William Sam Fletcher and Charles Pratt stand in front of the Osage Original Allottees exhibit in the Osage Tribal Museum. Photo by Shannon Shaw/Osage News
The Bigheart Times
As the Osage Nation’s massive trust case against the U.S. government winds slowly toward conclusion, two Hominy men are pushing ahead with another case, trying to recapture Osage headrights that fell into the hands of non-Osages.
William Sam Fletcher and Charles Pratt are the only plaintiffs left in the case thanks to the death of two others and the decision by a fifth plaintiff to drop out of the case.
On the other side: 821 defendants who have been served, 195 of whom have lawyered up to fight, 231 defendants who have not been found, and another 603 whose only address is care of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
One defendant, a church that has not been named, has capitulated, settling the claim against it by simply returning its headright and renouncing its ownership.
Bravo, said both Fletcher and Pratt: That is all they are seeking.
“In the name of justice, simply return these headrights to the Osages,” said Fletcher. “We never received any justice for those horrible injustices of the past, but we’re not concerned with money in the past.”
But Fletcher and Pratt say there’s an issue there: The Osage Nation has set up no mechanism to repossess the headright and redistribute income from it to Osage shareholders, so the money from the returned headright is now accumulating in an escrow account.
Fletcher and Pratt said that they have asked the Osage Minerals Council to figure out a system to accept the headrights, as well as for a statement of support from the tribal body that oversees the minerals estate but have not received an answer they find satisfactory.
Minerals Chairman John Henry Mashunkashey said that the reason for that is simple: The tribe’s lawyers have advised the Minerals Council not to take any action, however benign it might seem, on any litigation for fear that it could jeopardize the tribal trust case that recently yielded a $250 million summary judgment against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. That judgment is subject to appeal, and a trial is scheduled at the end of June regarding another $60 million claimed in the case first filed in 1999. The trust case is expected to be completed in the next two years.
“We’ve been instructed by our legal counsel to stay as far away as we can from the other two litigations by Bill Sam and Cora Jean Jech in the event that this might be a problem with our own litigation,” Mashunkashey said. “We don’t want to jeopardize payout in the spring of 2012. We’ve got to think of the 4,242 Osage annuitants.
“Personally, I am in total support of (the Fletcher) litigation, but when our attorney tells me to stay out of it, I’m going to.”
The Fletcher case, which for the first time publicly revealed the names of non-Osages who owned headrights, has turned up some hitherto unknown transactions involving headrights, Fletcher said, including that some of them have been traded by stock brokers.
The case has also failed to answer some large questions: Hundreds of entities are apparently receiving headrights despite the fact that there is no record of them having a business license or paying taxes.
“They’re non-existent,” Pratt said. “The Hissom Center (a state run mental hospital in Sand Springs) closed in 1993 but is receiving a headright interest. Where is the money going? It’s going somewhere, but we can’t find out where. It’s like a big cloud has been pulled over it.”
Responses to the Fletcher suit have been trickling in since the defendants were named and some were served. For the most point, the answers have been dry, simply denying that the plaintiffs have any right to the headrights in question and affirming that the defendants obtained the headrights legally, through inheritance or other means. One family, the Gardners, denied “they can be compelled to distribute trust property only to Osage Indians and their heirs” and said that the plaintiff’s claims are barred by the statute of limitations and other legal doctrines.
Osage Indian Baptist Church in Pawhuska, represented by former BIA solicitor Cecil Wood, replied that the 1906 Act upon which the case is built, does not bar Osages from willing headrights to whom they please. The church says it has .11395 of a headright, left to it in 1921 by Wy-e-nah-she, allottee No. 598, who had inherited that portion of a headright from his deceased wife, Mo-se-che-he, allottee No. 320.
The next step in the Fletcher case, Pratt said, is to start taking depositions: He is hoping to quiz non-Osage locals who own large numbers of headrights about how they obtained them.
The two plaintiffs are also actively seeking Osages and descendants of Osages who lost headrights or money that accrued in trust accounts during probate, whether they know how that happened or not.
[Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by The Bigheart Times and is used with permission.]
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Defendant in Fletcher case gives back shares of Mineral Estate
Osage News
The St. Lukes United Church of Christ in St. Louis is giving back their royalty payment of the Osage Minerals Estate in a step forward in Fletcher v. United States.
The church entered into an agreement with the Fletcher plaintiffs, William Fletcher and Charles Pratt, on March 26 to ensure that all their Section 4 Royalty Payments that are made to the church will instead be sent to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma in downtown Tulsa.
Currently the judge in the Fletcher case has barred the plaintiffs from giving out any details about the case. Fletcher and Pratt were asked about other defendants possibly giving back their shares and they had no comment.
However, they did comment on their disappointment that the Nation has not given any support for their case.
According to the settlement agreement, the royalty payment that was to go to the St. Louis church will go to the district court in Tulsa to be held in an account made by the court. According to Pratt, if the Nation had supported the Fletcher case the shares could have immediately gone to the Nation.
“Had [the Nation] cooperated four years ago, we could have had an account in place for the money returned,” Pratt said.
Both Fletcher and Pratt say the case is simply “in the name of justice” and they have no personal aspirations for any money for themselves. They just want the shares of the Mineral Estate that is going to non-Osage shareholders to be returned.
