Two Sovereignty Symposium panels on “Signs, Symbols and Sounds” highlighted artistic contributions by Osages, including a panel on the arts at the opening of the symposium, led by Yancey Red Corn, and another on music featuring Oscar-nominated Osage song composer Scott George.
Red Corn moderated the session on the arts with various Indigenous artists, including his mother, the Caddo potter Jeri Redcorn. George referenced Redcorn, along with another member of the music panel, Tim Nevaquaya, in discussing the importance of “the energy” that drives artistic practice.
“There was something Jeri said [when we were conversing.] She talked about how she feels when she’s creating, and it’s about the energy when you feel it, and you start to work on it and you can’t put it down. … it’s time to go to bed and it’s still on your mind. And your hope then is to transfer that energy to other people,” said George.
In singing, performing and in visual works, the desire to transfer the spirit behind the work is the same, George said. Panel member Brent Greenwood, a Ponca singer, said he looked up to George as someone who carries “hundreds and hundreds of songs,” and both Greenwood and George expressed that the road to becoming a good tribal singer is a long one defined by commitment and humility.
“Songwriting,” George said, “is about dedication. It’s not just something you just pick up and you’re there. Singing, you’re at best just good help for a long time. You let your elders and the men that have established themselves around that drum.”
“It’s like Morris Lookout told me,” George continued. “‘You’re finally teachable when you’ve come and come and come and come again. … Before, you had your own head and there was no sense in trying to tell you anything … it’s that way with a lot of things. … You have to hold yourself back. You find your way through it.”
George became hooked on singing, he said, because of good energy. “As far as singing goes, once you’ve felt that feeling around that drum, surrounded by those dancers and that hits you, you want more of it. And you don’t want it to quit. So, you’ll come back and do it again and it’s not there every time. When you relate that back to art, in a sense it’s just a one-time thing because I created it. … but when it touches somebody else, it’s there.”
In addition to being singers, the music panel members were also all visual artists. George had put away his visual art practice for some time in order to focus on a new grandson, he said, but recently, he has been getting back into painting. “I’m just now feeling that again, that spark. I don’t know if it was because of what happened this last year. I got beat by Barbie, maybe that’s as far as I can go,” he said with a laugh, reflecting on his Oscar nomination for “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” performed by the Osage Tribal Singers at the 2024 Academy Awards.
“The thing I get out of [both] art and singing isn’t so much the recognition, it’s that somebody else felt something from it. … When you can feel the spirit move inside the dance, that was my church right there, I felt it. And the same thing with art. You can put something up on the wall … but somebody it touches, there it is again,” he said.
The artist and singer’s earliest artistic influences came through books his grandfather had which depicted artworks of cultures of North America, South America and Canadian Indigenous people. “There would be paintings in there of the Aztecs and the Pueblos, just different tribes, … When I started looking through those as a child, I started formulating my ideas of what I wanted to do, … I kept looking at it and I would draw it,” he said.
His wife Taveah George was in the audience during the panel, and said she is happy to see her husband returning to painting. “He’s dragged everything out here lately, and he bought new paints,” she said. “So, I can see it. And I’m glad because I know he misses it. The only thing that drives me crazy is he’s a perfectionist. … He’ll have something that looks beautiful and he’ll just rip it up,” she said. “He is the same way with his music.”
When George composed “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People),” he did not write anything down, his wife said. She remarked, “It’s all memory. It was amazing—the whole movie thing, his composing the song, us practicing it over and over.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” came up many times at the conference, including at the opening panel moderated by Red Corn, who spoke about how acting is an art. He shared that he has continued acting since the film, most recently shooting a movie in March and in June called “The Huntsman.” “It’s now in post-production,” he confirmed but was not at liberty to say more.
Red Corn had not been planning to facilitate the panel on the arts, but he stepped in to do so when the moderator was unable to participate and facilitated the discussion with several other artists, including Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe.
The panel covered updates from the various artists, as well as a discussion of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which Red Corn’s company White Buffalo Alliance is working to address via a legal and technological payment tracking solution. During the panel, he gave the basics on the solution, which is now undergoing piloting, and other panelists spoke on how the Indian Arts and Crafts Act is not enforced.
“It was good,” said Red Corn, of his experience at the Sovereignty Symposium and indicated that he will share more updates on “The Huntsman” and White Buffalo Alliance in the future.
