They would
Speaker 1: leave us roadside bleeding to death, and they would pick
Speaker 1: up the bid and they would go on to Hudge
Speaker 1: and deliver. Well, it wasn't quite like that, but that's
Speaker 1: how we thought it. The main thing. Yes, so they
Speaker 1: were like basic backup, back up to the bid to them,
Speaker 1: regardless of what happened to us. I hope that doesn't
Speaker 1: speak to how goofy we might appear. I hope it
Speaker 1: speaks too how important we thought it was by the
Speaker 1: time they got there, they ended up having plenty of
Speaker 1: time to kill, so they made a stop before going
Speaker 1: to the broker's office. Yeah, we were just in a
Speaker 1: good will store passing time because yeah, we both bought
Speaker 1: a jacket and we both still own the two dollar
Speaker 1: jacket the suit jackets that we bought it. And I
Speaker 1: remember that. Raymond said there was a reason they didn't
Speaker 1: go straight to the broker's office hand in their seventy
Speaker 1: four million dollar bid right when they got there. We
Speaker 1: were in hutch we were new, We made the time
Speaker 1: and everything. There's also sometimes when you're among native people
Speaker 1: for a really long time and you begin to understand history,
Speaker 1: your trust level is um It does not go all
Speaker 1: the way to the bottom there. There's some things you
Speaker 1: just do not trust. And our Jane I talked about it,
Speaker 1: but we weren't going to just lay that down and
Speaker 1: walk off. We just weren't going to do that because
Speaker 1: under nefarious circumstances, which we did not think it was,
Speaker 1: but we weren't taking any chances. Anybody could have shown
Speaker 1: up at any time that day and delivered the bid.
Speaker 1: The deadline was for thirty anybody could put whatever number
Speaker 1: they wanted to do in there, so we were gonna
Speaker 1: wait until it that was not a possibility. We just
Speaker 1: sat there with ours in our hands. Four o'clock got
Speaker 1: there and there still wasn't. There's only two bids, and
Speaker 1: we expected three. We didn't know we had our own
Speaker 1: grapevine going, but we we knew that there might be
Speaker 1: as many as three bids and possibly four, but the
Speaker 1: number that we kept hearing was three. So Raymond and
Speaker 1: r J wait outside the broker's office all day bit
Speaker 1: in hand, waiting to turn it in at the last
Speaker 1: possible moment. So it's four o'clock. We're sitting there, still
Speaker 1: chit chatting with with the broker, and I reached a
Speaker 1: point where it's like, let's just go. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was kind of bored. I mean, we've had enough talk
Speaker 1: with him that and we knew what our number was.
Speaker 1: So r J did not want to leave. R J
Speaker 1: wanted to stay. He said, no, I think we should
Speaker 1: stay here. I said, r J, it's gonna be like
Speaker 1: super awkward. We're sitting here for an hour and a
Speaker 1: half and then another bidder walks in and we've been
Speaker 1: sitting here for this long. I mean that that that's
Speaker 1: that doesn't smell good, and so it was as much
Speaker 1: for appearances as anything else. And I was in the
Speaker 1: executive branch and invited r J long, So r J
Speaker 1: kind of reluctantly relented, and we said goodbye and left
Speaker 1: our bid. At about ten ever or four, we leave
Speaker 1: his office. He's on the fourth or fifth floor. We
Speaker 1: leave his office, walked to the vestibule outside the elevators
Speaker 1: and there's a cowboy standing there with a briefcase, and
Speaker 1: we're getting ready to go down and he's just arriving.
Speaker 1: And as we're going down, r J says, you think
Speaker 1: that was that other guy? I said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: r J. I'm really tired of thinking about it. I'm
Speaker 1: just we're out. Let's just go. So we went back
Speaker 1: to the car, we got in and we headed home.
Speaker 1: I checked in with chief, told him we delivered the
Speaker 1: bid successfully, et cetera. And as it turns out, the
Speaker 1: gentleman was the other bidder, and we did not know
Speaker 1: that at the time. But we're on our way back,
Speaker 1: we figured the last bid has been submitted. We don't
Speaker 1: know where we stand. It's two and a half hour
Speaker 1: drive home. We are still on I we are less
Speaker 1: than an hour out of hutch but we're still in Kansas.
Speaker 1: My cell phone rings and he said, I have reviewed
Speaker 1: the bids, I have spoken with Ted Turner, and you
Speaker 1: are a successful bidder and at present you're the high bid.
Speaker 1: Raymond knew when he got this call that it wasn't
Speaker 1: the end of it. There were still a lot of
Speaker 1: other details to be worked out, the financing, all the
Speaker 1: legal stuff, everything involved in a massive land deal. But
Speaker 1: he was the first person in the O s Age
Speaker 1: Nation to know that their bid there are seventy four
Speaker 1: million dollar bid was the highest, that if everything else
Speaker 1: fell into place, they'd own this land again. And as
Speaker 1: that starts to sink again, Raymond feels elated, just delated.
Speaker 1: We pulled. We pulled over on the side of my
Speaker 1: got out high five. I just didn't want to try
Speaker 1: to drive and talk about this. At the same time.
Speaker 1: Chief was incredulous that we I was incredulous that I
Speaker 1: gotta call him away out. I mean that that was
Speaker 1: like totally unanticipated. It was wonderful. Did you what did
Speaker 1: you say to r J? Because I assume you were
Speaker 1: you were on the phone, so he can't hear, like,
Speaker 1: what did you tell him? I just remember we're in
Speaker 1: a in that ford. We call it the Chief mobile. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're in that ford and we pull over and he said,
Speaker 1: he said, your ship man. I said, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: And um he was. He was every bit as giddy
Speaker 1: as as I was. Giddy. Is a really good to
Speaker 1: describe how he felt with that. The deal closed six
Speaker 1: months later in June, nearly one fifty years after the
Speaker 1: Each nation bought this land from the Cherokee Nation, they
Speaker 1: owned a big piece of it again. It was just
Speaker 1: an incredible feeling to be so close to um to
Speaker 1: to an historical inflection point. Um. It was, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it. I'll never have that feeling again, I don't
Speaker 1: think um And to have it once, uh, in your
Speaker 1: tribe's history is a lot. It's it's a really good feeling.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm proud of us for doing that. It
Speaker 1: does go without saying that that this never would have
Speaker 1: happened if not for the reformation of the government. So
Speaker 1: that old saw about you know, standing on the shoulders
Speaker 1: of those that came before you. There were sacrifices in
Speaker 1: in visionaries in the past and in o s Age
Speaker 1: government going all the way back to the sixties um
Speaker 1: that we're trying to move us out of what we
Speaker 1: were in the position we were placed in. And I
Speaker 1: can know six in the years since, the Osage Nation
Speaker 1: has brought in more bison to graze on this land,
Speaker 1: cattle to the tribes also bought some more land, nothing
Speaker 1: like the Blue Stem acquisition. That much land doesn't go
Speaker 1: on the market very often. But the os Age nations
Speaker 1: buying property in downtown Pahaska, building a new health center,
Speaker 1: a food processing plant. There's still something outstanding with the
Speaker 1: ranch the nation bought from Ted Turner. Right now, it's
Speaker 1: held in something called the simple the most common way
Speaker 1: to own real estate. Oth Age leaders want to change
Speaker 1: that to make sure that land can never again lead
Speaker 1: the os Age Nation. They want to put the land
Speaker 1: in trust. One must remember at the purpose of the
Speaker 1: land into trust process was instituted by the United States
Speaker 1: to allow tribes to go back and re acquire lands
Speaker 1: that may have been lost for any number of reasons
Speaker 1: and taken out of out of the tribe's hands. And
Speaker 1: so it's a level of protection that you couldn't get.
Speaker 1: The land is not health and trust, that's correct, It's
Speaker 1: it's a nine and day difference between fee and trust.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem. When the oath Age Nation applied
Speaker 1: to have this land put into trust, the federal government
Speaker 1: said it couldn't do that, at least not yet. The
Speaker 1: surface land, the government said was too damage from decades
Speaker 1: of oil and gas drilling. They said it would need
Speaker 1: millions of dollars worth of remediation work before they would
Speaker 1: agree to accept the title on behalf of the oath
Speaker 1: Age Nation. Raymond says it's a bit of an ironic
Speaker 1: twist because all that oil and gas drilling it was
Speaker 1: permitted by the US government, that was their job as
Speaker 1: trustee of the o s Age Mineral Estate. That set
Speaker 1: of facts would point to the b i A as
Speaker 1: the responsible party for that environmental degradation. Yet the same entity,
Speaker 1: the b i A, is the one that raises its
Speaker 1: hand and says we can't put this into trust. Look
Speaker 1: at this environmental degradation. I've asked the b i A
Speaker 1: about this. They declined to comment and have not made
Speaker 1: Secretary deb Holland available for an interview. I've also talked
Speaker 1: to R. J. Walker about this, since he's the current
Speaker 1: assistant Principal Chief. He said the os Age Nation is
Speaker 1: working with the b i A to submit a new
Speaker 1: application to put the land in trust. As with so
Speaker 1: much of the history here, the os Age Nation is
Speaker 1: trying to make sure it's land and its sovereignty are
Speaker 1: secure forever, trying to take back control of what was theirs.
Speaker 1: And Raymond told me, just like it took time for
Speaker 1: this land to leave O s Age hands, it'll take
Speaker 1: time to get it back. And so when you look
Speaker 1: out at a plat map of both Age County today
Speaker 1: and you see how many non O Sage landowners there are,
Speaker 1: you see that as a design of allotment. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: think I'm enough of an optimist that I don't look
Speaker 1: at those maps. What I do look at is the
Speaker 1: map of O s Age holdings and see how much
Speaker 1: more there is that we need to do. If I
Speaker 1: spend too much time as an elected official dwelling on
Speaker 1: the past, I'm not focusing on the future. We only
Speaker 1: all have our attention to apply to anything. If we
Speaker 1: apply it to the future, then we're going to continue
Speaker 1: on this path of reacquisition of lost land. If we're
Speaker 1: looking back, all we're doing is dwelling on something that
Speaker 1: we can't change. Can We should we study it and
Speaker 1: learn from it. Absolutely, should it be what we quote
Speaker 1: chapter and verse on a daily basis not, In my opinion,
Speaker 1: We're going to succeed by looking forward and figuring out
Speaker 1: how we continue to earn the resources to continue this
Speaker 1: purchase of previously owned lands. That's where I think our
Speaker 1: focus could should be always. I was there when Chief
Speaker 1: signed the deeds and to close it and said, this
Speaker 1: is the day we stopped going backwards. This is the
Speaker 1: day we begin to go the other direction towards buying
Speaker 1: all of this reservation back. And it will take us
Speaker 1: long to buy it back as it did sell it,
Speaker 1: perhaps even longer, but we have the means to do so.
Speaker 1: If the Germans can build up small land empire, there's
Speaker 1: no reason we can. M no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no no.
Speaker 1: For maps, newspaper archives, photos and other documents related to
Speaker 1: this episode, go to bloomberg dot com. Slash in Trust
Speaker 1: In Trust is a production of Bloomberg and I Heart Media.
Speaker 1: It's reported and hosted by me Rachel Adams, heard additional
Speaker 1: reporting by Alison Edda special thanks to Jeane Dennison, whose
Speaker 1: book Colonial and Tangle documented the Osage Nation's government reform.
Speaker 1: Her upcoming book, Rebuilding Relationships of Respect Self Determination in
Speaker 1: the Osage Nation, will document the Osage Nations land purchase.
Speaker 1: Davis Land is our senior producer. Samantha Story is our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Jeff Grocott is our senior editor. Additional editing
Speaker 1: by Daniel Ferrara. Additional production by Victor eBay As, production
Speaker 1: support from joelga to Carly. Sound engineering by Blake Naples.
Speaker 1: The music by Laura Workman. Photography by Shane Brown. You
Speaker 1: can email us at Podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. Find
Speaker 1: in Trust anywhere you get your podcasts m