The city of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in the Osage Reservation, shown here March 31, 2022, has become a busy tourist destination within the past five years, making it the perfect place for new businesses to prosper. The Osage Nation is now working on community partnerships with the city and county to improve the economy for everyone. CODY HAMMER/Osage News |
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Osage Nation joins with city, county for economic development projects
PAWHUSKA, Oklahoma — A walk in downtown Pawhuska on a brisk Saturday morning in March finds the town bustling.
Spring break has brought tourists from throughout the country descending on the Osage Nation Reservation. They drift in and out of The Pioneer Woman Mercantile store with bags in hand and smiles on their faces. They drive up Kihekah Avenue in search of the Osage Nation Museum and see buffalo on the Tallgrass Prairie National Reserve.
Pawhuska is the Osage Nation capital, the Osage County seat and a place the Osage people call home. A hub of culture and history, it’s where generations of oilmen and ranchers came to make a better life.
Living together has had its ups and downs over the years, to be sure, but the climate is changing. A volatile relationship once laced with racism and greed is slowly becoming one of partnership as the tribe, city and county work together for the benefit of all.
Plans are underway for the Osage to open new casinos and hotels in Bartlesville and Pawhuska with city utilities, and the tribe is looking to build a sports complex that could host tournaments and other events, drawing visitors to local restaurants, lodging, shopping and other attractions.
Additional projects include expansion of Broadband internet, community healthcare, senior housing, water projects and bridge and road work.
Leading those efforts are Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, Osage County Commissioner Randall Jones and Pawhuska City Manager Jerry Eubanks. Their goal is to improve the lives of all who live here, with jobs and development providing an economic boost for the region.
“We have to have these partnerships to grow,” Standing Bear said.
Eubanks said he would like the city, county and Osage Nation to come together to form a 10-year comprehensive plan.
“It’s going to take a sit-down with the commissioner, the tribe and the city,” Eubanks said. “Sure, I could put a plan out there, but it isn’t going to be accurate and why would I waste the time and the money to do it? … With all three entities sitting down together and mapping out where we go from here – would be huge. That needs to happen.”
Partnerships and solutions
Standing Bear, 68, a trial lawyer in Indian Country for more than 35 years, has been chief of the Osage Nation for eight years and is seeking re-election in June. During his two terms, his administration has purchased more than 50,000 acres of land within the 1.47-million-acre reservation.
“We’ve lost so much of our lands in the last 100 years,” he said. “We have to have water, sewer. We have to have law enforcement. We have to have all these issues within this larger dominant culture that has surrounded us … We have to recognize that we have neighbors that have infrastructure that we need.”
Jones, 58, a county commissioner for three years who is now chairman of the board, is also seeking re-election from his district, which is the most rural district in the county. He is of Seneca descent and has spent the majority of his life improving Osage County. As commissioner, he helps oversee construction, maintenance, improvements to buildings, roads, bridges, the county jail, the courthouse and equipment.
Eubanks, 55, who lived in Pawhuska for two years before becoming city manager in December, said the Osage Nation is like having a city-within-a-city. But he said he doesn’t see separate communities — just one.
“One of my first meetings with Randall was about community relations, and I don’t want to say things were strained, but it was a little bit of an uphill battle putting together the three entities, for one reason or another, and it’s really no one’s fault,” said Eubanks, who formerly worked as manager of the Blackwell Utility Trust Authority and as Blackwell’s assistant city manager. Before that, he was city manager for Fairview, Oklahoma.
“I remember one of the first things Randall said to me was, ‘I want to make this a better relationship for all of us,’ and he said, ‘What can we do to make this beneficial for every one of our communities?’” Eubanks said. “I think to elaborate on his last statement is, ‘Every day, things get better.’”
He continued, “The tribe’s there and willing to help. They’ve been willing to help on any matter I’ve taken to them.”
More jobs needed
Stretching from the Oklahoma border with Kansas down to Tulsa and Ponca City, the Osage Nation is the largest employer in Osage County, with about 500 jobs in its government offices and programs, and about 2,000 at its seven Osage Casino locations and central offices.
Since 2002, the Osage Nation has owned and operated casinos in north Tulsa, Sand Springs, Skiatook, Bartlesville, Ponca City, Hominy and Pawhuska. New casinos and hotels are under construction for Bartlesville and Pawhuska and are expected to bring more jobs to both.
The second-largest employer is Ree Drummond, who shot to fame as “The Pioneer Woman” with a Food Network cooking show. She now operates The Mercantile general store, which includes a bakery and restaurant, and a boarding house hotel. Tourists come to see her and discover that a tribe is also located in the area.
The diverse workforce for both entities is Native and non-Native. Many are simply happy to have a job after the pandemic arrived in 2020, but competition is tough, and it’s widely whispered that it’s not what you know but who you know.
The reservation’s boundaries are also the boundaries for Osage County, which has more than 45,000 residents with a median household income of $49,103. About 14 percent of the county residents identify as Native American, and 11.4 percent of reservation families live in poverty.
Pawhuska, the county seat, has about 3,480 residents within its boundaries, with other residents scattered among smaller towns such as Hominy at 3,430, Fairfax at 1,330 and Barnsdall at 1,033.
Finding a job outside Pawhuska is particularly challenging.
A walk along the main streets in other reservation towns such as Fairfax, Hominy and Barnsdall reveals boarded storefronts and damaged buildings, most of which are empty. After 5 p.m., they become ghost towns.
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CN Film Office, Native American Media Alliance helping grow Native representation
TULSA – The Cherokee Nation Film Office is partnering with the Native American Media Alliance to help grow Native representation in film and television.
The collaboration, which includes support from major industry allies and the Motion Picture Association, aims to expand diversity and inclusion throughout the entertainment industry, both in front and behind the cameras.
“With Natives currently comprising less than 1% of these professions, the significant need for diversity, inclusion and accurate representation of Native identity within film and television has remained prevalent since the industries’ earliest years,” said Jennifer Loren, director of the Cherokee Nation Film Office and Original Content. “We are honored to continue working alongside the Barcid Foundation and so many other great supporters in engaging, promoting and increasing Native talent throughout these industries.”
The tribe’s film office, Netflix, Amazon Studios, WarnerMedia, Snowpants Productions and Kung Fu Monkey Productions have partnered in support of the Native American Media Alliance and its TV and feature film labs, workshops and seminars.
The initiative helps Native Americans break into entertainment and new media professions, while also protecting Natives already employed in these industries. NAMA and its partnering agencies ensure fair and accurate portrayals of Native America by lifting and amplifying the authentic voices of Native people and organizations.
“We are honored to join each of our partners in our endeavor to continually develop and offer new ways to support our artists,” said Ian Skorodin, director of strategy for the Native American Media Alliance. “We have a talented community in need of exposure, access and opportunity. Our programming is helping get more Native American voices in front of the right people who can develop their content and build their careers.”
Throughout the year, NAMA presents programming geared specifically toward creating and expanding access for Natives interested in film and television. The alliance recently selected 12 fellows for the 7th Annual Native American TV Writers Lab, which consists of daily workshops, seminars and one-on-one mentoring to help screenwriters develop a pilot and hone staff writing skills.
Additionally, applications for this summer’s 2nd Annual Native American Writers Seminar are currently open. The month-long intensive will include multiple writing workshops, as well as individual mentoring and group sessions focusing on the development of existing scripts and submission preparation for writing fellowships.
The Native American Media Alliance is a community-based organization that advocates for Native American representation in the entertainment industry. NAMA functions as a resource for industry personnel to work with Native Americans who have an authentic voice for film, television and new media.
NAMA is a project of the Barcid Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on multimedia programming in indigenous communities. For more information or to submit an application for upcoming programs, please visit https://nama.media.
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Native American restaurant opens in Broken Arrow
BROKEN ARROW, Okla. — A new restaurant in Broken Arrow is going back to Oklahoma's roots. The restaurant “NATV” features traditional Native American dishes.
Kitchen prep is just one of the many tasks Jacque Siegfried has before the soft opening of her new restaurant.
She says her father taught her how to cook, but it was her curiosity to learn more about her Native American culture that added to her cookbook.
“I ask questions so many people I meet,” Siegfried said.
After more than 10 years working at different restaurants, she says she lost a part of her culture. So, she took a chance on opening her own place.
Reluctant at first, she now sees this as an opportunity to reconnect with her culture, while also sharing it with others.
“Food has always been my answer to connect with people. That’s what I want to connect with, so that’s what I need to do.”
You won't find Indian Tacos on the menu. Instead, she’ll focus more on indigenous dishes and flavors.”
“You’re going to have more of those earthy flavors involved in it. But, we’ll still have that connection to the fry bread because everybody loves fry bread.”
Siegfried debuted her food at the mother road market where she graduated from the Kitchen 66 Program. She touts some of her success by learning how to promote and market her unique dishes and how she can improve.
The restaurant is north of 91st Street on Main Street in Broken Arrow. They are open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. this week and they’ll add lunch hours next week.
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‘Reservation worthy’ cattle operation expands tribal enterprise
Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s ranch and meat processing plant generate jobs, food security
By Liz Gray and Morgan Taylor
OKMULGEE, Oklahoma — On a stretch of highway between Tulsa and Okmulgee that cuts through the Mvskoke Reservation, commuters have grown accustomed to passing Duck Creek Casino, owned and operated by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
Now the view includes a neighboring business, Looped Square Meat Co., the tribe’s latest economic venture that draws its name from a symbol representing the balance of nature. The $15 million meat-processing facility includes a retail space that sells what has been branded as “reservation worthy” meats and other foods.
It’s part of a growing agricultural enterprise for the tribe, which started with a small farm more than 75 years ago and has expanded to nearly 6,000 acres with the recent purchase of ranchlands near Okmulgee – the largest known land acquisition in the tribe’s history.
And although the tribe’s nine casinos are still the main source of funding, officials believe the expansion of agriculture can provide regular income, jobs and food security for tribal citizens.
“Lots of Indian Country have taken more of an active role in the management of natural resources and the use of their land,” said Trent Kissee, a tribal citizen and manager of the tribe’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
“I think there’s a variety of factors in that,” Kissee said. “Some of it is that tribes are just now becoming able to do so financially.”
The financial boost for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation came in the form of CARES Act money in 2020, which funded the construction of the 25,000-square-foot meat processing plant. The facility opened in December with eight employees, but is expected to eventually be fully staffed with 25 workers.
And the Muscogee (Creek) Nation is not the only tribe investing in agriculture. Indigenous and Alaska Native producers generated an estimated $3.5 billion in agriculture sales in 2017, with three-fourths specializing in livestock production, according to the Native American Agriculture Fund.
The Osage Nation Ranch in northern Oklahoma operates a cow-calf operation and a conservation herd of bison, in part on land purchased from media mogul Ted Turner. In other parts of the country, tribal nations operate fisheries, ranches, poultry farms, food processing plants, farms, nurseries and other agricultural enterprises.
For many, it’s a way to generate income in traditional ways without depleting natural resources.
“What I’ve heard from many tribes is that they’re trying to do agriculture in a way that honors the Earth, sort of looks at a whole system, and the interrelations of land and people and community,” said Patrice Kunesh, of Standing Rock Lakota descent, development officer for the Native American Rights Fund and former director of the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
“Whereas (with) agribusiness,” she said, “you tend to have blinders on and be totally focused on profit and the highest production.”
‘This is our home’
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s Looped Square Meat Co. now sits between the area’s nearest grocery stores, with a local general store about 9 miles away in one direction and Walmart about 13 miles away in the other direction, near Glenpool, Oklahoma.
It’s an area considered a food desert, with an estimated 17 percent food insecurity rate within Okmulgee County, according to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.
A new meat-processing plant built by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation opened in December 2021 to process meat from the tribe’s Looped Square Ranch. (Photo by Morgan Taylor/Mvskoke Media)
The plant is now processing beef from the Looped Square Ranch, and will also process pigs and deer in separate areas.
The retail store offers a variety of meats including fresh and frozen beef, chicken and pork. It also stocks other grocery items, including a special type of corn that is a key ingredient in making sofke, a traditional corn soup or drink.
And the tribe is keeping an eye on the future. The youth agriculture program is growing, introducing career pathways for tribal youth. Kissee said the goal is one day to provide a job market for the youth on the Mvskoke Reservation to promote a message that they do not have to leave home to find a sustainable career.
The Muscogee Nation has recently appropriated money to help build a youth teaching center for agriculture and for commercial greenhouses.
“We don’t want them to have to move to Iowa to work on a big farm when we could potentially provide them agribusiness careers here or even government ag-type jobs like you would see at the USDA,” Kissee said.
Hipp praised the tribe’s efforts to add the meat-processing plant to the ranch operations.
“It takes a Herculean effort to build a plant like this top to bottom, soup to nuts, A to Z, in the amount of time they did,” Hipp said. “Tribal governments are showing that it can be done over and over again. That’s really an important piece of the puzzle, who can really just get in there and make it happen, and the Muscogee Nation did.”
Kissee is optimistic about what’s ahead.
“I think long term, the plan is to have the agribusiness entity which would include the ranch and the processing facility,” he said. “We’re turning over profit and putting it back into the general fund and being able to provide services.”
He continued, “For tribal nations, this is what we do, this is our home. We work, we play, we raise our families. Home means something different to us. Earth means something different to us.”
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Adam Proctor | Native Oklahoma Magazine | 918.409.7252
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