To the surprise of Osages who feared a sovereign funeral home might never come to be, the Wahzhazhe National Cemetery and Funeral Home held a ribbon cutting and groundbreaking in Pawhuska, Okla.
The decision, said Secretary of Development Casey Johnson, was final as of last December 2024, when ARPA funds went under contract for the funeral home.
One community member, Susie Fletcher, said the need for a sovereign funeral home began 50 years ago. Plans for the funeral home have been in the works since 2022 and Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said it took over a year of negotiations between the Osage Nation Congress and his executive office to reach an agreement on what size and layout the funeral home would take. Additionally, he said he was hesitant to see the funeral home realized because of the incredible sensitivity of matters of death and funerals.
Standing Bear wants to see the highest level of commitment in the funeral home staff, he said.
“When someone dies, [say] it’s 2 in the morning, it’s snowing out there – we’ve got to find a way to get those people who work there at the funeral home immediately and they’ve got to get rides … make sure everybody is there and in the right frame of mind, because what really is important to all of us is the sensitivity that is required to talk with and work with people in grief.”
Myron Red Eagle, Osage Minerals Council chairman who told the Osage News he is running for assistant principal chief, prayed at the groundbreaking for the funeral home.
“It should have been done a long time ago,” he said, “but it’s been done, so that’s all it takes.” Of Osage efforts to practice the funeral ceremony at funeral homes where they may not understand Osage ways, Red Eagle said, “The choices they had was not very many choices. This funeral home coming in, it’s going to make it so much easier.”
Overcoming challenges
It has been difficult for Osages to bury loved ones without a funeral home, not only because many reservation-area funeral homes do not allow families to sit up with their deceased loved ones, but also because of the “Osage price,” said sources.
Fletcher said, “funeral homes knew that Osages had money, and there was a white price and an Osage price. Johnson’s Funeral Home really worked keen with Osages, but that’s how they made all their money.”
The Osage Nation began their Burial Assistance program in 2012, and since then, expenditures have totaled $5,771,949.54, said ON Office of the Attorney General Paralegal and Office Manager Corinthian Lorenzo.
When Fletcher’s daughter died, the funeral cost was $10,000. The amount of support available through the Nation was $5,000, she said.
In addition to financial burdens that Osages face with funerals, several Osages said they were prevented from following cultural practices.
Josney Bear is one Osage who recalls attending a funeral where the mourners were prevented from sitting up beside the body through the night, as the traditional way requires. She said the funeral home offered a compromise—allowing Bear and others to sit in their parking lot. A sticky note on the front door of the funeral home read, “Native American sitting in parking lot, cultural beliefs.”
Another Osage, Michaela White, was also unable to grieve in the Osage way because of funeral home policies. “The Hominy funeral home allowed only [two] people to stay in a very small room with our loved one,” she wrote on Facebook. “Nice of them to make accommodations for our traditions, but we’re still not able to fulfill our needs as Osages within a traditional funeral in that setting.”
Former Principal Chief Jim Gray said it is “a slap in the face” for funeral homes to take so much money from the tribe and then to prevent family members from sitting up with their loved one.
Other Osages have commented that while funeral homes vary in what accommodations they offer, their policies aren’t always accommodating. As Fletcher said, “Pawhuska’s funeral home, they won’t even release the body until they’re paid in full. … If you’ve got an Osage relative, don’t go to Johnson’s Funeral Home because they will not release the body until it’s paid in full.”
The Osage News spoke with the owner of Kendrick McCartney Johnson Funeral Home, Adam Kendrick, and he verified that they do not place a body in a casket until the bill is paid in full, whether that be an Osage Nation burial assistance voucher, life insurance policy or some other means of payment. They do perform embalming services and if the family wishes to use another funeral home, they will release the body as soon as the other funeral home pays them to release it. He said this is standard practice within the industry.
According to the Federal Trade Commission on “Complying with the Funeral Rule,” funeral homes must give the General Price List to anyone who asks, in person, about funeral goods, funeral services, or the prices of such goods or services. The funeral home has to give a GPL to all persons who inquire about funeral arrangements, and they must give a GPL the consumer can keep.
The elements of a funeral
Osage funerals incorporate four elements, the blanket, cedar, feather and food, as Eddy Red Eagle Jr. explains in a video by the Wahzhazhe Cultural Center. Some consider the funeral “the most important ceremony of all our Osage doings,” said Archie Mason, as he shared in the same video.
After embalming, Osages who practice traditional ways may transport the body to one of the three traditional village chapels. “We used to bring the bodies home, but nobody’s got big enough homes anymore,” Fletcher explained. “For the most part we use the chapels that they’ve built,” she said of the Nation.
For the burial, the late John Red Eagle said Wahzhazhe people always had the body at the graveside by noon. “They do that because they believed that the sun is straight up at the noon hour and they believed that the heavens were completely open during that time, and that their loved one and their spirit would go on during that time,” he said. “Other tribes do it different, but that’s the way Osages do it.”
Bear said she hopes the new funeral home will be geared toward Osage beliefs and allow Osages to stay with the body of their deceased loved one. She added that she hopes the cost for funerals will be less, as well, as most need the financial help from Burial Assistance not only for funeral costs, but for the food and giveaway that are part of the ceremony.
Because of the importance of respecting every detail, Chief Standing Bear said he was very hesitant about the Nation’s funeral home. He has seen embalming performed with awful results, he said, and dreads the possibility that this could happen to an Osage.
Additionally, Chief Standing Bear said the long-term cost of making sure the Nation will be able to fund the funeral home without any lapse is an element of concern. “This is a lifetime commitment and several lifetimes commitment,” he said at the groundbreaking and ribbon cutting. “I want to make sure everyone understands that, that once we come into this realm, this is a sacred—more-than-usual—situation that we must have the utmost respect for and we must help each other out like we have not because this is very, very sensitive.”
Finding the right equipment, personnel, embalming techniques, dressing and more will be an upcoming challenge, he said. And although he was hesitant, the Nation has made the commitment. “We’re doing it,” he said.
The funeral home will not be under construction for a period between 18 months and two years, and Standing Bear noted that Congress will need to appropriate more money for a hearse, embalming equipment, insurance the building will require, and qualified employees prepared to approach the role with great sensitivity to grieving Osages.
Wahzhazhe National Cemetery
The cemetery, however, is already complete and is now open. It is located southeast of the funeral home grounds.
Secretary of Development Casey Johnson said that Osages wanting to have loved ones buried at the cemetery can complete a form to do so with ON Real Estate Services or through Financial Assistance.
For those planning for their own end of life, Johnson said they’ll be able to purchase their own plot but the process isn’t yet established.
Legally, the funeral home operates “like a giant family cemetery,” said Johnson, “because it is on restricted land.” That means the funeral home and cemetery did not require zoning and they are outside of the municipality.
There are 7,500 plots in that “giant family cemetery” and the plots are available at $300 each.
Based off projected usage, according to the number of Osages who apply for Burial Assistance each year, the cemetery will not be full for at least 75 years, Johnson estimated. “We won’t be running out of space anytime soon.”
Non-Osage spouses can be buried alongside their Osage families, said Johnson. “The same with stepkids and everything else,” he said.
An Act of Congress allocated the funds for the middle option finally, he said, but the Nation will still need more appropriations. “It will be $650K roughly per year just to run the thing,” he said. “I’m just building it.”
ON Congress Speaker Pam Shaw agreed with Chief Standing Bear that the stakes were high and the tribe has “a lot to learn” about running a funeral home, she said. “We know that.”
Shaw’s husband’s father, the late Jerry Shaw, served on the 31st tribal council and she shared his hopes that the funeral home would come into being. “It has been discussed for a very long time,” she said. “Thank you to Chief and to Mr. Johnson and to your staff and all the folks that will be working on this project. I know that it is going to be good for our people. Most importantly, it will help us to show that we can protect our ways, our culture, the ways that we proceed in these matters, so I’m very happy about that and happy to have been part of it,” she said.
Shaw also noted the legislation creating the funeral home had the names of each congressperson. “That’s somewhat unique,” she said. Congressman John Maker is the bill’s sponsor, she acknowledged, and every member of Congress co-sponsored the legislation. “That says something about our commitment,” she said.
