Colonial Entanglement: Constituting a Twenty-First-Century Osage Nation

2 Blood

Chapter 2 Blood 48 : : : B l o o d O n July 1, 2005, I arrived, as usual, at the Osage Tribal Council chambers just before 9:00 a.m. The over-air-conditioned wood-paneled room where the OTC’s meetings were held had a domed ceiling with a skylight, a state-of-the-art recording system, and murals covering the walls. The murals were intended to tell the history of the Osage from past to present. They started on the left with the children of the sky coming from the stars and joining the people of the land, water, and earth in a move to a new territory . They ended with Osage of various phenotypes and dress standing in front of the OTC building itself. Drawing out my pen and paper to take notes on the day’s affairs, I found my seat in the small audience section, where folding chairs had been set facing the u-shaped tables for the councilors. Most of the other people in attendance were program directors, who were there to give their monthly reports to the OTC. The program directors generally used these meetings to update the OTC about the developments in their programs, but they also occasionally asked for additional funds, gained approval of grants in progress, or sought guidance on personnel or other problems they were having. At each Monday committee meeting, the OTC heard from the various Osage Nation programs, which were spread out evenly throughout the month.1 Any issue requiring additional funds or a change in policy would then be voted on during the next bimonthly Wednesday business meeting. As soon as the day’s committee meeting was convened and the prayer said, the Certificate Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) Department asked for an executive session, requiring all nonelected officials to leave the room.2 Waiting out the forty-five-minute executive session, which we had been told would be no more than five minutes, several of the program directors and I discussed the progress of their programs, their frustration with the council-style governing structure, and what the CDIB Department could possibly be up to. They were indignant about the way the OTC micromanaged their affairs and demanded that they wait, often for over half the day, to give their monthly reports. They complained that problems were only addressed after they had fully developed and that there was no mechanism for Nation-wide strategic planning. We guessed that the executive session had something to do with a rogue CDIB employee, since personnel issues were the main reason executive sessions were usually held.3 It turned out we were only partially correct. B l o o d : : : 49 I was later told by various sources that this meeting was called because the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was no longer signing the CDIB cards of those descendants whose ancestors were listed in the 1906 roll but who were believed not to have Osage blood. This was particularly significant since, shortly after the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) created the 1906 roll, Osage leaders went before the secretary of the interior as part of a formal hearing to dispute 200 of the names listed on the roll based on lack of connection to the Osage Nation. Some of these individuals had moved off the reservation, while others were Indians from other Nations, such as the Kaw. The Osage leaders argued that these names had been fraudulently added to the roll in order to gain access to Osage lands and other resources, but the appeal was not sustained. The current OTC was thus left with the dilemma of whether or not to act on this opportunity, which appeared to confirm that the OIA’s roll had been wrong since 1906. If true, the federal government could be held responsible for massive losses of land and Mineral Estate proceeds that had gone to “non-Osage” allottees and their descendants. In the following weeks, the OTC met repeatedly with the Osage Gov­ ernment Reform Commission (OGRC) about the list of “non-blooded Osage,” trying to decide if and how this would impact the list of Osage eligible to participate in the reform process. Through conversations with the Osage BIA superintendent, the OTC eventually realized that there had not been any change in BIA policy. It was determined that an Osage woman in the Osage CDIB Department had begun inserting...