Bonus Episode: The Celebration

Published Dec 11, 2024, 3:48 PM

In this special bonus episode of In Trust, the Osage Nation puts nearly 42,000 acres of land back into trust with the US government. The move caps a nearly decade-long saga and protects the land from being sold, stolen or lost.

Hey, it's Rachel. It's been a while, but we have a quick update for you. Last month, I hopped on a plane from Houston to Tulsa and drove the hour north to Pohsca. It was my first time on the Osage Reservation in more than a year. I went back to cover an important development. In this story. We told you a lot about how US policies were to strip O Sage land and money away from families in the Osage Nation itself. We also told you about how Osage leaders are trying to buy some of that back, and last month, the Osage Nation did something big, bringing a part of this history full circle. Government officials and journalists were in town, including Alison Edrea, my reporting partner for this podcast. We all gathered in a big room at the new O Sage Casino in Pahsca. There was a podium at the front next to a table with some official documents on it. Chief Jeffrey's standing there can please come up. You might remember Chief standing there from earlier episodes. He's the elected leader of the Osage Nation and the person who made the call to go all in to win the more than forty thousand acres billionaire Ted Turner was selling. But that acquisition was just step one, because the.

Title is going to be changed from Osage Nation to the United States of America in trust for the Osage Nation, that's what is on these states.

This was step two, transferring the land to the federal government, so that the US would hold the title to the land, but on behalf of the Osage Nation. In other words, to establish that fiduciary duty, the highest responsibility in the US legal system, a way to protect the land from being sold or lost or stolen. This had been years in the making. The osh Nation had applied to have the land put in trust back in twenty sixteen, then withdrew that application, did a bunch of work, and resubmitted it in twenty twenty three. Putting land in trust, even a couple acres is a long bureaucratic process, so for a massive chunk like this ranch, at times it seemed like it might not even happen at all. You might remember that one issue was all the oil drilling that had taken place on the land. There was a concern that the BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, might not accept the liability that came with that damage, even though it was the US that had overseen the oil production. Chief Standing Bear said he explained all this to Frank Lucas, the US Congressman from Oklahoma.

We told him the situation and he goes, oh, let me get this straight. Bia. He's a big tallent. He goes, BIA says, he can't put it in trust, as all its environmental damage. But all's environmental damage happened when they were in charge and make sure everything was not damas. Yes, sir, and he goes, let them make sense. Then I go, that's what we think.

So after Chief Standing Bear finished speaking, a new person came on stage, a regional director for the BIA ed E Streeter. They were in pretty close contact over the last several years working on this. There were a lot of technical details that needed to be hammered out, but he said it was the right thing for the government to do.

Placing land and trust is critical to travel, sovereignty, self determination and preservation of the history and culture, economic development, and the well being and tribal citizens. The process also helped write the wrongs of past policies such as a lot men as Chief talked about, which removed me as the makers of lands for travel, ownership and federal protection.

Federal policy any more than a century. After the nineteen oh six Act that divided up this land, the title to more than forty thousand acres was officially transferred from the o Sage Nation to the US government. It's trustee and perpetuity.

So congratulations, you are own forty three thousand acres all forty two thousand sum of federal trust land and it is owned by Alden.

After the event, Alison and I caught up outside with r. J. Walker, the assistant Principal Chief who drove the bid to Kansas with Raymond Redcorn, the bid that won the Osage Nation this land nine years ago.

One of my biggest desires as an Osage as as an elected official, is to purchase our land back. And the simple reality is that they're not making any more land. And we sat in one little spot in this world, and it's the Osage Nation, the Osa Reservation, and we're taking it back little by little. In this case, it was a big bite.

By all accounts, this was a celebration, but r J said, this relationship with the US government is still kind of tense at times. There's a lot of history here of how the US facilitated this landlass to begin with, how it breached its trust duty, something we covered extensively.

It's just a little bit awkward to me to sign over something that is the Osage Nation and now it is owned by the United States of America.

This came up a lot during my reporting for the first eight episodes of this podcast, how complicated the trust relationship is and how difficult it can be for the Osage Nation to put its faith in a government that has allowed and even facilitated some of the worst chapters in its long history. I think back to my conversation with Genie Dennison, the Osage citizen and associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. She explained how the trust relationship was a tool away for the Osage Nation to use the US legal system to its advantage and keep the state out of the Osage Nation.

This is a historic deal and its interest forever on behalf of the Osage Nation and the United States of America now has a responsibility that it is taken care of and we are taken care of and it can never be sold.

As I was leaving Oklahoma, I was struck by how much had changed since I started reporting this story. During my first visit here, I'd met Jim Gray, the former chief, to ask him about head rights and how so many non Osages got them. I remember Jim telling me all about the territory the Osage once had centuries ago, how they bought all of what's now Osage County above the ground and below, and how the government carved it up into smaller chunks. On my way out of town, I met up with Jim again, this time at a diner. In a lot of ways, this was an effort that really started back in the early two thousands when Jim was chief and the Osage Nation reformed its entire government, setting itself up to do something huge like buy back tens of thousands of acres of land.

We lost our land, a lot of it over the centuries, and this is an attempt to get some of it back, but not just get it back and stay under the jurisdiction of the state and the taxation policies of the state. This gives it back in the best way you can get it back. The United States government protected on your behalf from encouragion by local municipal government, or say government, that's as good as it gets in this business.

Everyone I talked to this last trip said the same thing. Land prices are high. Putting assets back in trust is hard. But the Osage nation isn't done. Oce Age leaders want more land and they're working to put themselves in a financial position to buy it. Acquiring this land, putting it back into trust, It's far from the end. It's another beginning. This episode was reported and hosted by me Rachel Adams, heard with additional reporting from Alison Edita. It was produced by Victor Eveyas and edited by Margaret Sutherland and Jeff Grocottlomberg's head of podcasts is Sage Bowman. Additional thanks to Davis Land, Jackie Kestler, Ariel Brown, and Shane Brown.

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