Food ArchiveRepresenting
Osage Nation

The following article is authored by my Undergraduate Academic Adviser and research partner, Dr. Michael Beilfuss. Dr. Beilfuss and I, both disciplined in English literature, found that working in the archive and visiting both Nation built and State built museums. We visited roughly a total of 15 museums, parks, and monuments. While we did reach out to Oklahoma State University, their archive staff were available during summer months. Dr. Beilfuss below has detailed some of the different museums we visited together, as well as the timeline that many of the museums recognize. Below his article, I've included quotes from an interview I conducted with Osage Nation Museum Director Marla Redcorn-Miller.

Past McCaleb Untitled Museum Article by Michael Beilfuss

Before Oklahoma became the 46th state in 1907, most of its land was American Indian reservations, and it was known as Indian Territory. It was the land at the end of the Trail of Tears. Five different tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Seminole nations, were forced to relocate to the Indian Territory from their ancestral homelands in the southeast. Dozens other tribes were also forcibly removed to Oklahoma, including the Osage, whose ancestral homeland included parts of northeast Oklahoma but mostly stretched further east and north along the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio River valleys. Their reservation is now limited to a small section in north central Oklahoma.

There are a number of institutions in Oklahoma that attempt to represent the culture of the many American Indian nations that now call Oklahoma home. Oklahoma City features three major institutions: the Oklahoma History Center, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and most recent addition, The First Americans Museum (FAM).

According to Ginny Underwood, FAM's Marketing and Communications Manager, it is the only museum of its size with an all-Native curatorial staff. She points out that everything in the museum "is told in first person perspective."

Architects worked with tribal elders to choose the location and to design the building.

"The architectural structure of the museum itself is a cosmological clock. The front entrance faces east and during the autumnal and vernal equinox the sun will rise through the center of the remembrance walls."

— Ginny Underwood, FAM Marketing & Communications Manager

"The entire intent of the First Americans Museum is to tell the stories of the 39 tribal nations in Oklahoma today. Only 4 of those tribes are original inhabitants of Oklahoma, the rest were forcibly removed here."

— Ginny Underwood

"There's some research that says what people know about First Americans they learn in K-12, but a lot of that historical context ends in the 1920s. There is a huge information gap from the 1920s to today. A lot of times it is filled in by Hollywood or non-native narratives. What we want people to see is our living culture our living traditions. We're still practicing. We want to be bridge builders. We are still living and practicing our cultures."

— Ginny Underwood

The museum is organized in chronological order and is divided into chapters: Origin to Indian Removal, Indian Removal to Statehood, and Statehood to Today. A walk through the main gallery begins with 320-degree circular digital video installation that features Native voices reciting excerpts of the origin stories of four tribes, with animated representations of those stories on the display. From there the galleries trace over 500 years of history with a combination of artifacts, informational panels, and recordings of oral histories, among other story-telling techniques. The galleries feature a powerful color scheme with red representing "Points of Pride and Power;" a black fading to red to represent "Nationhood" and black to represent "Game Changes/Federal Policy."

The main gallery ends with a distinctly upbeat message about what it means to be a member of a tribe today. For example, the concept of the warrior society which includes veterans but is more than that.

"It isn't just people that go to war, but it is people who uphold values of protection and caring for the community."

— Ginny Underwood

The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and the Oklahoma History Center are not focused exclusively on American Indian nations, but they both have considerable holdings and exhibits related to Native American culture.

The Oklahoma History Center moved to a newly constructed building and opened in 2005 with four main gallery spaces, one of which is devoted to Native American history in Oklahoma. According to Jeff Briley, Deputy Director of the Oklahoma History Center, when the "We Are Who We Were: American Indians in Oklahoma" exhibit was created, the designers started with "essentially a Black Box." They invited all of the tribes associated with Oklahoma to participate in the design process.

"We had buy-in by everybody in the planning process. The whole day of a bunch of white academicians telling the story of what Oklahoma Indians is about was over."

— Jeff Briley, Deputy Director, Oklahoma History Center

Although Briley admits the exhibit is a little dated, it does provide a thoughtful tour through American Indian history as it relates to Oklahoma, from the tribes whose ancestral homelands including parts of what is now Oklahoma, to the tribes who were forced to relocate there in the nineteenth century. The exhibit makes efforts to connect present day American Indian experiences to a rich and diverse history. Briley said that the museum was awarded funds in 2022 to overhaul the exhibit, and the process is just beginning.

Just a few miles north of the Oklahoma History Center, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum also includes extensive Native American holdings and hosts special exhibits with Native American art and artifacts.

"A lot of people don't think about it, but the majority of cowboys were indigenous. Our logo is Jackson Sundown, a Native American cowboy."

— Eric Singleton, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum

The museum features two galleries exclusively devoted to Native American art and history. They include items stretching from the Pre-Columbian era to the present day. A number of the artifacts are accompanied by traditional interpretative panels written by museum staff along with complimentary panels written by American Indians providing their own perspective.

The centrally located and the larger-than-life The End of the Trail sculpture greets guests as soon as they walk in the door of the museum. The imposing plaster sculpture was made in 1915 by James Earle Fraser in San Francisco, and found its way to Oklahoma in the 1960s. The museum offers two different interpretative panels for the sculpture that offer divergent impressions. One is more traditional and includes information about the artist and the statue's providence. It does, however, include some insight into different ways of interpreting the statue:

"By many it is viewed as a reverent memorial to a noble and valiant people. To some Native Americans, however, it is seen as an unpleasant reminder of defeat and subjugation."

The opposite wall features a panel with text written by R. David Edmonds, who is Cherokee. The interpretation includes comments about the racism and oppression American Indians had to endure, and casts the statue in the light of the myth of the "Vanishing Indian." However, Edmonds turns the narrative upside down, tracing a 20th century of growth for American Indian populations and communities. He draws attention to the "modern warriors" who "enlisted in the armed forces" and many American Indians who moved to urban centers to contribute to American society. The panel ends with these words:

"Today, Native Americans proudly ride forward on a trail into the future."

— R. David Edmonds (Cherokee), interpretive panel, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum

Quotes from Marla Redcorn-Miller interview audio, July 2022

About the conception of Osage Nation Museum:

"It never has been just a museum, its been an Osage Museum from the very start."

— Marla Redcorn-Miller, Osage Nation Museum Director

About FAM and the concept of decolonizing museum spaces:

"When you say 'decolonize a space', it is focusing on the colonizer, because you're in conversation with the colonizer. We have our own values, we have our own systems, we have our own beliefs, we focus on those. Through our programming, through our exhibits, out of our core values, it is going to decolonize, and we're not going to get caught up in all of these frameworks that don't really need to be part of who we are."

— Marla Redcorn-Miller

"If you get so caught up in academic frameworks, and not turning towards the people enough, I've seen things get talked all the way around, without ever actually talking about it from the perspective of the artist, or the people it happened to."

— Marla Redcorn-Miller

During the latter half of our research trip, I had the chance to visit Osage Nation, the government of which is located in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and witness food sovereignty in action. Harvest Land, an Osage Nation facility, acts as a greenhouse and crop repatriation program. When I visited in 2022, the farmers there were working to cultivate the Possum Grape, a plant that only occurs wildly. The week I arrived, the latest attempt had shriveled in the nearby nursery.

Harvest Land is a facility that not only serves as a living archive, a place in which plants and stories and practices thrive through community outreach, but it also instills the right to healthy food, something citizens of Pawhuska were without due to the food desert inflamed by the recent COVID 19 Pandemic.

Past McCaleb Untitled Food Sovereignty Article

Native food in the U.S., primarily that of our region, is largely unknown aside from a few dishes. When First Americans are paired with food in the minds of elementary school children, fictionalized accounts of Thanksgiving take precedence. Pilgrims planting fish before corn and comically large turkeys take center stage. Looking back on Native food practices lends us a look into unheard accounts of U.S. treaties, and allows us a look forward into practices like food sovereignty and awareness.

Rations are something we most commonly associate with war and soldiers. We portray them in war movies as hardtack, vacuum-sealed steak, and astronaut ice cream. Romanticization isn't something uncommon with war, but rations take on another narrative besides heroic sacrifice when dealing with the Act of 1883.

Bison fueled many of the plains tribes, both in the North and South, so when colonizers began hunting them in the fury we consume cows today, traditions were altered permanently. Low access to cow and the displacement to Oklahoma with poor soil quality and weather created a food desert for struggling tribes. In the absence of the bison and the forced removal of many tribes to regions they were vastly unfamiliar with, the United States government began its issuance of rations. This was in part a recognition of the lack of resources on the reservations and an attempt to enforce rules upon families through the threat of revoking access to food, something that is considered a war crime modernly. Rations were typically made up of flour, oil, coffee, salt, beans, and other shelf-stable ingredients.

"Few persons probably know how rapidly the American bison is disappearing from the Western plains…. Some idea of the extent of the ruthless slaughter may be formed from the fact that twenty-five thousand bison were killed during the month of May south of the Kansas Pacific Railroad for the sake of their hides alone, which are sold at the paltry price of two dollars each, on delivery for shipment to the eastern market."

— Kansas State Record, 1872, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Native food practices vary largely by region and climate. While researching and interviewing both tribal members and museum staff, most could agree that modern cuisine was either too general to describe or out of reach for consumers locally. My trip through Pawhuska and Muskogee gave greater insight into why Indigenous cuisine is still largely closed off. Leslie, an employee at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum explained her parent's and her own hesitation to practice food tradition.

"I'm in between traditional and nontraditional. I hear the same stories of [people's] grandparents not telling their stories, or there is a huge denial in being Native at all because it wasn't a good idea to be Native in Oklahoma. [Food] is not represented."

— Leslie, employee at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum

Culturally, traditional food is out of reach for most families, Native and not. Establishments such as the Mitsitam Cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian and Thirty-Nine at the First Americans Museum. Plains tribes are represented through the use of grain and ration-based recipes as well as bison. Community food revitalization and sovereignty are also pillars that Osage Nation has taken on in the last two years with Harvest Land.

Harvest Land facilities just out of Pawhuska, Oklahoma — Osage Nation Bird Creek Farms

"It is challenging to understand the cultural components of things like frybread being considered traditional food, yet the Harvest Land is trying to get back to a truly traditional Osage foundation of the foods that were consumed in the Osage's traditional area prior to the integration of government food supplies."

— Jann Hayman

In December 2020, Osage Nation opened Harvest Land, a project funded by the Coronavirus Assistance, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. To address the issue of a growing food desert in Osage County, the director of the Osage Nation Department of Natural Resources Jann Hayman utilizes 40,000 square feet of greenhouse and 44,000 square feet of kitchen and commercial aquaponic systems. I spoke to Jann about the rising need for food sovereignty in the Osage tribe, as well as what Harvest Land has done for stability in the region.

"I think [the government impacting food sovereignty] is a challenge that we are currently dealing with, specifically at the Harvest Land farm. We continually have conversations about what is deemed 'traditional' Osage food. From my perspective, traditional Osage food would be pre-colonial food. To me, food that was supposed to the Osage people through commodities only created food systems that are not focused on the overall health of Indigenous people. It is challenging to understand the cultural components of things like frybread being considered traditional food, yet the Harvest Land is trying to get back to a truly traditional Osage foundation of the foods that were consumed in the Osage's traditional area prior to the integration of government food supplies."

— Jann Hayman, Director, Osage Nation Department of Natural Resources

Husband of nation member volunteering to make jam in Harvest Land kitchens

The Harvest Land farm works to build the capacity to provide produce to Osage Nation programs, such as Title VI (elder nutrition) and Wah-Zha-Zhe Early Learning Academy. Additionally, we hold farmer's markets for the community, have an online store where people can shop and pick up locally, as well as our doors being open to anyone who wants to stop in. Our goal is to get healthy produce into the hands of the community, both Native and non-Native, which ultimately supports a healthier lifestyle for our Osage people.

You can visit and shop at Harvest Land online at harvest-land-osage-nation.myshopify.com.

The United States, even after The Indian Removal Act of 1830, faced the threat of a living and breathing culture. While thousands of Natives died in the forced migration through what we know as The Trail of Tears, the combined cultural impact of tribal community and rising birth rates shocked US officials into a state of defense. In order to defend America's delicate standing against a targeted and brutalized group of people, Union Veteran Richard Henry Pratt thought to take the children.

An almost gravestone-like memorial for the Osage Indian Girls residential school — St. Louis School for Osage Indian Girls, 1887–1949

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in 1879 with the goal of total absorption and assimilation of the Native children sent there. Pratt originally practiced methods of assimilation on men imprisoned in a labor camp, dressing them in military uniforms and disciplining them in English literacy as well as physical industry. When the US government was presented with his "successful" findings, he expanded his prison into Carlisle. Pratt's overall goal with his experiment was to "kill the Indian and save the man." The establishment of this school brought forth a new genocide of Native Americans.

Children inducted into the Boarding School's system were often used to force and intimidate tribal elders or threaten that of reduction or complete restriction of government rations. Conditions inside the schools were crippling physically and emotionally, causing a still unknown fatality count across the United States. Military customs and Catholic tradition were enacted upon the children in order to shift mannerisms and customs, effectively erasing the culture the children were born into.

The US is not exclusive to Residential Schools. As of 2021, more than 1,000 remains of First Nation children were discovered on the property of former residential schools. Canada's response has mostly been led by First Nation leaders and continued searching of the grounds continues to this day. What trails the US behind Canada, is the recognition of these schools at all. Deb Haaland, current United States Secretary of the Interior, issued a report request on behalf of Bryan Newland, Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, to research and locate all existing Residential Schools that operated in the United States from the late 19th century all the way up to schools still enrolled in the mid-eighties. Current efforts, including the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report of May 2022, to locate more children past the current 500 found will rest on the US government's decision to continue the Bureau of Indian Affairs' research. MSSU is approximately 30 minutes from the site of the Quapaw Boarding school, two hours from St. Louis School for Osage Indian Girls, Osage Boarding School, and McCabe Boarding.

Images for the following pages: Osage Boy's Residential school photograph, two pages from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report of May 2022 citing withholding of rations to families unwilling to give children to federal agents.

Group photo of the boys' residential school located in the Pawhuska, Oklahoma area

The following pages are from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report of May 2022, authored by Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Brian Newland, originally included in the McCaleb Project:

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, May 2022 — page 1

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, May 2022 — page 2