Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
TULSA, Okla. — In a year in which “Killers of the Flower Moon” created buzz for the Osage Nation, the tribe’s chief said food sustainability is “No. 1 on the list” of its economic development efforts.
Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear spoke Thursday, April 18, during the first State of Tribal Nations event hosted by the Tulsa Regional Chamber.
“We have 2,000 head of cattle … nearly 300 bison, greenhouses, and we are doing our best to be prepared for anything that is coming in the future,” he said.
The event at the Renaissance Tulsa Hotel and Convention Center also brought the Cherokee Nation chief and representatives of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
“(Oklahoma) tribes have gotten into industries I never thought we would be able to. I mean, the gentleman to my right,” said Cherokee Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., gesturing to Standing Bear, “refers to Martin Scorsese as ‘Marty’ and Leonardo DiCaprio as ‘Leo.’”
Scorsese, director of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” bringing the film production to Oklahoma resulted in a nearly $40 million economic impact for Bartlesville and Pawhuska in the heart of the Osage Nation.
Standing Bear said that since he was first elected in 1990 as the assistant principal chief, the Osage Nation saw many opportunities for economic development but “have not been able to capitalize on all of them.”
The tribe has put efforts into health, food provision, scholarship programs, education and “recently have been concentrating on Career Tech,” Standing Bear said. The Osage Nation is looking to the Tulsa Chamber to facilitate better business partnerships in the area, he said, and Hoskin agreed.
Hoskin said the greatest economic development for the Cherokee Nation has been health care.
“What we want is a world-class system of wellness,” he said, adding the government in the past was “short-changing our people” when it came to health care.
“In the last five decades, we have been able to amass resources and do something about it. … We started behind the idea that our people needed access to health care, and that it shouldn’t bankrupt them to get that,” Hoskin said.
The Cherokee Nation recently put a new hospital in Tahlequah and a new health center in Salina that will “triple the size” of what they have now, he said. They are building an $85 million outpatient facility, which Hoskin said is driven by a need for wellness, not profit.
Hoskin said a big misunderstanding for the Cherokee Nation is that its people get “some sort of special handouts” from the government.
“At the root of this is that people in this country need to understand that these are obligations. They are treaties, statutes and court decisions. The question is whether or not the United States is going to live up to its legal obligations,” he said.
Hoskin said tribal leaders also have a duty to “continually remind the country that these things the tribes are trying to do are really rooted in history and law.” He said he feels an obligation to help educate the public on the “injuries done to Native Americans” by the government, and to educate the public on why certain court decisions and treaties are important to the tribes.
He referenced the McGirt v. Oklahoma decision and the “steep learning curve” as state and tribal leaders, as well as law enforcement officials, have tried to reconcile jurisdictional issues created by the case.
Standing Bear said one of the biggest misconceptions about the Osage Nation is that they “no longer exist as a people.”
“We are still here. We are proud, and we are culturally developed,” he said.
Vann Bighorse, secretary of language, culture and education for the Osage Nation, said: “This state of the tribal nations event is a very effective way to help an endeavor. Hearing the drum today, the songs that were sung today, the language that was spoken today. … All these people got to take it in and feel our culture that we’ve had for thousands of years … and will continue to have.”
This story is co-published by the Tulsa World and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Oklahoma area.
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