The Pivot

good enough. So I changed it to the only newspaper in the world. And they came over and they're like, Louise, that's just a really gross exaggeration. Louise works for the oth Age News now. She's married to Raymond Redcorn, the former assistant Principal chief who delivered the bid for the Blue Stem acquisition. These days, Louise mostly covers the oth Age Nation, but she's been a lot of her career writing county news. And you can't cover Ocge County without

covering the Drummonds. I mean, I've written a lot of stories about them, from you know, speeding tickets to assaults to exaggerated statistics at the mercantile in terms of how busy they are. These stories date back a while speeding tickets that were dismissed at the time of Drummond punched. A police officer getting a Drummond represented him in court and the man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanors. Saw an

officer a story about read Drummonds mercantile and Pahuska. Whether it was actually seeing that thousands of visitors a day, she said it was. I think sometimes there is the afore aforementioned hutzpah that they don't always follow the rules the way everybody else does. A lot of people cow tow to them, cow tow to the dramas and just sort of give them a green light. And I think the reason in Pahuska is that the Drummonds have done

a hell of a lot of good for Pahuska. You know, sales tax collections are between thirty and over pre mercantile times. They built a new football field at the high school. They're they're in the process of building an animal shelter that and they've never sought I mean, they've kept those things secret almost I mean, they just had not even ever claimed credit for those for those two items. So I mean there's a certain amount of gratitude that is natural.

I've heard this from other people too, that there are Drummonds today who have helped revitalize POSCA. They've brought jobs, tourists, money to a place that needed it, that they've given back to the community. And not everyone feels that way, of course, But what Louise is talking about here, it gets at the complexity of it all, the complexity of a place shaped by a hundred years of history, with shifting rules and fortunes and power dynamics, a place where

tremendous wealth was lost and gain. My families were still neighbors who run into each other at the store, we're dinner, we're Friday night football games. In that complexity, it doesn't just describe the relationship between the Drummonds and the os Age Nation, because there's another character in this story that's been here all along, the United States Government. Howid hey who agree tjo wash Nikahi are. My name is Jeane Dennison.

I'm a citizen of the Nation from Oklahoma and an associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. Jean was one of the first people I interviewed for this story. I was nervous. I was an oil reporter from Houston. A lot of this history I was learning about for the first time. I couldn't figure out if the trust relationship with the US government was a good thing, We're a bad thing if os Age citizens liked it. And Jeane told me I wasn't going to find one answer.

She said over and over again that this story, the oth Age nation story, is really complicated. When Jane and I talked this last time, it was about that trust relationship with the US government, something oth Age leaders have fought tirelessly for for over a century. Something they want to use today to protect the land they bought from Ted Turner by putting it back into trust with the US. I wanted to ask Jean, why why pursue the trust relationship if it's been so flawed in the past and

occasionally even today. I guess I wanted to know why bother there was a lot of failures to honor the kinds of promises that were made in these treaties by the United States government, but ultimately these treaties really did offer the United States um access to our lands, but they also offered oth Ages is the ability to UM have some kind of protection against other kinds of threats.

So that's really what this trust relationship was about, was this ability to have UM increased protection against the threats that were rising in our territories. In other words, the federal government was a tool, a tool to keep the state out of the oath Age nation. Jean says it was a flawed one, but it was the best tool

the oth Age Nation had at the time. And so what we see again and again UM is these kinds of looking at the world around us and trying to figure out what are the tools, what are the things that we can do to make this pivot again and again looking at the situation around us and saying, Okay, structures that we have in place right now are not working for us. They're creating more chaos than they are

creating order, and so we're going to pivot. The o Stage Nation is in the middle of a pivot, one that involves land, oil, and sovereignty that will determine the future of who controls these nearly one point five million acres and how this is in trust. I'm Rachel Adams heard and in this episode, you're also going to be hearing from someone else, Alison Edita. She's a contributing reporter on the series, and she's here to help me explain this pivot. I did a presentation for the Stage Nation

employees back. I believe it was in two thousand and nine or two thousand and ten. This is Elizabeth Sloha Homer, the lawyer in d C who sits on the O Stage Nations Supreme Court. I had told people, I had said this before the Rby decision came down. If there's any justice left in America, the oh stages win the Irby case. The Irby case, this is just one and a whole bunch of reservation cases in recent years that are incredibly important for understanding where everything stands today, where

the state's jurisdiction ends, in tribal nations jurisdiction begins. No one's covered these cases more closely than Allison Edita, the Indigenous affairs reporter for KOs U, a public radio station in Oklahoma. She's going to help me out on this one, Alison so Irby. It was a case about taxation, whether the state could collect income taxes from O s Age

citizens who live and work in os Age County. But just like all of these cases, the Irby case was about something much bigger than that, because at the center of it was a question was there still an O. S Ge reservation or had it been disestablished when the US divided up all the surface land into parcels under the nineteen o six Altman app I talked to a lot of federal Indian law experts and they all pretty much said no, the O. S Age Reservation was never disestablished.

The nineteen o six Act did a lot of things, but it didn't get rid of the reservation. That's what Elizabeth was saying in that presentation back she thought the os Age Nation had an even better case than a lot of other tribal nations because of the O. S Age mineral estate and all the underground land that the os Age Nation thought to hold onto. Then the decision hit. I was sitting in front of my computer at my desk, and I got an electronic copy of Herby and started

reading it. And the next thing I know, I'm like having a hard time breathing, you know, I was just, oh my god, this is the worst, the worst opinion. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled the O s Age Nation reservation had been disestablished,

that it was no longer Indian country. And so to me, the Irby decision truly struck me as there is no justice left in the United States, And as an officer of the Court and a lawyer for my entire life, my entire career, that that just was emotionally wrenching, devastating to me because it was so wrong, so wrong. In the decade after the Rby decision, the OCGE Nation tried to find a path forward, another way to get its reservation recognized by the Court, but they were kind of stuck.

You can't bring the same case twice. The Court had ruled, and it ruled that the O C reservation was disestablished. But then we'll hear argument first this morning case eight McGirt versus Oklahoma, Mr. Chief Justice, and may have pleased

the court. Something big happened another case mcgert the Oklahoma This case is resolved by the fundamental propositions that decisions about sovereign rights so for Congress to make, and Congress makes those decisions by speaking clearly in the text, the decision below must be reversed because the text makes clear that Congress never terminated the Creek Reservation and never transferred

federal criminal jurisdiction to Oklahoma. Mc group was enough case involving a reservation in Oklahoma, but this time it was the Misgogy Nation reservation, also known as the Muscogee Creek Nation. This case was about a felony crime and whether it should be prosecuted in federal or state court, But just like the Irby case, it was also about something much bigger, whether the Misgogy Nations reservation still existed. The mcgurt case

went all the way up to the Supreme Court. It was decided on July nine, the last day before the court said it would recess, and as someone who has covered indigenous affairs for a while, I'll just never forget it. This was one of the biggest wins for tribal sovereignty in decades. The highest court in the land ruled that the Misgogy Nation reservation still existed. The allotment era when the US government divided up native land didn't change that.

In the months after the mcgurt decision, other tribal nations in Oklahoma asked state courts to apply the ruling to their own reservations. The Chickasaw Cherokee Choked On Nation Seminal and Quapa they had their reservation status as affirmed too, but it hadn't been applied to the se Nation, at least not yet. McGirt is um is a case in my mind of one of great hope but also great pain. This is Wilson pipe Stem, the attorney who's represented the os Age Nation and the oth Age Minerals Council. You

heard from him a couple of episodes ago. Alison and I went to his office and Pulsa over the summer to talk to him about these cases, how they affect the Osage Nation, what O s Age leaders want to do moving forward, and Wilson said one of the biggest things McGirt highlighted to him was what could have happened during the nineties if the os Age Reservation had been recognized, that would have been federal jurisdiction over all of those murders.

But they treated the Sage Reservation like it didn't exist anymore. So they were bringing you had to bring a case against somebody in O Sage County court where justice was not to be found right. So it wasn't until somebody was murdered on trust land, or Henry Rowan was murdered

on trust land that they decided it's federal jurisdiction. Now, to me, that shows you the protection that reservation status can bring, because those cases would have would have been federal jurisdiction to start with, and we may have been able to avoid the loss of many lives if the federal government had respected the homelands of the O s h people and treated as a reservation as it should have been for over a hundred years. Now, what Wilson is talking about here gets at the importance of having

these reservations in the first place. It affects who gets to tax you, protect you, and punish you. You know, there's just no doubt in my mind as a legal matter, the Sage Reservation was never disestablished. It just never was. The language is not in any of those laws. And even when the tense Circuit Court of Appeals and Herby said, well,

we looked at all the statutes. We don't find any language of disestablishments, so we'll go to these other things that now McGirt in the Supreme Court has decided no, you can't get past that first question. So um uh, the Sage reservation was never disestablished. Elizabeth and Wilson are not the only ones who feel this way. The oth Age leaders I've talked to our adamant their reservation still exists and eventually they'll get the court to recognize that.

And the sooner we can get to that ruling, the easier the transition will be. This past year, the Sage Nation piggybacked on a criminal case to try to get the mcgert decision applied to them. They lost for the state district judge force Age County. But we've reached out to the tribe. They said they're still weighing their options, deciding the best way to move forward a pivot, but that's not the only pivot the nation is planning when we come back. We talked to the man leading another

big pivot. UMU. The kind of person that likes to understand things, even though over again I realized how limited we all are and trying to understand everything. It's been on my mind day and night. And now, ladies and gentlemen, has some words to say to us is inaugural address? Yeah, there was a written stage kay on June. It was less than two weeks ago an election in the state of Oklahoma was held and in that election, several officials of the state who have pledged opposition to the Native

American self governance one their primaries. That was illustrated the next day June when the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled in the case of Castro A Wuerta. This is Jeffrey standing Bear, the principal chief of the Osage Nation. He's leading the tribe through all this how to respond to the mcgart case in the current state

of Oklahoma politics. Standing Bears Chief who decided to bid the maximount the Congress would allow back when the tribe bought the land from Ted Turner, and over the summer he won another term as chief. He gave his inauguration speech at the Osge Casino in Tulsa, and during it he kind of dropped a bomb. I looked to my left and I saw our Minerals Council. Minerals Council, it's time for you to fully manage our mineral estate for

our people. And I looked over to my right where the Osage Congress, our legislature was sitting and said, Congress, we need you to enact the laws of the os Age Nation to do this. What Chief Standing Bears proposing is a big deal. After more than a century of the Bureau of Indian Affairs managing the O. S H Mineral Estate, the O s H Nation would be taking

it over. Are all the duties that fell to the b a A would now be the O s Age Nation's responsibility overseeing leases, making sure oil states get cleaned up. This hasn't happened yet, and it still has a long way to go. Part of the reason Standing Bear wants to do this is pretty practical. He thinks the os Age Nation can do a better job than the US government. The b i A is, after all, a federal bureaucracy. Stuff takes a long time. There's internal office politics, outdated software,

staffing issues. But Standing Bear says this is also about something much bigger. All of our areas that are engaged and sovereignty. In my view, the one area that is most exposed is our O. S Age mineral state. So we need to get in there, pre empt that with self governance, and use that mineralist state as our people who we purchased this naralist state in eighteen seven, need too with our own money. Let us use it the way our elders intended it for us to use it.

Allison and I wanted to talk to Standing Bear after he gave this speech. We wanted to know why now, why after so many decades, would the Stage Nation want to take it over. So we called him just a few days after that speech to ask him about it. This is a threat that's unique from the others. It is a threat of control by the state on a regulatory basis, taxation basis, criminal basis um. Those are powerful forces. In other words, this is about keeping the state Oklahoma

out of the Stage Nation. And Standing Bear said it's more important than ever because of how Oklahoma responded to McGirt by bringing another case. He mentioned castro Berta, the U. S. Supreme Court ruling on criminal jurisdiction on tribal land in Oklahoma. So this ruling to day means the state of Oklahoma can exercise criminal jurisdiction over non Native Americans on tribal land.

This comes after the case of Oklahoma versus Castro Huerta, which questions who could prosecute non tribal members who committed crimes against Native Americans. And of course this ruling here narrows the decision Regret versus Oklahoma, which said that Native Americans another court case, I know, but this is important because when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Miskogee Nation, Oklahoma wasn't happy. On the other side of

all this is Kevin Stitt. He's the governor of Oklahoma and his office has been at the forefront of trying to undo mcgurt, that decision that meant so much for tribal sovereignty. Still says by taking away the state's control, Oklahoma risk becoming some sort of lawless land with thousands of criminals released from jail. But Allison has done some

reporting on this. My reporting part Rebecca and Eagle and I pulled data from all the tribes over three years to see how many cases would actually be affected by the mcgert decision, and what we found was fewer than one thousand cases in Oklahoma were affected. But Oklahoma stands by their number and that argument that thousands of criminals would be released has been a pretty key part of the state's response to mcgurt, and over the summer, Oklahoma

was successful in limiting the impact of mcgurt. The Supreme Court ruled in the state's favor in the castral work the case. Stick is running for re election this year. It would be his second term as governor. He easily won the primary in June, and his next stop is the general election in November. In that election is also where over a hundred years of o s Age Nation

history and Drummond history collide in the present day. Because, as we've told you, the Republican candidate to become the next Attorney General of the state, the chief law enforcement officer for all of Oklahoma is the lawyer and big landowner whose family has deep roots in os Age County, getting a Drummond. This is a pretty important role at an even more important time, especially when it comes to

who gets to prosecute whom. The a g after all, is the one who guides the state's response on matters like this. During that first interview in his office, Gettner said one of the things he was running on was a promise, a promise to work more with tribal nations in Oklahoma than still has with the Cacaffey surrounding the

moderate decision. Our governor for some reason just can't see it in himself to act rationally, and so he's driven a wedge between the name of American tribes in the state of Oklahoma, and I can I think that I can undo that. Tribal leaders in Oklahoma supported Getner, and their support means a lot. When the final votes were rolling in during the June primary, Choctaw Nation Chief Gary Batten put out a statement saying this was a win

for tribal sovereignty. So here we have a drumming about to be the next attorney general of the state, vowing to work for tribal sovereignty at a time when the chief of the Osage Nation sees an existential threat from the state, a threat he's worried would affect the o Sage mineral estate, the same one that members of Gettner's family had fought to get a piece of a century ago.

If your head is spinning, so we're hours. We asked standing Bear about what he thinks all this means how this history impacts the state of play today, and his answer was, basically, it's complicated, and not just because of the Drummond's history in Osage County. During the election, we met and I said, uh, I know, Gettner um pretty good. He's he's a good guy in my mind, except his views on protecting his ranch and service owners have come

into conflict with us in our mineralist state. I said, Getner, if you would pledged not to sue os Age Nation again on these issues between the surface land and the mineralist state, I will ask for Minerals Council to support you, and I would support you for Attorney General. He would not do that. What standing Bear is saying here is something we haven't told you about yet, but comes up a lot in oth Age County, get As lawsuits. Get Nurse firm brought a lot of lawsuits against oil companies

in the area on behalf of other landowners. He considers himself a steward of the land. He has a lot of it. After all, land that he says has been damaged by oil and gas production that whole time, all the royalties from that oil and gas are going to head right holders. If you injure the land, you fix it. That's all. That's all I asked. I was litigating on a case by case basis on my land. If you

dumped thousands of gallons of salt water. I would require you to clean it up, and if you wouldn't clean it up, then I'd suit you. But in Gettner and his law firm did something more drastic. They bought a lawsuit on behalf of an Osage rancher and another landowner in o Sage County. When we'll stepped back in one of my very intelligent attorneys in this law firm or live as well, there's a NIPA National Environmental Protection Act, and let's go use NIPA to make the b i

A do its job. And they that's what we did. Basically, they didn't just go after one oil company, they went after the whole system the way that b i A was permitting wells in Osage County. This was one of the biggest lawsuits to affect the O s Age in mineral estate. Ever after Gettner and his law firm brought the case, the BIA said it would re vamp its process for permitting wells in Osage County, but those permits

started to take a long time. All the while oil prices were super low, head right payments were taking a huge hit. A lot of Osage head right holders saw it as an attack not just by the b A, but by Gettner Drummond himself. Gettner says he was a convenient scapegoat, but Standing Bear says that case has him and other Sage leaders on guard. We have to be connizant that the new attorney general the local home ours. We believe you'll be the new tonat generals displayed interests

adverse to our legal interests in our policy interests. We hope getting her Drummond will work with us, but we are very aware of his news and his history. There's something else I want to mention that involves getting a Drummond's law firm and Standing Bears office. Just last year, an attorney at Gettner's law firm represented a woman who worked for the os Age Nation and said she was sexually harassed by two men who served in the Chief's office.

According to a letter Gettner's firm sent to a lawyer for the chief's office, the woman raised complaints with the tribes HR department was later fired. Drummond Law called it retaliatory termination and requested a one d thousand dollar settlement. When The os Age News reported on the proposed settlement earlier this year, They quoted an O s Age congressman who said Standing there used the O s Age people's money to buy the woman's silence. One of the accused

men still works in his office. Standing Bear says personnel matters are confidential and that he signed a lot earlier this year to prohibit sexual harassment. From the beginning, I was told the story was complicated. What I didn't realize was just how intertwined the Drummond story and the oc Age story were, not just in the nineties, but today, and after more than a hundred years of history, of decades living side by side on this land, there's a

big question hanging over os Age County. Can the os Age Nation reclaim more of what was lost? Land head rights, sovereignty? And as they try, will they find an ally and get her Drummond. I started this story with a question did the Drummonds have head rights? And if so, how did they get them? But I ended with a totally different understanding of how three brothers built an empire on

the Stage Reservation. I learned about a store where they could charge huge markups, a store that dozens of O s Age families became indebted to a lot of times. Those debts were repaid when an O Stage person died and one of the Drummond brothers became the administrator of their estate, a position that allowed them to approve claims from their families own store. Sometimes it was the funeral

itself that brought the store huge business. A nine thousand dollar funeral eight thousand dollar promisory note the Osage price. I learned how all of this was done while the Drummond brothers were guardians, meant it protect their O Stage words money above all else. I learned about secrets tucked deep in family stories and others hidden away in land abstracts and core archives, secrets that shape this place today.

A place where neighbors were given totally different rule books, one that allowed some people to have tremendous power and another that took that control away. A place where many of the descendants of those people O Stage and Drummond lived side by side. Where the great grandchildren of an O Sage a Latt can run into the great grandchildren of a Drummond guardian while picking up a sandwich at subway. We're filling up their tank at the gas station. In November,

Oklahoma voters will elect a new Attorney General. It's almost certain to be getting or Drummond, the descendant of a man who came to this land almost a hundred fifty years ago to trade with the Stages, a descendant who will have a leading voice and what the future looks like for tribal nations and the state of Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the oth Age Minerals Council will keep meeting to figure out they're going to take over the management of their mineral estate and if so, what that will look like.

Then there's the ranch, the forty thousand acres the os Age Nation bought from Ted Turner. Standing there, says the tribe is still working to put it in trust to make this land inalienable O Sage forever. The meantime, my job is keep the peace with our neighbors and among ourselves until we can think this through. This is so critical time. It's not letting up. It keeps coming. And I also thought after mcgurt, well you'll get to us eventually,

but it keeps coming. And this brings me immediately to the day that we all must work together to follow our constitution and protect our mineralist state and all our lands. And how do we do that. History has shown that we're Federal law clearly pre empts state law, tribal governance, self governance pre empts state law. Pre EMPs means we need to get there first, governing ourselves on our lands,

with our territory and our people. I'll do everything and Assistant Chief will do everything we can to claim this territory, to pre empt this territory as o sage law managed Byer Minerals Council. Then at the end, I looked at my uncle Bogary Lookout. He's my relative, and I said, I want to quote your father, Henry. Uncle Henry look Out, and he was you said, a holy man, and he told us many things. He said, life is short, be quick about it. Thank you. That concludes this part of Intrust.

We're taking a break so we can work on more stories. We'll be back soon. See you. Then. For maps, newspaper archives, photos, and other documents related to this episode, go to Bloomberg dot com slash in Trust. In Trust is a production of Bloomberg and I Heart Media. This episode is reported and hosted by Me Rachel Adams Heard and me Alison Rara. Victor Ebayez is our senior producer. Samantha Story is our

executive producer. Jeff Grocott is our senior editor. Additional editing by Daniel Ferrara, Production support from Gilda de Carle, sound engineering by Blake Maples, theme music by Laura Warrman, Photography

by Shane Brown. Additional thanks to Margaret Sutherland, Linley Lynn, David Ingold, Evan Applegate, Devin Pendleton, Ariel Brown, Jane Yeoman's, Eugene Rusnick, Cynthia Hoffman, Frank Coleshaw, Jackie Kessler, Bernadette Walker, Emily Engelman, Michael Fraser, Thomas Houston, Stephanie Davidson, Mckinninda Keiper, Carly Snyder, Melissa Shadrick, Rakia Soluja Flynn, McRoberts, and Robert Blow. You can email us at Podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. Find in Trust anywhere you get your podcasts