We have smelt in the rivers this year. They travel upriver to spawn, to fishers waiting anxiously on the Cowlitz River and the Sandy, near Troutdale, Ore. east of Portland, where thousands of people lined the bank for a 7-hour dipnet season. This is only the fourth time since the fish were listed as threatened 15 years ago. Grande Ronde tribal members gathered to harvest smelt honoring their deep connection to these waters.
Smelt and salmon bring sea lions behind them, while bald eagles range up and down the river banks. Osprey returned this week, and the pair on the bridge didn’t waste any time starting a family. New Black Angus calves are appearing—one mother had twins— and soon we’ll have calf rodeos.
We’re celebrating spring, even though the political and economic world feels unsettled.
The current administration’s executive order of March 27 “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” directs the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” within the Smithsonian Museum. Given the history of Natives in this country, it will be interesting to see how the National Museum of the American Indian (NAMI) is affected.
In the meantime, we, Osages and Natives, will continue to live and celebrate our sovereignty and practice our culture. An Osage Heritage Site visit focused on Missouri Riverways 2025 is under way. A lucky group will visit the University of Missouri, Museum of Anthropology, Perche Creek Mound, Arrow Rock State Park, Fort Osage, and Osage Village State Historic Site in early April.
The Osage Nation celebrated its 19th year as a constitutional form of government with Sovereignty Day Celebration Dance, a bison feast, and a first leadership gathering aimed at “Strengthening Sovereignty.”
Former Osage chief Jim Gray has an essay in Beyond Blood Quantum: Refusal to Disappear, a forthcoming essay collection from Fulcrum Publishing. In the second volume of The Great Vanishing Act, academics and activists ranging from high school students to elders consider cultural values and living in community beyond the confines of federally prescribed parameters. The collection was edited by Norbert S. Hill, Jr., an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Megan Hill (First Generation Oneida Descendent), the Senior Director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development and the Director of the Honoring Nations program at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Desirae Hill. It includes poems by Joy Harjo, (Muscogee) former US poet laureate, and Kenzie Allen (Haudenosaunee), an essay by respected legal scholar Mathew L.M. Fletcher “Blood Quantum and the Auto-Colonization of the Michigan Anishinaabek,” that reflects the complexities of belonging and its implications for the 12 Michigan Anishinaabek tribal nations.
Gray’s “Osage Spring” traces the history of Osage governance and its new constitution through efforts at termination and a threat to the Trust Relationship into the present. Gray lists the successes of the last 19 years, when the Nation has reestablished bison herds, language preservation, gaming revenue and multiple programs. By walking through our history and ongoing struggles with the federal government, the essay reminds us of all we’ve accomplished.
Beyond Blood Quantum joins Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege, edited by Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) and Jean M. O’Brien, from the University of Minnesota Press in 2022, includes my essay celebrating the magic day bison returned to the Osage Ranch, focused on privatization and allotment of Indigenous lands.
We celebrate our sovereignty, highlighting our accomplishments and achievements despite obstacles placed before us. While poking around the National Museum of the American Indian website, I found engaging videos including “The Invention of Thanksgiving” and “The Removal Act” among others.
The best ways we can live is to honor our people, our culture, our land. In the words of attorney and tribal judge Terry Mason Moore at the Strengthening Sovereignty meeting, “All political power is vested in and derived from the Osage People. All government of right originates with the Osage People, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.” Esteemed elder Eddy Red Eagle Jr., who sits on the Traditional Cultural Advisory committee, admonished us to continue learning language and culture for ourselves and those who come after.
