We were told it couldn’t be done, with Dr. Jann Hayman at the Osage Nation

Jann was Director of Environment and Natural Resources when the tribe mobilised so much of its extraordinary food sovereignty and related achievements . In the wake of that , she was asked on the Chief's Cabinet .

This conversation picks up from Chiefs as we flesh out the realities of those achievements , including those remarkable food sovereignty measures , land reacquisition , related buffalo restoration , broader wildlife and landscape too , language innovation , trust-based funding , reconnecting with the stories of the elders and building a systemic movement .

We hear , too , how all this is impacting people and what big ideas are next . And again , this is a very frank , inspiring and fun yarn with a deeply moving story and piece of music played by Jan to close .

G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration , your independent listener-supported podcast exploring how people are regenerating the systems and stories we live by . Enormous thanks this week to Edward Surgeon for increasing your subscription amount again . So grateful , mate , and rich travels across the Kimberley to you .

If you can too , please consider joining Ed and this brilliant community of supporting listeners . Get additional stuff if you like and help keep the show going . Just follow the links in the show notes .

With all my thanks , if you happen to have come to the Osage series here first , you can hear my conversation with Chief Standing Bear in last week's episode and the brief scene setting episode with Nicol the week prior to that .

If you're not familiar with the backstory on this one , it's worth ducking back to listen to that 13 minute introduction with Nicol first . Okay , let's gather around the table back at Jann's office . Have you got a favourite comfy chair ?

So in that role I've kind of shifted into that role I was first just the director over the environmental and natural resources programs and then when COVID came and the Osage Nation received CARES federal funds luckily Chief had enough foresight to see these funds are available what can we do to really make a positive impact for the Osage people ?

So then we started down the path for developing our food sovereignty programs . And so right at that time there was a little farm it was called Bird Creek Farm and it was very small , so that had just

shifted under me . And so then it was just a natural development as we received these funds . Then Harvestland was built , butcher House , our meat processing facility was built . So it's just kind of naturally evolved into this very a bigger , bigger picture . You know kind of way to help our people .

And so in that in my role I oversee the food sovereignty programs , help our people .

And so in that in my role I oversee the food sovereignty programs , I continue to see the environmental and natural resources programs and then we also oversee the Osage Nation's bison herd and then a smaller herd of cattle as a pipeline to our meat facility so we can provide , have that , I guess , have that control of pipeline pipeline so we're always able to at

any point process our own animals .

It seems like to be going right through that supply chain , as it were , through to processing too , which for many people is like the Holy Grail . If we could only like communities everywhere and farmers everywhere who don't own the terms of trade and just have to take what they get and let alone what their animals end up going through and so forth .

So the fact that it seems to have happened quite quickly , how have you managed that ?

It was just making sure that we had the right team and , yeah , it was tough

. Then they ended up extending the deadline . So , of course , but we already had it done . So that was a blessing and you know we were kind of told it couldn't be done , but we did it .

So I suspect I made some good choices along the way in this development . That um , but I think a lot of it is that me and , uh , you know , executive just have the same ideas , the same same goals . You know we want the same things for the Osage people . So I think that has naturally just aligned .

I just always , always , yeah .

So then , um , an opportunity came open with the tribe , so I applied .

So I remember growing up with that and going out with my grandpa and taking care of the cattle , and you know so I've always , at least in my generation and my parents and grandparents generations , always just that was a part of who we were .

to that sort of . I helped manage the bison .

I think it was late last year or the year before , very recently anyway , like the way it used to be , and others have varieties of of management , but really still repatriating , like bringing them back to the land and for all the cultural benefits that that bestows as well .

Has it been similar motivations here and is it linked to other efforts as well , like how are you managing that ?

It's high fence and yes , I mean the goal for us , at least for me and my team and I feel like also with Chief is that it's a conservation herd . We manage it very much like the Nature Conservancy north of town . So we work very closely with the Nature

Conservancy . They've been there a while . Yeah , other tribal nations in Oklahoma that have bison Not as much , I would say , on the management of the animals themselves , but our butcher house processing facility obviously can process bison and it's one of the few facilities that can do that .

So we work real close with the other tribes that have bison so we can accommodate those processing needs for them . But our bison preserve itself , the fencing that is on it is such that it could we in the future , if we decide to expand into elk , we can put elk on the property too .

So that's been kind of one of the one of the long-term term goals , kind of like , like these food sovereignty facilities , we had CARES funds that paid for the fencing . So , while we had those funds , what could we ever use this for ? And let's put that infrastructure in now or a few years ago , while we can .

And elk was also historically important to the Osage people . So we don't have any out there right now , but if and when we ever get to the point where we can , you know , go down that road , then we're ready for that .

sort of visceral sense of benefit having them back on land ?

We have some drum makers that are now , you know , realizing we keep the hides , we try to get the word out , but we make that resource available to anybody it is . You don't have to be Osage . If there's any native drum makers that want to use bison hides for their drums , we have that available .

Then we get quite a few inquiries on , like the horn caps for jewelry , you know , and things like that , just little things from the head that people would like to see . And we've done , we've worked with a group , the Osage LLC , the business arm of the nation , and some local cooks and folks to do some bison feasts .

So I think there's been two of those so far . So we've provided the animal People . Osages have come in and harvested it like they did historically , and so they've come out to our Pahuska village and had a big feast . They cooked it over an open fire . You know how they would have done it historically .

So while we weren't involved in all of that , we have the bison available . So we've tried to kind of expand what we're able to do and work with . If anybody's got any ideas , we want to hear them . We want to figure this out , because that's what the goal is for the herd is to connect our people

.

What else is sort of on the cards or in motion , and what sort of success are you seeing in terms of care for the land more broadly ?

Um , it kind of I don't know , it's kind of a longer term kind of goal is to like build a greater community of landowners , osage landowners that are willing to come to us for , you know , just basic management plans , management ideas , and try to kind of take what we're doing and pass that on to , like , you know , make a bigger impact even outside of the land

the Osage Nation owns . Let's do all this together . Let's bring in some , you know , osage landowners across Osage County and start small , even though that's not real small .

But , start locally and try to kind of help I don't know kind of shift , the I don't know shift the way people look at their land to be more kind of conservation minded and to understand that the things that you do affect so many other resources . You know we see a lot of .

You know kind of blanket aerial spraying for trees , but you know that has so many other consequences . You know on wildlife and you know other plant species , and so we're wanting to take an approach with , again , the land that we oversee and you know have some test plots .

Is , you know , instead of doing , you know , addressing one issue this way that you've kind of grown up hearing about let's shift over and do it this way , that you've kind of grown up hearing about let's shift over and do it this way , and so you know , maybe kind of teach some some better strategies for accomplishing the same goals but , um , keeping those kind

of ecosystems more intact yeah , when we first saw the the planes flying over with the sprays , we thought that was finished .

It was like , wow , it's still going . Yeah , you're right , it's that sledgehammer approach isn't it too , and ? There could be other ways to keep the rest of the living systems which can serve you let alone keep yeah , the whole system functioning well so I guess that kind of all comes down to .

change you know , I guess be a be a change agent for for the good you know like at a systemic level .

So I have a lot of discussions over the years with them and , you know , trying to kind of build a better relationship with them and kind of to me that's a good start is they're also on the Osage Nation ranch . So let's , let's start there , let's try to kind of change some of that mentality .

And that's not always so easy , but but yeah , I think it's a work in progress . I wouldn't say there's a lot of momentum yet .

With a lot of , I would say , kind of with kind of the for-profit , like agricultural operations , the first thing that's going to you're going to have to show or talk about is that this isn't going to be not even a waste of money , but you're there's what's the advantage , what's the financial advantage ?

That's going to be like kind of at the root of that , I feel like kind of the smaller producers or kind of the more the family operations . You know that they have a different , generally speaking it kind of a different sense .

I feel like some of the smaller producers have , I don't know , maybe a little more flexibility and interest in wanting that more kind of connectivity to the land

, and so you know , it's just kind of , I feel like on a different , depending on the scale of the operation kind of changes the conversation yeah .

That scale issue is a big one , from what I hear over the years I'm doing this even and back home it's if you abstract yourself and your operation from the land past a certain threshold , perhaps you could say you lose those other points of connection and motivation to care for it and so forth .

So you know , it's not that you necessarily wish badly on it , but the structure is such that it's so removed . It's just you're not really relating in a real way , in a direct way . So there's something about the scale into getting sufficient benefits from scale , but perhaps not to the extent that we have abstracted ourselves currently en masse .

And then , in terms of if we're trying to change things systemically or instigate those sorts of changes , it's also something key to keep in mind For those who might think of a green world domination or the like , that there's something about keeping or restoring connection .

They haven't been there . And I've heard from different producers , you know , throughout Osage County there's been , you know , kind of a decline in people seeing wild turkey .

So we like seeing the turkey and so , you know , there again , we don't hunt , we , we try to try to kind of manage you know the , the timber , like we manage our you know our little prairie areas and stuff and try to do them both .

And so this time of year , um , you can hear the turkeys gobbling and so , like every morning and every evening I'm hearing the turkeys gobble and it's , you know , like I don't know it's , it's a for me , like a sense of like we're doing something right because , we can . We have our cattle , we can have our wildlife . You can have both .

You just have to know how to manage those together . And so I I feel like um kind of in those moments I wish that some producers , other agricultural producers , had those kind of like light bulb moments . So it's like look , you can have all of this together .

Maybe I mean these are the interesting things I hear a lot about is often creating circumstances where people can

come into contexts , where it's working in that way . You can be like , oh , maybe I can see that in a patch on my place , yeah , but that's really , I mean , that's deeply moving that you're experiencing in that way .

I wonder too , jan , about the big news out of last year with the 40,000 acres plus that used to be Ted Turner's and that used to be Osage but that's come back into Osage hands as part of a direct concerted effort to bring back some of the lands that are Osage lands into Osage hands .

And I wonder we talked with the chief about what it means to put it in the sort of trust structure that it is . But I wonder , from your point of view , what does it mean for your role ? Has it meant like this massive scale up speaking of scale in your sense of what's possible , or , oh my God , how am I going to manage this ?

managing it and still coming out with the same results . But yeah , in terms of possibilities , I think we're still kind of rolling around . So many ideas of you know we've talked about , of course , you know elk is a possibility in the future , but you know just different time types of wildlife management .

You know , focusing on the turkey , focusing on you know , all these other things , but one of our goals is to get a , is to go through the process and get a very solid , just biological assessment on the pieces that we oversee .

You know exactly what species are there across the board and let's just make sure we see it and start kind of over time managing that , you know , and being able to have the science that backs our decisions and you know as being able to have the science that backs our decisions in the , you know , as we see an increase in biodiversity .

Now we have , we can see . You know , the science is showing that over time , and so , yeah , we all get excited . It's just the possibilities and what that looks like , you know , from now to five or 10 years ? I'm not for sure . Um

yeah , we , we want to make sure , at the end of the day , all of the decisions that we make are science-based .

We were discussing internally and with our cultural department team on like a bison dinner this was a little while back and so the discussion was that my generation anyway is going to have to learn how to you know , engage and make meals using bison because that that knowledge has been lost .

So you know and that was , I don't know , an interesting moment to really think about that Like bison were here historically and we know that .

We know it's significant to the Osage people , but to think of it's not that far back where that knowledge was lost , it's just a few generations and that's one good thing about our butcher house facilities we can process , you know , our own animals and in a way that makes sense for our people .

But to try to bring that back is , I don't know there's not really any words for that being able to do that , but just knowing that

how it doesn't take that long for history or for our knowledge to be lost if we don't actively work to keep it .

They keep suet for , you know , different dishes and things like that that they probably wouldn't normally keep otherwise , but for our people it's important , so we're able to do that . So yeah they , they try to come , try to accommodate anything that we need as a , as a nation , as

a people , that we know that other facilities wouldn't do .

But we're in a different , almost a different category , I think , than I wouldn't say all but some tribal nations also , because we put so much money into our infrastructure that a lot of other other tribal nations didn't do , or they did in just a little bit different capacity .

So as far as , like what we have developed , we're leaps and bounds ahead of a lot of other tribal nations , at least in Oklahoma I don't know what I'm more familiar with .

, and I'm so thankful that we have this , because now , trying to find federal funds to do what we did , I don't think it would be feasible , it just wouldn't be able to happen yeah , it's a moment in time .

I mean , we still coming from the environmental department , we still did our own you know , evaluations and reviews and and just we just want to make sure to have that done , but we didn't have the red tape that normally comes with federal funds and so we literally could just do with it as we needed and it was .

You know , Chief talks about that quite a lot about if , given the opportunity , look what tribes can do .

We just were given money away but if you can see the trust fabric that was being built and then the real results on the ground , when the tribes were like your good selves , setting up generational infrastructure yeah , and to me that's almost the punchline it's like , if you're gonna cut on mass as authorities , then sure , but have a look first .

Yeah , that's probably the most concerning thing , again from an outside perspective , trying to make sense of what's happening .

It's the somewhat well abstracted I'll use that word again just disconnected way that it's happening .

Yeah , we just visited the greenhouse too , another piece of infrastructure that you've set up , bringing forth that other aspect of food sovereignty , incredible structure and incredible staff too , from what I gather , we had some chats over there and lovely sort of legacy piece with the pineapple coming out of the film killers of the flower yes , I've heard that we're

the uh , and maybe it was mentioned in the greenhouse that we're the biggest producer of pineapples in oklahoma

somehow , I have no doubt I was seeing the road proliferate . But yeah , so all it's this multi-faceted thing you're managing to create it's really quite inspiring what are you seeing next , I wonder . That's a great question .

, so once I think that's just going to , at least in terms of food sovereignty , just continue to grow um indefinitely .

At Butcher House one of the things that we're working on is field harvesting for our bison . So you know , now we don't have that process in place , we have to physically take the bison there . But one of the long-term goals is to get , you know , a mobile , you know , meat processing truck for , like a trailer , little mobile unit .

So we can go out and harvest them in the field . So of course that's safer for our employees

, you know , safer for the bison , you know it's just a better process anyway . So you know there's at least with just logistics of the facilities . It's just always about expanding and doing what we can .

I'm wondering if you've seen the the outcome of all this in any moments like that , in people where you've thought to yourself wow , look , what this can do there's a few moments like that one in particular , because also the goal of our facilities , of our food sovereignty facilities , is to keep the cost down .

But there was one particular person that somebody had told me it was a person in our office , actually had gone down and was waiting in line and there was a lady next to him in line and she said that she had never been able to buy meat , that they had always lived off of what they were able to get you know deer and things like that , you know wild game

because they couldn't afford to go to the store and buy meat . So she was so excited because that was the first time that she was able to actually purchase meat , because it was affordable yeah and that I had called executive and you know , just made sure to tell everybody .

I said that's why we're doing this because , even though we can buy meat , there are people that can't , and so we need to always remember that those are the people that we're trying to help .

it accessible , in that way , it's almost again the ultimate achievement . Wonderful Jan , you got anything else on your mind ?

Because it just blows my mind , no matter where , even all small farmers that are producing amazing clean food as medicine , they oftentimes can't give it away , which is incredibly frustrating , and so so much of that is education on the importance of clean food . Do you have ?

Don spoke to this a little bit , but in terms of how we reach and that's always my interest too in the world of media and marketing and storytelling of getting people to care more , where are you with that ?

I think that's kind of one of the continual challenges that we have is people it just blows my mind , but they just don't know we're here , even though we have this facility . People just , I don't know , assume it's not open to the public ,

or assume it's only for Osages and it's not for anybody . Open to the public , or assume it's only for osages and it's not for anybody , or there's a lot of assumptions . I feel like that's , um , sometimes challenging to overcome .

So we're always yeah , the mobile market's great because we're getting our name out there and getting making those connections to let people know like you don't have to come just to the market , no matter where it's at . You can come here any day , five days a week . Please come , we want that , we want people to come here .

And so I think Butcher House is doing a lot . I don't know exactly why , but I think they're doing a lot better . People are using them a lot more and of course , you know that's a lot of uh , just private , um , private . You know ranchers using them for processing their own , you know animals and things like that .

But , um , but harvest land always seems to be a little bit of a challenge and it comes back to , in my opinion , the education piece we have to be able to .

And it comes back to , in my opinion , the education piece we have to be able to not give up , just keep pushing forward and keep making connections and keep finding ways to connect people to this facility .

know , it seems we get excited here .

And so when I was little taking lessons , my teacher at the time also played the harp and so I was introduced to the harp . So and then , you know , went on and never played again , so had a little I don't know moment last summer . So me and my daughter are taking harp lessons . I went and bought a harp , we have a harp , we drive to Tulsa twice .

A daughter are taking harp lessons . I went and bought a harp , we have a harp , we drive to tulsa twice a month and take harp lessons . So , uh , piano wasn't her thing . So we're going down , I'm learning the harp , but wow yeah , that's cool , so even funnier story . Uh , well , maybe it's not funny .

My uh grandma ended up teaching me and so , um , she has a uh , I was talking with her recently . She has this uh baby gran steinway piano and I she's always had it in her house and it's from the 1920s and so , um , beautiful piano and uh .

so I was talking to her just a couple months ago and I asked her um , I never asked before , what's the history on the piano ? We've had it in our family forever , since the 20s . She said my family's overseas . She said her family bought that in the 20s , you know , during the whole .

You know , boom , they were shareholders and they had some money and so they bought the piano and it was like just that little piece of history . I had no idea and I never even thought to ask .

We'd have to use a knife and fork and eat off this table right now but . I've got photos out in the hall of my ancestors eating out their hands on the ground together and we went and had a look at that , but same era and dressed , doing that , dressed to the nines .

Yes , it's fascinating and such a unique heritage and there's that piano standing as a monument to it as well . I don't suppose you've got a piano around here somewhere . No , wouldn't that be good . Have you recorded things over the around here somewhere ? Wouldn't that be good ? Have you recorded things over the journey ? No , not even I can catch something in .

I go . Thanks a lot , it's been great speaking with you . Yes , and power to you . Thank you , that's great .

Jann did graciously record some piano for us . You're listening to it now . I'm so very grateful to be able to play it to you here . Apparently the family was too . Jan wrote saying thank you for the opportunity to play . It meant a lot to us and she said the song I played is nearer my God to thee with Schubert's impromptu in G flat major .

It's still stopping me in my tracks . That concludes our series from the Osage Nation , though I'll have a little bonus episode out shortly from that brief and entertaining tour Dawn gave us in the greenhouse . That'll play for you while we spend the week out at the Old Salt Festival in Montana . I'll report on that soon too .

If you missed the episode with Cole from out there at the Old Salt Co-op last year , you might enjoy episode 217 . And again , if you happen to have come to the Osage series here first , you can hear my conversation with Chief Standing Bear last week and the brief scene-setting introductory episode with filmmaker Nicol Ragland the week prior to that .

For now , back to Jann and her grandmother 's Steinway . Steinway . My name's Anthony James . Thanks for listening .