Speaker 1: It was on the second page. The tagline was if
Speaker 1: it stinks, will find it eventually. This is Louise Redcorn.
Speaker 1: She's a journalist. She used to run The Big Heart Times,
Speaker 1: the newspaper that published that list of all the non
Speaker 1: os aged head right holders back in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: The papers had a lot of taglines over the years.
Speaker 1: The former owner of the paper had it just been
Speaker 1: the only newspaper in barn in the Barnstall area that
Speaker 1: gives a deadly and I thought, no, that's just not
Speaker 1: good enough. So I changed it to the only newspaper
Speaker 1: in the world. And they came over and they're like, Louise,
Speaker 1: that's just a really gross exaggeration. Louise works for the
Speaker 1: oth Age News now. She's married to Raymond Redcorn, the
Speaker 1: former assistant Principal chief who delivered the bid for the
Speaker 1: Blue Stem acquisition. These days, Louise mostly covers the oth
Speaker 1: Age Nation, but she's been a lot of her career
Speaker 1: writing county news. And you can't cover Ocge County without
Speaker 1: covering the Drummonds. I mean, I've written a lot of
Speaker 1: stories about them, from you know, speeding tickets to assaults
Speaker 1: to exaggerated statistics at the mercantile in terms of how
Speaker 1: busy they are. These stories date back a while speeding
Speaker 1: tickets that were dismissed at the time of Drummond punched.
Speaker 1: A police officer getting a Drummond represented him in court
Speaker 1: and the man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanors. Saw an
Speaker 1: officer a story about read Drummonds mercantile and Pahuska. Whether
Speaker 1: it was actually seeing that thousands of visitors a day,
Speaker 1: she said it was. I think sometimes there is the
Speaker 1: afore aforementioned hutzpah that they don't always follow the rules
Speaker 1: the way everybody else does. A lot of people cow
Speaker 1: tow to them, cow tow to the dramas and just
Speaker 1: sort of give them a green light. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason in Pahuska is that the Drummonds have done
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of good for Pahuska. You know,
Speaker 1: sales tax collections are between thirty and over pre mercantile times.
Speaker 1: They built a new football field at the high school.
Speaker 1: They're they're in the process of building an animal shelter
Speaker 1: that and they've never sought I mean, they've kept those
Speaker 1: things secret almost I mean, they just had not even
Speaker 1: ever claimed credit for those for those two items. So
Speaker 1: I mean there's a certain amount of gratitude that is natural.
Speaker 1: I've heard this from other people too, that there are
Speaker 1: Drummonds today who have helped revitalize POSCA. They've brought jobs, tourists,
Speaker 1: money to a place that needed it, that they've given
Speaker 1: back to the community. And not everyone feels that way,
Speaker 1: of course, But what Louise is talking about here, it
Speaker 1: gets at the complexity of it all, the complexity of
Speaker 1: a place shaped by a hundred years of history, with
Speaker 1: shifting rules and fortunes and power dynamics, a place where
Speaker 1: tremendous wealth was lost and gain. My families were still
Speaker 1: neighbors who run into each other at the store, we're dinner,
Speaker 1: we're Friday night football games. In that complexity, it doesn't
Speaker 1: just describe the relationship between the Drummonds and the os
Speaker 1: Age Nation, because there's another character in this story that's
Speaker 1: been here all along, the United States Government. Howid hey
Speaker 1: who agree tjo wash Nikahi are. My name is Jeane Dennison.
Speaker 1: I'm a citizen of the Nation from Oklahoma and an
Speaker 1: associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington.
Speaker 1: Jean was one of the first people I interviewed for
Speaker 1: this story. I was nervous. I was an oil reporter
Speaker 1: from Houston. A lot of this history I was learning
Speaker 1: about for the first time. I couldn't figure out if
Speaker 1: the trust relationship with the US government was a good thing,
Speaker 1: We're a bad thing if os Age citizens liked it.
Speaker 1: And Jeane told me I wasn't going to find one answer.
Speaker 1: She said over and over again that this story, the
Speaker 1: oth Age nation story, is really complicated. When Jane and
Speaker 1: I talked this last time, it was about that trust
Speaker 1: relationship with the US government, something oth Age leaders have
Speaker 1: fought tirelessly for for over a century. Something they want
Speaker 1: to use today to protect the land they bought from
Speaker 1: Ted Turner by putting it back into trust with the US.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask Jean, why why pursue the trust
Speaker 1: relationship if it's been so flawed in the past and
Speaker 1: occasionally even today. I guess I wanted to know why
Speaker 1: bother there was a lot of failures to honor the
Speaker 1: kinds of promises that were made in these treaties by
Speaker 1: the United States government, but ultimately these treaties really did
Speaker 1: offer the United States um access to our lands, but
Speaker 1: they also offered oth Ages is the ability to UM
Speaker 1: have some kind of protection against other kinds of threats.
Speaker 1: So that's really what this trust relationship was about, was
Speaker 1: this ability to have UM increased protection against the threats
Speaker 1: that were rising in our territories. In other words, the
Speaker 1: federal government was a tool, a tool to keep the
Speaker 1: state out of the oath Age nation. Jean says it
Speaker 1: was a flawed one, but it was the best tool
Speaker 1: the oth Age Nation had at the time. And so
Speaker 1: what we see again and again UM is these kinds
Speaker 1: of looking at the world around us and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what are the tools, what are the things
Speaker 1: that we can do to make this pivot again and
Speaker 1: again looking at the situation around us and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: structures that we have in place right now are not
Speaker 1: working for us. They're creating more chaos than they are
Speaker 1: creating order, and so we're going to pivot. The o
Speaker 1: Stage Nation is in the middle of a pivot, one
Speaker 1: that involves land, oil, and sovereignty that will determine the
Speaker 1: future of who controls these nearly one point five million
Speaker 1: acres and how this is in trust. I'm Rachel Adams
Speaker 1: heard and in this episode, you're also going to be
Speaker 1: hearing from someone else, Alison Edita. She's a contributing reporter
Speaker 1: on the series, and she's here to help me explain
Speaker 1: this pivot. I did a presentation for the Stage Nation
Speaker 1: employees back. I believe it was in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine or two thousand and ten. This is Elizabeth Sloha Homer,
Speaker 1: the lawyer in d C who sits on the O
Speaker 1: Stage Nations Supreme Court. I had told people, I had
Speaker 1: said this before the Rby decision came down. If there's
Speaker 1: any justice left in America, the oh stages win the
Speaker 1: Irby case. The Irby case, this is just one and
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of reservation cases in recent years that
Speaker 1: are incredibly important for understanding where everything stands today, where
Speaker 1: the state's jurisdiction ends, in tribal nations jurisdiction begins. No
Speaker 1: one's covered these cases more closely than Allison Edita, the
Speaker 1: Indigenous affairs reporter for KOs U, a public radio station
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. She's going to help me out on this one,
Speaker 1: Alison so Irby. It was a case about taxation, whether
Speaker 1: the state could collect income taxes from O s Age
Speaker 1: citizens who live and work in os Age County. But
Speaker 1: just like all of these cases, the Irby case was
Speaker 1: about something much bigger than that, because at the center
Speaker 1: of it was a question was there still an O.
Speaker 1: S Ge reservation or had it been disestablished when the
Speaker 1: US divided up all the surface land into parcels under
Speaker 1: the nineteen o six Altman app I talked to a
Speaker 1: lot of federal Indian law experts and they all pretty
Speaker 1: much said no, the O. S Age Reservation was never disestablished.
Speaker 1: The nineteen o six Act did a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but it didn't get rid of the reservation. That's what
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was saying in that presentation back she thought the
Speaker 1: os Age Nation had an even better case than a
Speaker 1: lot of other tribal nations because of the O. S
Speaker 1: Age mineral estate and all the underground land that the
Speaker 1: os Age Nation thought to hold onto. Then the decision hit.
Speaker 1: I was sitting in front of my computer at my desk,
Speaker 1: and I got an electronic copy of Herby and started
Speaker 1: reading it. And the next thing I know, I'm like
Speaker 1: having a hard time breathing, you know, I was just,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is the worst, the worst opinion.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Speaker 1: ruled the O s Age Nation reservation had been disestablished,
Speaker 1: that it was no longer Indian country. And so to me,
Speaker 1: the Irby decision truly struck me as there is no
Speaker 1: justice left in the United States, And as an officer
Speaker 1: of the Court and a lawyer for my entire life,
Speaker 1: my entire career, that that just was emotionally wrenching, devastating
Speaker 1: to me because it was so wrong, so wrong. In
Speaker 1: the decade after the Rby decision, the OCGE Nation tried
Speaker 1: to find a path forward, another way to get its
Speaker 1: reservation recognized by the Court, but they were kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: You can't bring the same case twice. The Court had ruled,
Speaker 1: and it ruled that the O C reservation was disestablished.
Speaker 1: But then we'll hear argument first this morning case eight
Speaker 1: McGirt versus Oklahoma, Mr. Chief Justice, and may have pleased
Speaker 1: the court. Something big happened another case mcgert the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: This case is resolved by the fundamental propositions that decisions
Speaker 1: about sovereign rights so for Congress to make, and Congress
Speaker 1: makes those decisions by speaking clearly in the text, the
Speaker 1: decision below must be reversed because the text makes clear
Speaker 1: that Congress never terminated the Creek Reservation and never transferred
Speaker 1: federal criminal jurisdiction to Oklahoma. Mc group was enough case
Speaker 1: involving a reservation in Oklahoma, but this time it was
Speaker 1: the Misgogy Nation reservation, also known as the Muscogee Creek Nation.
Speaker 1: This case was about a felony crime and whether it
Speaker 1: should be prosecuted in federal or state court, But just
Speaker 1: like the Irby case, it was also about something much bigger,
Speaker 1: whether the Misgogy Nations reservation still existed. The mcgurt case
Speaker 1: went all the way up to the Supreme Court. It
Speaker 1: was decided on July nine, the last day before the
Speaker 1: court said it would recess, and as someone who has
Speaker 1: covered indigenous affairs for a while, I'll just never forget it.
Speaker 1: This was one of the biggest wins for tribal sovereignty
Speaker 1: in decades. The highest court in the land ruled that
Speaker 1: the Misgogy Nation reservation still existed. The allotment era when
Speaker 1: the US government divided up native land didn't change that.
Speaker 1: In the months after the mcgurt decision, other tribal nations
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma asked state courts to apply the ruling to
Speaker 1: their own reservations. The Chickasaw Cherokee Choked On Nation Seminal
Speaker 1: and Quapa they had their reservation status as affirmed too,
Speaker 1: but it hadn't been applied to the se Nation, at
Speaker 1: least not yet. McGirt is um is a case in
Speaker 1: my mind of one of great hope but also great pain.
Speaker 1: This is Wilson pipe Stem, the attorney who's represented the
Speaker 1: os Age Nation and the oth Age Minerals Council. You
Speaker 1: heard from him a couple of episodes ago. Alison and
Speaker 1: I went to his office and Pulsa over the summer
Speaker 1: to talk to him about these cases, how they affect
Speaker 1: the Osage Nation, what O s Age leaders want to
Speaker 1: do moving forward, and Wilson said one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things McGirt highlighted to him was what could have happened
Speaker 1: during the nineties if the os Age Reservation had been recognized,
Speaker 1: that would have been federal jurisdiction over all of those murders.
Speaker 1: But they treated the Sage Reservation like it didn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: So they were bringing you had to bring a case
Speaker 1: against somebody in O Sage County court where justice was
Speaker 1: not to be found right. So it wasn't until somebody
Speaker 1: was murdered on trust land, or Henry Rowan was murdered
Speaker 1: on trust land that they decided it's federal jurisdiction. Now,
Speaker 1: to me, that shows you the protection that reservation status
Speaker 1: can bring, because those cases would have would have been
Speaker 1: federal jurisdiction to start with, and we may have been
Speaker 1: able to avoid the loss of many lives if the
Speaker 1: federal government had respected the homelands of the O s
Speaker 1: h people and treated as a reservation as it should
Speaker 1: have been for over a hundred years. Now, what Wilson
Speaker 1: is talking about here gets at the importance of having
Speaker 1: these reservations in the first place. It affects who gets
Speaker 1: to tax you, protect you, and punish you. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just no doubt in my mind as a legal matter,
Speaker 1: the Sage Reservation was never disestablished. It just never was.
Speaker 1: The language is not in any of those laws. And
Speaker 1: even when the tense Circuit Court of Appeals and Herby said, well,
Speaker 1: we looked at all the statutes. We don't find any
Speaker 1: language of disestablishments, so we'll go to these other things
Speaker 1: that now McGirt in the Supreme Court has decided no,
Speaker 1: you can't get past that first question. So um uh,
Speaker 1: the Sage reservation was never disestablished. Elizabeth and Wilson are
Speaker 1: not the only ones who feel this way. The oth
Speaker 1: Age leaders I've talked to our adamant their reservation still
Speaker 1: exists and eventually they'll get the court to recognize that.
Speaker 1: And the sooner we can get to that ruling, the
Speaker 1: easier the transition will be. This past year, the Sage
Speaker 1: Nation piggybacked on a criminal case to try to get
Speaker 1: the mcgert decision applied to them. They lost for the
Speaker 1: state district judge force Age County. But we've reached out
Speaker 1: to the tribe. They said they're still weighing their options,
Speaker 1: deciding the best way to move forward a pivot, but
Speaker 1: that's not the only pivot the nation is planning when
Speaker 1: we come back. We talked to the man leading another
Speaker 1: big pivot. UMU. The kind of person that likes to
Speaker 1: understand things, even though over again I realized how limited
Speaker 1: we all are and trying to understand everything. It's been
Speaker 1: on my mind day and night. And now, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: has some words to say to us is inaugural address? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a written stage kay on June. It was
Speaker 1: less than two weeks ago an election in the state
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma was held and in that election, several officials
Speaker 1: of the state who have pledged opposition to the Native
Speaker 1: American self governance one their primaries. That was illustrated the
Speaker 1: next day June when the Supreme Court of the United
Speaker 1: States of America ruled in the case of Castro A Wuerta.
Speaker 1: This is Jeffrey standing Bear, the principal chief of the
Speaker 1: Osage Nation. He's leading the tribe through all this how
Speaker 1: to respond to the mcgart case in the current state
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma politics. Standing Bears Chief who decided to bid
Speaker 1: the maximount the Congress would allow back when the tribe
Speaker 1: bought the land from Ted Turner, and over the summer
Speaker 1: he won another term as chief. He gave his inauguration
Speaker 1: speech at the Osge Casino in Tulsa, and during it
Speaker 1: he kind of dropped a bomb. I looked to my
Speaker 1: left and I saw our Minerals Council. Minerals Council, it's
Speaker 1: time for you to fully manage our mineral estate for
Speaker 1: our people. And I looked over to my right where
Speaker 1: the Osage Congress, our legislature was sitting and said, Congress,
Speaker 1: we need you to enact the laws of the os
Speaker 1: Age Nation to do this. What Chief Standing Bears proposing
Speaker 1: is a big deal. After more than a century of
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Indian Affairs managing the O. S H
Speaker 1: Mineral Estate, the O s H Nation would be taking
Speaker 1: it over. Are all the duties that fell to the
Speaker 1: b a A would now be the O s Age
Speaker 1: Nation's responsibility overseeing leases, making sure oil states get cleaned up.
Speaker 1: This hasn't happened yet, and it still has a long
Speaker 1: way to go. Part of the reason Standing Bear wants
Speaker 1: to do this is pretty practical. He thinks the os
Speaker 1: Age Nation can do a better job than the US government.
Speaker 1: The b i A is, after all, a federal bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Stuff takes a long time. There's internal office politics, outdated software,
Speaker 1: staffing issues. But Standing Bear says this is also about
Speaker 1: something much bigger. All of our areas that are engaged
Speaker 1: and sovereignty. In my view, the one area that is
Speaker 1: most exposed is our O. S Age mineral state. So
Speaker 1: we need to get in there, pre empt that with
Speaker 1: self governance, and use that mineralist state as our people
Speaker 1: who we purchased this naralist state in eighteen seven, need
Speaker 1: too with our own money. Let us use it the
Speaker 1: way our elders intended it for us to use it.
Speaker 1: Allison and I wanted to talk to Standing Bear after
Speaker 1: he gave this speech. We wanted to know why now,
Speaker 1: why after so many decades, would the Stage Nation want
Speaker 1: to take it over. So we called him just a
Speaker 1: few days after that speech to ask him about it.
Speaker 1: This is a threat that's unique from the others. It
Speaker 1: is a threat of control by the state on a
Speaker 1: regulatory basis, taxation basis, criminal basis um. Those are powerful forces.
Speaker 1: In other words, this is about keeping the state Oklahoma
Speaker 1: out of the Stage Nation. And Standing Bear said it's
Speaker 1: more important than ever because of how Oklahoma responded to
Speaker 1: McGirt by bringing another case. He mentioned castro Berta, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling on criminal jurisdiction on tribal land in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: So this ruling to day means the state of Oklahoma
Speaker 1: can exercise criminal jurisdiction over non Native Americans on tribal land.
Speaker 1: This comes after the case of Oklahoma versus Castro Huerta,
Speaker 1: which questions who could prosecute non tribal members who committed
Speaker 1: crimes against Native Americans. And of course this ruling here
Speaker 1: narrows the decision Regret versus Oklahoma, which said that Native
Speaker 1: Americans another court case, I know, but this is important
Speaker 1: because when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the
Speaker 1: Miskogee Nation, Oklahoma wasn't happy. On the other side of
Speaker 1: all this is Kevin Stitt. He's the governor of Oklahoma
Speaker 1: and his office has been at the forefront of trying
Speaker 1: to undo mcgurt, that decision that meant so much for
Speaker 1: tribal sovereignty. Still says by taking away the state's control,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma risk becoming some sort of lawless land with thousands
Speaker 1: of criminals released from jail. But Allison has done some
Speaker 1: reporting on this. My reporting part Rebecca and Eagle and
Speaker 1: I pulled data from all the tribes over three years
Speaker 1: to see how many cases would actually be affected by
Speaker 1: the mcgert decision, and what we found was fewer than
Speaker 1: one thousand cases in Oklahoma were affected. But Oklahoma stands
Speaker 1: by their number and that argument that thousands of criminals
Speaker 1: would be released has been a pretty key part of
Speaker 1: the state's response to mcgurt, and over the summer, Oklahoma
Speaker 1: was successful in limiting the impact of mcgurt. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ruled in the state's favor in the castral work
Speaker 1: the case. Stick is running for re election this year.
Speaker 1: It would be his second term as governor. He easily
Speaker 1: won the primary in June, and his next stop is
Speaker 1: the general election in November. In that election is also
Speaker 1: where over a hundred years of o s Age Nation
Speaker 1: history and Drummond history collide in the present day. Because,
Speaker 1: as we've told you, the Republican candidate to become the
Speaker 1: next Attorney General of the state, the chief law enforcement
Speaker 1: officer for all of Oklahoma is the lawyer and big
Speaker 1: landowner whose family has deep roots in os Age County,
Speaker 1: getting a Drummond. This is a pretty important role at
Speaker 1: an even more important time, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: who gets to prosecute whom. The a g after all,
Speaker 1: is the one who guides the state's response on matters
Speaker 1: like this. During that first interview in his office, Gettner
Speaker 1: said one of the things he was running on was
Speaker 1: a promise, a promise to work more with tribal nations
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma than still has with the Cacaffey surrounding the
Speaker 1: moderate decision. Our governor for some reason just can't see
Speaker 1: it in himself to act rationally, and so he's driven
Speaker 1: a wedge between the name of American tribes in the
Speaker 1: state of Oklahoma, and I can I think that I
Speaker 1: can undo that. Tribal leaders in Oklahoma supported Getner, and
Speaker 1: their support means a lot. When the final votes were
Speaker 1: rolling in during the June primary, Choctaw Nation Chief Gary
Speaker 1: Batten put out a statement saying this was a win
Speaker 1: for tribal sovereignty. So here we have a drumming about
Speaker 1: to be the next attorney general of the state, vowing
Speaker 1: to work for tribal sovereignty at a time when the
Speaker 1: chief of the Osage Nation sees an existential threat from
Speaker 1: the state, a threat he's worried would affect the o
Speaker 1: Sage mineral estate, the same one that members of Gettner's
Speaker 1: family had fought to get a piece of a century ago.
Speaker 1: If your head is spinning, so we're hours. We asked
Speaker 1: standing Bear about what he thinks all this means how
Speaker 1: this history impacts the state of play today, and his
Speaker 1: answer was, basically, it's complicated, and not just because of
Speaker 1: the Drummond's history in Osage County. During the election, we
Speaker 1: met and I said, uh, I know, Gettner um pretty good.
Speaker 1: He's he's a good guy in my mind, except his
Speaker 1: views on protecting his ranch and service owners have come
Speaker 1: into conflict with us in our mineralist state. I said, Getner,
Speaker 1: if you would pledged not to sue os Age Nation
Speaker 1: again on these issues between the surface land and the
Speaker 1: mineralist state, I will ask for Minerals Council to support you,
Speaker 1: and I would support you for Attorney General. He would
Speaker 1: not do that. What standing Bear is saying here is
Speaker 1: something we haven't told you about yet, but comes up
Speaker 1: a lot in oth Age County, get As lawsuits. Get
Speaker 1: Nurse firm brought a lot of lawsuits against oil companies
Speaker 1: in the area on behalf of other landowners. He considers
Speaker 1: himself a steward of the land. He has a lot
Speaker 1: of it. After all, land that he says has been
Speaker 1: damaged by oil and gas production that whole time, all
Speaker 1: the royalties from that oil and gas are going to
Speaker 1: head right holders. If you injure the land, you fix it.
Speaker 1: That's all. That's all I asked. I was litigating on
Speaker 1: a case by case basis on my land. If you
Speaker 1: dumped thousands of gallons of salt water. I would require
Speaker 1: you to clean it up, and if you wouldn't clean
Speaker 1: it up, then I'd suit you. But in Gettner and
Speaker 1: his law firm did something more drastic. They bought a
Speaker 1: lawsuit on behalf of an Osage rancher and another landowner
Speaker 1: in o Sage County. When we'll stepped back in one
Speaker 1: of my very intelligent attorneys in this law firm or
Speaker 1: live as well, there's a NIPA National Environmental Protection Act,
Speaker 1: and let's go use NIPA to make the b i
Speaker 1: A do its job. And they that's what we did. Basically,
Speaker 1: they didn't just go after one oil company, they went
Speaker 1: after the whole system the way that b i A
Speaker 1: was permitting wells in Osage County. This was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest lawsuits to affect the O s Age in
Speaker 1: mineral estate. Ever after Gettner and his law firm brought
Speaker 1: the case, the BIA said it would re vamp its
Speaker 1: process for permitting wells in Osage County, but those permits
Speaker 1: started to take a long time. All the while oil
Speaker 1: prices were super low, head right payments were taking a
Speaker 1: huge hit. A lot of Osage head right holders saw
Speaker 1: it as an attack not just by the b A,
Speaker 1: but by Gettner Drummond himself. Gettner says he was a
Speaker 1: convenient scapegoat, but Standing Bear says that case has him
Speaker 1: and other Sage leaders on guard. We have to be
Speaker 1: connizant that the new attorney general the local home ours.
Speaker 1: We believe you'll be the new tonat generals displayed interests
Speaker 1: adverse to our legal interests in our policy interests. We
Speaker 1: hope getting her Drummond will work with us, but we
Speaker 1: are very aware of his news and his history. There's
Speaker 1: something else I want to mention that involves getting a
Speaker 1: Drummond's law firm and Standing Bears office. Just last year,
Speaker 1: an attorney at Gettner's law firm represented a woman who
Speaker 1: worked for the os Age Nation and said she was
Speaker 1: sexually harassed by two men who served in the Chief's office.
Speaker 1: According to a letter Gettner's firm sent to a lawyer
Speaker 1: for the chief's office, the woman raised complaints with the
Speaker 1: tribes HR department was later fired. Drummond Law called it
Speaker 1: retaliatory termination and requested a one d thousand dollar settlement.
Speaker 1: When The os Age News reported on the proposed settlement
Speaker 1: earlier this year, They quoted an O s Age congressman
Speaker 1: who said Standing there used the O s Age people's
Speaker 1: money to buy the woman's silence. One of the accused
Speaker 1: men still works in his office. Standing Bear says personnel
Speaker 1: matters are confidential and that he signed a lot earlier
Speaker 1: this year to prohibit sexual harassment. From the beginning, I
Speaker 1: was told the story was complicated. What I didn't realize
Speaker 1: was just how intertwined the Drummond story and the oc
Speaker 1: Age story were, not just in the nineties, but today,
Speaker 1: and after more than a hundred years of history, of
Speaker 1: decades living side by side on this land, there's a
Speaker 1: big question hanging over os Age County. Can the os
Speaker 1: Age Nation reclaim more of what was lost? Land head rights, sovereignty?
Speaker 1: And as they try, will they find an ally and
Speaker 1: get her Drummond. I started this story with a question
Speaker 1: did the Drummonds have head rights? And if so, how
Speaker 1: did they get them? But I ended with a totally
Speaker 1: different understanding of how three brothers built an empire on
Speaker 1: the Stage Reservation. I learned about a store where they
Speaker 1: could charge huge markups, a store that dozens of O
Speaker 1: s Age families became indebted to a lot of times.
Speaker 1: Those debts were repaid when an O Stage person died
Speaker 1: and one of the Drummond brothers became the administrator of
Speaker 1: their estate, a position that allowed them to approve claims
Speaker 1: from their families own store. Sometimes it was the funeral
Speaker 1: itself that brought the store huge business. A nine thousand
Speaker 1: dollar funeral eight thousand dollar promisory note the Osage price.
Speaker 1: I learned how all of this was done while the
Speaker 1: Drummond brothers were guardians, meant it protect their O Stage
Speaker 1: words money above all else. I learned about secrets tucked
Speaker 1: deep in family stories and others hidden away in land
Speaker 1: abstracts and core archives, secrets that shape this place today.
Speaker 1: A place where neighbors were given totally different rule books,
Speaker 1: one that allowed some people to have tremendous power and
Speaker 1: another that took that control away. A place where many
Speaker 1: of the descendants of those people O Stage and Drummond
Speaker 1: lived side by side. Where the great grandchildren of an
Speaker 1: O Sage a Latt can run into the great grandchildren
Speaker 1: of a Drummond guardian while picking up a sandwich at subway.
Speaker 1: We're filling up their tank at the gas station. In November,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma voters will elect a new Attorney General. It's almost
Speaker 1: certain to be getting or Drummond, the descendant of a
Speaker 1: man who came to this land almost a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: years ago to trade with the Stages, a descendant who
Speaker 1: will have a leading voice and what the future looks
Speaker 1: like for tribal nations and the state of Oklahoma. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the oth Age Minerals Council will keep meeting to figure
Speaker 1: out they're going to take over the management of their
Speaker 1: mineral estate and if so, what that will look like.
Speaker 1: Then there's the ranch, the forty thousand acres the os
Speaker 1: Age Nation bought from Ted Turner. Standing there, says the
Speaker 1: tribe is still working to put it in trust to
Speaker 1: make this land inalienable O Sage forever. The meantime, my
Speaker 1: job is keep the peace with our neighbors and among
Speaker 1: ourselves until we can think this through. This is so
Speaker 1: critical time. It's not letting up. It keeps coming. And
Speaker 1: I also thought after mcgurt, well you'll get to us eventually,
Speaker 1: but it keeps coming. And this brings me immediately to
Speaker 1: the day that we all must work together to follow
Speaker 1: our constitution and protect our mineralist state and all our lands.
Speaker 1: And how do we do that. History has shown that
Speaker 1: we're Federal law clearly pre empts state law, tribal governance,
Speaker 1: self governance pre empts state law. Pre EMPs means we
Speaker 1: need to get there first, governing ourselves on our lands,
Speaker 1: with our territory and our people. I'll do everything and
Speaker 1: Assistant Chief will do everything we can to claim this territory,
Speaker 1: to pre empt this territory as o sage law managed
Speaker 1: Byer Minerals Council. Then at the end, I looked at
Speaker 1: my uncle Bogary Lookout. He's my relative, and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to quote your father, Henry. Uncle Henry look Out,
Speaker 1: and he was you said, a holy man, and he
Speaker 1: told us many things. He said, life is short, be
Speaker 1: quick about it. Thank you. That concludes this part of Intrust.
Speaker 1: We're taking a break so we can work on more stories.
Speaker 1: We'll be back soon. See you. Then. For maps, newspaper archives, photos,
Speaker 1: and other documents related to this episode, go to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash in Trust. In Trust is a production
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg and I Heart Media. This episode is reported
Speaker 1: and hosted by Me Rachel Adams Heard and me Alison Rara.
Speaker 1: Victor Ebayez 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, Production support from Gilda de Carle, sound
Speaker 1: engineering by Blake Maples, theme music by Laura Warrman, Photography
Speaker 1: by Shane Brown. Additional thanks to Margaret Sutherland, Linley Lynn,
Speaker 1: David Ingold, Evan Applegate, Devin Pendleton, Ariel Brown, Jane Yeoman's,
Speaker 1: Eugene Rusnick, Cynthia Hoffman, Frank Coleshaw, Jackie Kessler, Bernadette Walker,
Speaker 1: Emily Engelman, Michael Fraser, Thomas Houston, Stephanie Davidson, Mckinninda Keiper,
Speaker 1: Carly Snyder, Melissa Shadrick, Rakia Soluja Flynn, McRoberts, and Robert Blow.
Speaker 1: You can email us at Podcasts at Bloomberg dot net.
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