Osage Nation Governmental Reform

Located in northeastern Oklahoma, the Osage people live on the only reservation lands in the state. In 1894, with the discovery of oil on Osage lands, the U.S. government illegally abolished the nation’s own constitution and imposed a new political system, dividing the nation’s lands among 2,229 federally recognized citizens. Only these citizens – and eventually their heirs – had the right to vote or to receive benefits from the tribe’s mineral estate, effectively disfranchising a large portion of the Osage Nation. For more than a century, this government made decisions for the Osage Nation. In 2002, the tribal council, recognizing that its current form of government was untenable and could not assure the future of the nation, established the Osage Government Reform Initiative; two years later, the Nation formed an Osage Reform Commission, an autonomous body separate from tribal government, and charged it with leading a process of constitutional reform. The Commission had two clear objectives: to listen to the Osage people, and to form a government that would be a product of the Osage people themselves. They pursued this through a long, arduous, but ultimately successful series of community meetings, open to all Osages, whether descended from the 1894 rolls or not. In time, citizen feedback, trust, and enthusiasm grew. In June of 2006, the Osage Nation adopted a new constitution, written by the Osage people, that brought back into the tribal community the thousands of Osages who had been excluded by the federally imposed governmental structure more than a century before. One of the first actions of the new Osage government was to develop a 25-year strategic plan identifying needs and goals for the future of the nation. Today, the Osage Nation embraces all its citizens and places in their hands a governing structure that is a product of their own efforts, their own ideas, and their own dreams.