Kevin Abourezk
ICT
LINCOLN, Neb. — As a light mist blanketed the tall grass, Cory DeRoin waded into the field, stopping occasionally to pull sage and goldenrod from the prairie. Behind him, his relatives and a few others walked along a trail, some wandering into the field to pull the medicines they would use in prayer later.
Nearly two centuries ago, DeRoin’s ancestors may have walked this same ground, gathering the same medicines that their descendants pulled from the earth on their recent walk through this native tallgrass prairie near Lincoln, Nebraska.
But in 1854, the Otoe-Missouria surrendered their last Nebraska lands to make way for settlers. Twenty-seven years later, they made the long march from Nebraska to Red Rock, Oklahoma, where they would plant their seeds and raise their children and grandchildren. Their lands eventually became Lincoln, as well as other towns in southeastern Nebraska.
Today, they are still struggling to make northern Oklahoma their home, but they also are beginning to reconnect to their former home in Nebraska as part of a reconciliation effort supported by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Great Plains Studies.
“We put tobacco out and made our offering to Mother Earth and thanked her for everything that she’s provided for us,” said DeRoin, pausing his nature walk to share his story. “It’s a really good spiritual feeling.”
The Center for Great Plains’ Reconciliation Rising project hosted the second annual homecoming celebration in Lincoln from Sept. 21-23 for 23 citizens of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma. The main celebration luncheon on Sept. 21 included the reading of an Otoe-Missouria Day Proclamation by Mayor Leirion Gaylor-Baird and presentations by Otoe-Missouria tribal members and others.
Native university students set up two teepees near the site of the luncheon, which included songs and dances by a local drum group, an Otoe-Missouria drum group, Otoe-Missouria dancers and Lincoln dancers. Lincoln and Otoe-Missouria elders said prayers, and two local youth and university student organizations served food and cleaned up afterward.
DeRoin talked about his tribe’s original homelands in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region, which they left in 1714 for Nebraska.
“Our old folks are looking down on us, happy that we’re here, that we’re able to come back and walk in their footsteps,” he said.
DeRoin said his elders shared with him the stories about his people’s lives in Nebraska. While their original homelands were farther east, his people consider Nebraska their last chosen home, he said.
“In my heart, I feel like I’m at home,” he said.
He said he’s hopeful the annual homecoming celebration will grow in coming years as more and more of his people start returning to Nebraska and more local Natives and non-Natives get involved in the celebration.
“I hope that the relationship continues to grow and that the kids as they get older remember this and they’ll come back every year and they’ll bring their kids,” he said.
Mark Brohman, executive director of the Wachiska Audubon Society, a local nonprofit that works to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, talked about the Otoe-Missouria people as the last tribal stewards of the Lincoln and surrounding region.
And he said he hopes the tribe someday will be able regain some of the land they lost.
“Your ancestors were the first conservationists, the first land stewards, the first environmentalists,” he said. “We hope that someday they’ll have large prairies in eastern Nebraska that they’ll have under their ownership and we’ll be able to pass it on to future generations.”
Brohman said the tribe’s return to Lincoln each Sept. 21 – the date of the tribe’s last land cession to the federal government – is empowering to Natives and non-Natives alike.
“It does our community well to be able to interact with you folks, the original peoples of this land,” he said.
In addition to the homecoming celebration on Sept. 21 and a dinner at the Lincoln Indian Center later that night, the 21 Otoe-Missouria tribal members walked three different native tallgrass prairies and took part in healing ceremonies hosted by local Indigenous people.
They ended their journey the morning of Sept. 23, when they traveled to Indian Cave State Park in far southeast Nebraska to visit some of the Indigenous cave paintings there.
Marci Black and her daughter Lena traveled to Nebraska to learn more about the lands their ancestors left behind. Lena, the Red Rock, Oklahoma, powwow princess, performed during the Sept. 21 homecoming celebration.
Taking a break from one of their prairie walks, Marci said the Indian Center dinner was especially moving for her.
“I actually cried,” she said. “It was a build up of all the generosity and good feelings and kindness that we had been shown.”
Her daughter, who is considering attending college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said she enjoyed learning about her tribe’s history.
“The energy is really just awesome,” she said. “It’s very moving and touching.”
Just down the trail, Robert “Cory” Deere, 54, said it was difficult to travel to Nebraska and imagine the lives that his people were forced to give up in order to make way for settlers. Deere, a docent for the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, said he felt a profound sadness when he thought about his ancestors hunting and gathering on the prairies they visited.
“It’s a proclamation day, but it’s like we’re gone,” he said. “We’re down there now.
“It’s kind of a touching thing. I want to come back more.”
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