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HomeGovernmentSix Congress members take oaths of office on Inauguration Day

Six Congress members take oaths of office on Inauguration Day

Keynote speaker, Associate Justice Elizabeth Lohah Homer, gives impassioned speech about the origins of Osage sovereignty and the history of the Osage Nation Organization

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. – The Ninth Osage Nation Congress is now serving in office after six members took their oaths here during the 2024 Osage Inaugural Ceremony on July 13.

That morning, five Congressional incumbents and one prior member, who were all reelected in the June 3 General Election, were sworn in with ON Supreme Court Chief Justice Meredith Drent presiding. The swearings-in took place in front of various Osage government officials, invited guests, Congressional members’ family and friends and the Osage public at the recently opened Bartlesville Osage Casino & Hotel.

Russ Tall Chief of Wahzhazhe Communications served as emcee and welcomed the attendees, stating: “Today our Congress members-elect take their oaths of office to fulfill the mission of the Osage Nation Congress – and what is that mission? To adopt a system of laws that promote the health, education, and well-being of Osage citizens. To preserve the checks and balances of the government by the independent exercise of legislative powers. To carryout oversight of responsibilities to enhance government accountability. Encourage and support the raising of tribal revenues and to appropriate monies that support necessary government services and to preserve and protect the Nation’s environment.”

At the ceremony, a drum group led by Russell Mashunkashey provided opening songs and members of the Pawhuska-based Harold Bigheart Smalley American Legion Post 198 posted the flag colors.

Dr. Steven Pratt, a former Hominy District Head Committeeman and University of Central Oklahoma professor emeritus, delivered the invocation.

Drent administered the oaths of office to each of the six reelected members in alphabetical order of their names. Those taking their oaths were: Billy Keene, John Maker, Jodie Revard, Pam Shaw, Joe Tillman and Maria Whitehorn. Each member will serve a four-year term in office.

Those six join the other six Congress members in the middle of their respective four-year terms, who are: Scott BigHorse, Alice Goodfox, Otto Hamilton, Brandy Lemon, Eli Potts and Whitney Red Corn. The 12 legislative members are now serving as the Ninth ON Congress for the next two years.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Homer speaks on Osage sovereignty history

Elizabeth Lohah Homer, who sits on the ON Supreme Court with Drent as one of two Associate Justices, served as the event guest speaker. Tall Chief introduced Homer (Hominy District) to the audience as one who speaks on Osage sovereignty’s past, present and future.

Homer holds her juris doctorate from the University of New Mexico and followed her late father, Charles Henry Lohah, into a career of public service and Indian law and policy. Following his respective decades of professional and public service, Charles Lohah served as the first ON Supreme Court Chief Justice when the reformed Osage government started in 2006 until 2012 when he stepped down and passed on Thanksgiving Day that year.

On Dec. 18, 2023, the Nation ceremoniously broke ground on a new courthouse structure in Pawhuska, which will be named the Charles H. Lohah Judicial Building.

Homer, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M. and Washington, D.C., where she founded her firm Homer Law, previously served a three-year term as vice chairwoman of the National Indian Gaming Commission. Tall Chief read from Homer’s professional biography, which includes: “A proponent of collaborative rulemaking, Ms. Homer was instrumental in effecting tribal involvement in the Commission’s regulatory processes through the establishment of tribal advisory committees and other consultative activities during her tenure with the Commission. Ms. Homer has had a distinguished career in public service. She served as the Director of the Office of American Indian Trust at the U.S. Department of the Interior where she worked closely with tribal governments and federal policy makers to advance issues and policies of concern to American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments as well as Native Hawaiians. As the Director of the Office, she supervised the implementation of a number of Administration policy priorities in the areas of tribal, natural and cultural resources, consultation, and negotiated rulemaking, including President Clinton’s Executive Orders regarding Sacred Sites and Tribal Consultation.”

Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear first appointed Homer to the Nation’s High Court in 2014, where she is now serving her third term.

In her opening remarks, Homer told the audience and Congress members: “I have worked in Indian affairs and Indian policy for all of my life and it started when I was a little girl, tagging along with my dad to all these political meetings to talk about Osage sovereignty” before stating: “I want to, first of all, congratulate our recently reelected members of the Osage Nation Congress. Running for office is not an easy task, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. And putting yourself out there to serve in leadership brings with it both honor and privilege, but it also brings a lot of challenges sometimes and maybe you’re not appreciated as much as you might hope. Since all of you have served before, I don’t really have to tell you that your service won’t always be appreciated by all of your constituents all of the time. We deal with a lot of issues that are sometimes controversial and that’s a healthy thing, that’s not a bad thing, and we need to look at it as a healthy thing. And if the rough and tumble of the politics gets to a point where we’re fussing and feuding with each other, I hope that you all have confidence in the Osage Nation courts to be able to be there as the backstop to call the balls and strikes, so it is a great privilege and pleasure for me to now have been serving into my third term on the (ON) Supreme Court.”

Homer shared several historical moments in a timeline of Osage government, sovereignty and its impacts on the people. She also noted the Osage inauguration comes at a time of mainstream political strife between the Republican and Democrat parties in the U.S. Congress – especially during the ongoing 2024 Presidential election year – and how the Osage made its own path in recent decades to develop its own government where all Osages (18 and older) can vote in elections.

“You know we live in very perilous times – the Congress of the United States can hardly sit in the same room together, the membership is deadlocked, it’s at war where we can’t get federal policy through,” Homer said. “And it’s a really terrible thing to me personally as a student of history and a proponent of strong government to watch this … But since 2006 – by way of contrast – the Osage Nation has grown stronger and more powerful and more capable and is making the kind of changes in our communities that we could not have dreamed of when I was a little girl and watched my auntie’s house burn to the ground because we did not have fire or emergency services. That has changed and many, many other things have changed because our Osage sovereignty has been restored, we wrestled it back and that sovereignty is what enables this Nation to progress and go forward and create the kind of world where our children and our grandchildren and all of the generations to follow will know who they are and that they always have a place and a home and people who will care about them – And that’s really what sovereignty is about.”

Lohah noted her great-grandfather, who was named O Loh Hah Walla, was elected Principal Chief in June 1905 “and you can hardly imagine that within one year, Osage sovereignty is rendered a nullity because you cannot say that you are sovereign when your form of government is dictated to you by another sovereign, right? And so, in 1906, our Constitutional form of government was abolished and we – for 100 years – lived under a rule that separated and divided us, that made haves and have-nots of Osages. The franchise depended upon ownership of a property interest. Now under Federal law, that would be unconstitutional. But the Congress of the United States imposed that upon the Osage people and we’ve had to deal with it.”

“And it caused 100 years of bitter division amongst the Osage people, that’s what happened to us,” Homer said. “Today, miraculously, on March 11 of 2006, we wrestled our sovereignty back! We had help from our allies and our relatives, (Osage-Otoe-Missouria attorney) Wilson Pipestem worked on the legislation that basically said ‘yes, the Congress of the United States honors and recognizes the sovereignty of the Osage Nation’ – That is tremendous! That action followed up with the formation of our (constitutional reform) commission to get us a Constitution that is of, for and by the Osage people – We celebrate it every March 11.”

“And so today, our children and grandchildren do not face the humiliation of having to say ‘well I’ll be an Osage someday when my mama dies or my grandpa dies or my daddy dies or somebody else in my family dies and leaves me a property interest that gives me the franchise and the ability to hold myself out as an Osage for the purposes of federal law,” Homer said. “I faced that humiliation most of my life – in fact, my appointment to the National Indian Gaming Commission, I had to get a special letter from the Solicitor of the Interior Department saying ‘yeah, Liz is an Osage.’ Well I always knew I was an Osage and the reason I knew I was an Osage is that I was dragged around my entire childhood with Charles Henry Lohah, my father, to go to meetings of a group called the Osage Nation Organization.”

Founding members of the Osage Nation Organization. Back Row, from left: Raymond Lasley, Sr., Leroy Logan, Anthony “Snap” Daniels. Front row, from left: Rose Jake, Arita Jump (grandmother of Supreme Court Chief Justice Meredith Drent), Frances Holding, and Hazel Harper. Founders not pictured, Charles Lohah, and brothers Joe Bates and Edward Bates. Courtesy Photo/Native American Rights Fund

The Osage Nation Organization: ‘the wisest, most wonderful, dearest people’

Homer shared memories and information about the Osage Nation Organization, which she described as “made up of some of the wisest, most wonderful, dearest people, it has been my ever privilege in life to be able to become acquainted with and I was just a little girl. And they were so kind and they were so wise. And what did they care about? What were the ONOs about? The ONOs were about Osage sovereignty. The ONOs were a group of Osages that came together to fight to restore our Constitutional form of government for the Osage people.”

Homer also recalled hearing local critics of the organization refer to its members as ONOs – sounded out as “Oh-nos.”

Homer said her aunts, Hazel Lohah Harper and Rose Lohah Jake, were the ONO organizers and recruited her father, who had just graduated from University of Tulsa law school at the time. She mentioned several individuals who were active in the ONO, including Leroy Logan, Raymond Lasley, Bill and Evelyn Pitts, Joe Bates, Kenneth Jump, and many others “who came to take up the call of the ONOs to establish a government by and for the Osage Nation.”

She also acknowledged other individuals who were also “true believers of Osage sovereignty of the 20th century,” including Andrew ‘Buddy’ and Margaret Gray, Chief Paul Pitts and David Harrison Sr., that kept us from being officially terminated (in the 1950s) – We were on the termination bill, that Osage Nation was on the cusp of being terminated. What that means is the Osage Nation would no longer exist. Poof! Vanished! By a stroke of the pen of the President of the United States. Well, over the years, there have been these people and many more that I can’t name who cared deeply enough that they committed their own time and their own money to preserve our sovereignty, to preserve, restore and advance Osage sovereignty.”

The ONOs articles ‘to secure a tribal government’

Homer shared more details about the Osage Nation Organization’s work, including its “the statement of purpose” written in a document that her late father preserved and was later given to her from another family member. Homer shared some of the ONO articles, adding “I hope that the ONOs will never be forgotten, I hope the ONOs are given and accorded their true place in Osage history to have been the ones to keep the concept of Osage sovereignty alive and who ultimately have been vindicated with the ratification of the (2006) Constitution of the Osage Nation.”

Some of the ONO articles shared by Homer include:

  • To secure a tribal government, which represents the whole tribe in matters of or affecting the whole tribe. “So this is the concept of equality of Osages – to get rid of this two-part system, you’ve got the haves (shareholders) and the have-not. And over the years, that divide had grown and grown wider.”
  • To secure a tribal government, which will act to obtain rights and benefits not now available to members of the Osage Tribe and which are available to members of all tribes.
  • To secure a tribal government which will inquire into grievances or complaints of tribal members and act upon them or recommend a course of action to the BIA in order to settle them. “That is the concept of the limitation on the powers of the Tribal Council of that day. Our old elected Tribal Council had very limited powers and so this is something the ONOs wanted to address.”
  • To secure a tribal government, which will exercise responsibly the full power it may possess by custom, treaty, statute or regulation.
  • To secure a tribal government which will act openly at regularly scheduled public meetings, will hold special meetings only after adequate notice to the leaders of the various groups and village councils and will at no time transact business at closed meetings. “That’s basically the way it’s supposed to be, tribes can close meetings to talk, but the actual decisions have to be in the open … It works in all governments, not just the Osage government, but the federal government and state government as well.”
  • To secure a tribal government that will act in cooperation with the government of the United States. “Now this is really an important qualification – To the fullest extent not detrimental to the Tribe. So it’s like ‘we want to work with you, but we’re not going to help you wreck us, we’re not going to help you terminate us, we’re not going to help you take our resources or abolish our rights.’”

“OK, now have any of you heard anything that we cannot agree on? We could’ve agreed on this a long time ago, but it took time to get us here,” Homer said, then continued with the next ONO article.

“Now this is an important one,” Homer said. “Because this was the big rub, this is what everybody criticized the ONOs about because they thought ‘we were after their headrights.’ ‘To secure a tribal government, which will act in no way to the detriment of shareholders in the Osage Mineral Trust.’ And why would they? They’re Osages, these were allottees, a lot of them. They didn’t want anything bad to happen to the Mineral Estate. Well, the Mineral Estate is protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The Mineral Estate is protected by the Constitution of the Osage Nation. The Mineral Estate is even protected by the bill that we got through to (U.S) Congress back in 2005 that allowed us to reform the government and to operate under our own constitutional framework.”

‘These ideas are derived from Native, Indigenous thought’

“Now, let’s fast forward to March 11, 2006, the miracle that after all this time of fussing and feuding and upset and disappointment, that we now have a government premised on the principles of fundamental fairness and due process of law, separation of powers, yet, also individual liberty, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Those are the most important constitutional principles whether you’re talking about the Constitution of the Osage Nation or the Constitution of the United States,” Homer said. “These ideas are derived from Native, Indigenous thought.”

With additional historical details added, Homer said: “Did you know tribes were encamped in Philadelphia as the Constitution of the United States was being debated? And these framers of the Constitution listened to the tribes and they were fascinated that these ‘savages’ could come up with these ideas – where do you think the idea of a nation within a nation came from? They came from the Confederacies in which we were organized historically. Osages – just like the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy – Osages were confederated with our relatives the Omaha and the Ponca and the Kaw and Quapaws. We are all related, we were part of a confederacy, we would come together in times of war and confrontation and defend each other just like the Five Nations with the Onondaga, the Seneca and the other tribes of the Confederacy. The difference between us and the Five Tribes in the Northeast is that they have a record of their political thought, they kept it on wampum, they managed to preserve it for all of these years so that you and I can now read it.”

To the government officials present, Homer said “when you accept the mantle of leadership, you have these duties and you have a responsibility to be calm, to be civil, to be courteous. Wouldn’t it be great that the Constitution of the United States told this to our (Congressional) members who can’t get along for a minute? But we can because these are Indigenous thoughts that are not unfamiliar to us, these thoughts and ideas, even the ethics provisions in the Constitution are right in line with Indigenous thought in this country.”

Homer said she’s heard from skeptics who questioned whether Indigenous people taught government concepts to the Founding Fathers, and she counters back: “Well where did those guys get these ideas? They’re the descendants of monarchies – they ran away because of their oppressive governments! Where did they come up with this, just somebody out of the blue went ‘oh, there should be equality, oh, there should be due process of law, there should be fundamental freedoms?’ They were listening to their tribal allies.”

‘Know Osage history because we need you to have that’

“So, you have taken up the mantle, God bless you, God bless each one of you for doing that,” Homer told the incoming Congress. “I urge you to study these things, study about this history, know Osage history because we need you to have that, we need you to bring that to the table in all of your policymaking. Do not be discouraged when you’re criticized, be kind to yourself and be kind to one another, do be encouraged when you see the fruits of your labor. Be encouraged to watch the Nation strengthen and grow, be encouraged when our children win the language competition or graduate from high school or college or vo-tech or graduate school. Be encouraged by the life-saving services our Nation is building – health, law enforcement and public safety. Tell your constituents what the Nation is doing to make the Osage Reservation a safer, happier, healthier place to be. Take pride in your work and the people will come to take pride in their government.”

In closing, Homer said “I wish the ONOs had all lived to be here with us today to see our Congress members take the oath of office under a Constitution forged by and for the Osage people. I am thankful that my father lived long enough to be seated as the first Chief Justice under the Osage Constitution of 2006 and I am proud to have been able to follow him onto the (Supreme) Court as an Associate Justice. He said it was perhaps the greatest accomplishment of his life … It was gratitude for the restoration of Osage sovereignty and nothing is more emblematic of sovereignty than the power of a government to maintain courts of law. So too, I have gratitude for the members of the Osage Congress and our Principal Chief, our Assistant Chief, my colleagues on the court and our judiciary of the Osage Nation and our Osage Nation staff, our enterprises, our first responders, our healthcare workers and all those who help forge the Nation we see today. But above all, I am grateful to O Loh Hah Walla and his progressive ticket that swept the 1905 election of the Osage Nation for keeping alive the concept of Osage sovereignty in the face of utter destruction and humiliation and all of those who came after and fed the flame in the face of nearly impossible odds so that we can be here today – a united, cohesive people celebrating the inauguration of our duly elected leaders.”

Before the event concluded, Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, also a past Assistant Chief under the former Osage Tribal Council government, acknowledged “how far we’ve come (to Homer),” then added: “In 1990, when I took the oath of office along with your father, Joe (Tillman), and many others on that Council in those days, we took the oath of office and it was given to us by the Superintendent of the Osage Indian Agency and I looked down on that paper before we said the oath and it said ‘BIA employee oath’ sure enough. So we’ve come a long way and I think we’re all blessed to be a part of it and I’m glad we’re a prayerful people because we’ve had a lot of help from Almighty and I really believe that. To be this far and to go forward, so I look forward to working with all of you, Way-We-Nah!”

Author

  • Benny Polacca

    Title: Senior Reporter

    Email: bpolacca@osagenation-nsn.gov

    Instagram: @bpolacca

    Topic Expertise: Government, Tribal Government, Community

    Languages spoken: English, basic knowledge of Spanish and French

    Benny Polacca (Hopi/ Havasupai/ Pima/ Tohono O’odham) started working at the Osage News in 2009 as a reporter in Pawhuska, Okla., where he’s covered various stories and events that impact the Osage Nation and Osage people. Those newspaper contributions cover a broad spectrum of topics and issues from tribal government matters to features. As a result, Polacca has gained an immeasurable amount of experience in covering Native American affairs, government issues and features so the Osage readership can be better informed about the tribal current affairs the newspaper covers.

    Polacca is part of the Osage News team that was awarded the Native American Journalists Association's Elias Boudinet Free Press Award in 2014 and has won numerous NAJA media awards, as well as awards from the Oklahoma Press Association and SPJ Oklahoma Pro Chapter, for storytelling coverage and photography.

    Polacca earned his bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University and also participated in the former American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota where he was introduced to the basics of journalism and worked with seasoned journalists there and later at The Forum daily newspaper covering the Fargo, N.D. area where he worked as the weeknight reporter.

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Benny Polacca
Benny Polaccahttps://osagenews.org

Title: Senior Reporter

Email: bpolacca@osagenation-nsn.gov

Instagram: @bpolacca

Topic Expertise: Government, Tribal Government, Community

Languages spoken: English, basic knowledge of Spanish and French

Benny Polacca (Hopi/ Havasupai/ Pima/ Tohono O’odham) started working at the Osage News in 2009 as a reporter in Pawhuska, Okla., where he’s covered various stories and events that impact the Osage Nation and Osage people. Those newspaper contributions cover a broad spectrum of topics and issues from tribal government matters to features. As a result, Polacca has gained an immeasurable amount of experience in covering Native American affairs, government issues and features so the Osage readership can be better informed about the tribal current affairs the newspaper covers.

Polacca is part of the Osage News team that was awarded the Native American Journalists Association's Elias Boudinet Free Press Award in 2014 and has won numerous NAJA media awards, as well as awards from the Oklahoma Press Association and SPJ Oklahoma Pro Chapter, for storytelling coverage and photography.

Polacca earned his bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University and also participated in the former American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota where he was introduced to the basics of journalism and worked with seasoned journalists there and later at The Forum daily newspaper covering the Fargo, N.D. area where he worked as the weeknight reporter.

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