Assistant Principal Chief candidate Amanda Proctor poses for the Osage News during the Pawhuska In-Lon-Schka. Photo by Chalene Toehay/Osage News
By Benny Polacca
Osage News
Before Amanda Proctor started her law career with a focus on Native American issues, she worked as a program director for two tribes where she found herself taking on duties which lawyers tackle on a day-to-day basis.
“I started as a housing director and I felt as a housing director, I was doing a lot of legal work which included drafting policies, negotiating intergovernmental affairs and litigation” such as eviction matters which ended up in court, Proctor said. Those experiences would fuel her efforts to help several Native tribes and causes by representing them in court after graduating from law school.
Now she is running for Osage Nation Assistant Principal Chief to bring her knowledge to the Executive Branch.
Proctor, 35, won the second highest number of votes in the Nation’s June 7 election out of six candidates for the assistant principal chief’s office. Now she faces a July 19 runoff election against Scott BigHorse while incumbent John Red Eagle makes a run for the Principal Chief’s office against Tim Tall Chief.
If elected, Proctor will be the first Osage woman to hold the assistant principal chief’s office. Proctor said she’s heard concerns about a woman holding the second highest elected position in the Executive Branch, but she believes the Nation is ready for another change in progress.
“We’ve never had a female chief or assistant chief. Some people have told me they didn’t feel the tribe was ready for a female leader,” Proctor told the Osage News during an interview after dancing at this year’s Pawhuska In-Lon-Schka dances. “There’s been a lot of evolution: originally these dances were not open to the participation of women. It might be time for leadership to open up as well.”
What’s next for the assistant principal chief?
As assistant principal chief, whoever is elected will have the task of performing duties which may be delegated by the Principal Chief and will serve as an ex-officio member of the Osage Nation Congress, according to the Nation’s Constitution. When meeting with Congress in committee of the whole, the assistant principal chief shall also have the right to join in debate and cast tie-breaking votes when the 12-member Congress is equally divided.
The assistant principal chief-elect also joins the tribal government which is at a crucial crossroads with the Second Osage Nation Congress taking oath of office this month with four new members and several litigations issues in the air, such as lawsuits filed in the Nation’s court system involving the executive and legislative branches and whether the tribe will make a move in response to the recent federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to not rehear the Nation’s case against the Oklahoma State Tax Commission.
On running for office, Proctor, says she’s “wanted to for quite sometime and really thought this through as the (candidacy filing) deadline approached because it involves sacrifices for me. Anytime you put yourself out there, there are risks and consequences.”
Proctor, who is co-founder of Tulsa-based Shield Law Group PLC which focuses on representing Native American tribes and organizations, said she “certainly will have to disengage from a number of my relationships” since the assistant chief position is full-time.
To date, Proctor has represented nine area tribes which, includes serving as general counsel for the Housing Authority of the Seminole Nation (Okla.) as well as the Absentee Shawnee Housing Authority. She is licensed to practice law in the tribal courts for the Iowa, Ponca, Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee Nations.
Last year, Super Lawyers magazine selected Proctor as one of their Rising Star attorneys who are age 40 and under. According to the magazine’s Web site: “[The Super Lawyers selection process] is a comprehensive, good-faith and detailed attempt to produce a list of lawyers that have attained high peer recognition, meet ethical standards, and have demonstrated some degree of achievement in their field.”
“If elected, I think I will be practicing a lot more law than I am now,” Proctor said. “We are at a critical juncture in the history of this tribe and I think I am in the position to make decisions for the Nation – especially without the comfort of an attorney general (for the Nation).”
Proctor is referring to the Nation’s lack of an attorney general, a position she believes could be instrumental in providing legal advice or resolving conflicts on issues that may arise within the tribal government. “It will keep me sharp in my skills,” Proctor said of holding office, if she is elected. The Nation’s latest effort to establish an attorney general’s office failed earlier this year when the First ON Congress voted down a bill, sponsored by Congresswoman Shannon Edwards which would have created the AG position, during the Hun-Kah Session.
One issue affecting the Osage Nation that Proctor believes she can help with as assistant principal chief is closing the issues raised by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last year after the agency issued a monitoring report to the Nation asking it to account for more than $666,000 in grant funding which had been awarded to the tribe but was unaccounted for.
A HUD spokeswoman told the Osage News in May the agency was still working with the Nation to close the findings in the monitoring report. A follow-up inquiry made last month has yet to be answered.
“Thanks to my background in housing authority, I really know the ins and outs of federal compliance and HUD audits,” she said.
Proctor also believes “we’ve got to put in some long hours” immediately if she’s elected because the Nation must decide on whether to respond to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to not the rehear the Tax Commission case (also known as the “reservation/ rez status case”).
“We need to figure out where we are and where we need to go,” she said because the Osage Nation’s reservation status is at issue which could affect three of the seven Osage Million Dollar Elm Casinos which are not on protected trust lands.
‘Humble’ start to helping Native Americans
Born in Dallas, Proctor (Osage/ Cherokee) grew up in Wichita, Kans., and graduated from high school in nearby Goddard in 1993 before heading east to attend Ivy League-famed Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. “My background is humble with no expectation of (rural residents) going to Ivy League school,” Proctor said adding her parents (mother Karen Proctor is Osage) grew up in rural Kansas.
Amanda Proctor’s uncle and newly-elected Osage Minerals Councilman Galen Crum is one of her most ardent supporters who has championed and defended her on the Osage Shareholders Association blog which has been a lightning rod of discussion, criticisms and praise for all the candidates, newsmakers and rumors aired through the Internet since the election seasons started heating up last year. In a June 29 posting to the blog, Crum wrote:
“When Amanda was barely in high school she announced that she was going to Harvard to study some major that would allow her to serve Native People. I smiled and encouraged her, (I’m her uncle) but I was certain her parents could never afford Harvard, even if she could qualify. But Amanda fooled me. She worked hard, got the grades, did the public service and extra curricular activities etc. that would land the necessary scholarships to pull it off. Harvard was very hard, not just the incredibly demanding curriculum, but also being a thousand miles from home, with little extra money. Scholarships pay for tuition, room, books etc., but not for plane trips home. I suspect a big, empty college campus is about the loneliest place on earth over Christmas and Thanksgiving breaks. But she stayed with her dream and got it done.”
Proctor completed her Harvard studies and graduated with an AB (bachelor’s) degree in anthropology in 1999. Proctor, who has participated in Native American cultural dances since childhood, founded the Harvard University Powwow in 1995 while attending the school.
After Harvard, Proctor started her work in Indian Country by working as housing directors for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe in Oklahoma and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians in Dowagiac, Mich., before returning to school to pursue her law degree.
Proctor attended the University of Tulsa from 2003 to 2005 when she earned her Juris Doctorate as well as the Native American Law Certificate. The following year, she was admitted to the Oklahoma Bar Association and joined the staff of Sneed Lang Herrold PC, a Tulsa-based law firm where she focused on Native American law and has signed onto cases involving various tribal matters and causes including the Fletcher v. United States case which involves shareholders of the Osage Minerals Estate.
Today Proctor keeps home in Skiatook where she’s lived for the past five years. She is raising three sons as a single mother: Grayson, 8; Amory, 3; and Rhett, 11 months.
As attorney, Proctor is also general counsel for the Ponca Tribe and has provided legal work for the Otoe-Missouria on some projects. She left Sneed Lang Herrold last year to start Shield Law Group PLC with fellow TU law school graduate Katrina Jacuk who is a member of the Kenaitze tribe in Alaska and is of Aleut descent.
In the eight-year-old Fletcher case, in which Proctor is one of the attorneys of record, Osage plaintiffs William Sam Fletcher and Charles Pratt are seeking the return of headright shares which are being paid to non-Osage shareholders and entities with hundreds of defendants who have been served in the case.
Assistant Principal Chief candidate Amanda Proctor poses for the Osage News during the Pawhuska In-Lon-Schka. Photo by Chalene Toehay/Osage News
