Chief Speaks about Osage History and Financial Well-Being

I am honored to write from the ancestral homelands of my people, the Osage Nation. When my ancestors lived in what would later become the St. Louis area, they called themselves 𐓩𐓣𐓪𐓤𐓘͘ 𐓮𐓤𐓘, meaning “Children of the Middle Waters,” highlighting the importance of the many rivers within this region to Osage life. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis head office is located near the banks of the Mississippi River, once a source of economic opportunity and prosperity for the Osage people.

I lead the Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment program, or NEFEE, which supports the financial and economic well-being of tribal nations and Native communities across the U.S. by strengthening access to economic and personal finance education and is headquartered at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This work is part of the St. Louis Fed’s broader efforts to provide economic and financial education resources to teachers, students and consumers, consistent with the Federal Reserve’s public service mission to strengthen the economy and our communities.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to speak with Geoffrey Standing Bear, principal chief of the Osage Nation. We spoke about a range of topics, including the Osage removal from Missouri, the history depicted in the film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and the important role tribal leaders have in advancing financial well-being for their peoples today.

Removal from Homelands

To make way for westward expansion, the Osage were forced to cede millions of acres to the U.S. government through a series of treaties in the 1800s, including an 1808 treaty for over 52 million acres encompassing almost all of what is now Missouri. (See map below.) William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, would later regret his role in orchestrating the 1808 treaty terms on behalf of the U.S. government, according to an August 2002 Smithsonian article, “Iron Will.”

Map via Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office

The Osage were forced to cede millions of acres to the U.S. government in present-day Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma in the 1800s to make way for American westward expansion.

In 1872, the Osage, by an act of U.S. Congress, were required to leave their diminished reservation in Kansas for their current reservation in present-day Oklahoma. Chief Standing Bear said that the Osage chose their 1.47-million-acre reservation because they believed the lands would be undesirable to settlers. However, the discovery of oil on the reservation in the late 1800s had the opposite effect.

Like many tribes impacted by the federal policy of allotment, the Osage lost communal ownership of their lands, Chief Standing Bear said.

“But what’s different about the Osage is that [Principal Chief] James Bigheart and some of the chiefs at the time said, ‘We will sever the mineral estate because we have found this oil here and it has some value,’” he said.

By severing the mineral estate, the Tribe retained rights to sub-surface oil, gas and other minerals even when they lost ownership of the surface lands. The Osage Nation was “holding things up,” Chief Standing Bear said, so the federal government severed the mineral estate.

“And then they gave every one of the surviving Osages a share of the headright—they call it a headright share, which is a right to a royalty,” he said. “And there was a roll of 2,229 surviving Osages.”

Their foresight led to the Osage becoming some of the wealthiest people per capita in the world by the early 20th century.

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

Last year, the Osage Nation received international attention through the Academy Award-nominated movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the nonfiction book by David Grann. Filmed primarily on the Osage Reservation, the movie depicts a dark period of American history in the early 1900s, known as the “Reign of Terror,” when Osages were targeted for their wealth. As Grann notes in his book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, “The Osage found themselves surrounded by predators—‘a flock of buzzards,’ as one member of the tribe complained at a council meeting.”

Under federal law (PDF), a guardian was required for those Osage Indians whom the Department of Interior considered to be “incompetent.” Because guardians controlled how these Osage “wards” could spend their money and how much they could withdraw from their trust funds, the guardianship system left the Osage vulnerable to fraud, swindles and theft, Grann writes. In his 1985 book, The Underground Reservation: Osage Oil, Terry P. Wilson noted that by December 1924, certain funds mishandled by guardians amounted to $8 million, or $145 million today when adjusted for inflation.

This system created an “elaborate criminal operation,” in which many were complicit, as Grann details:

The crooked guardians and administrators of Osage estates were typically among the most prominent white citizens: businessmen and ranchers and lawyers and politicians. So were the lawmen and prosecutors and judges who facilitated and concealed the swindling (and, sometimes, acted as guardians and administrators themselves).

Because of the lack of financial control and the exploitation, Osages were also restricted from developing their own financial skills.

The Federal Guardianship System for Osages

Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear described the federal guardianship system and how, even long after the Reign of Terror, the money of those who didn’t have a guardian, including his grandmother, was controlled. His comments followed a discussion about the importance of financial knowledge.

Transcript

Megan Cruz: Chief, I want to talk about the guardianship system, which isn’t really that long ago in our past, and it restricted Osages from really being able to develop financial knowledge. Could you maybe explain how that increased the exploitation of this guardianship system and not being able to develop that knowledge?

Chief Standing Bear: Well, among the Osage and many other tribes there was a belief of the United States that to maintain control over the individual—because, remember, the tribal governments were smashed up and have just been rebuilding since the 1970s—that federal control was best illustrated, I believe, in what you saw in the movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” when Mollie says, “Mollie Kyle, incompetent.”

And the Osages were determined to be competent or incompetent. If you were determined to be incompetent, sometimes the government would apply a guardianship requirement on you. But other times, you just couldn’t function unless you had a guardian, because, if you didn’t, you couldn’t get money out of your account very easily. And going through all those hoops was extremely difficult.

And I can tell you, that when I was in high school, I drove my grandmother 60 miles up here to Pawhuska from her home in Tulsa to access her money, and she had a good amount that was held by the government. She did not have a guardian.

But we needed a new lawn mower. And so, we went and applied for money to buy a lawn mower. We did that first thing in the morning. And after being interviewed by the lawyer, the solicitor, we were able to get permission to go down and pick up a lawn mower. Now, if she had a guardian, this process would have still occurred.

But, you know, she had gone to a Catholic school in the early 1900s. She was a smart woman. And so we went down there and picked up the lawn mower.

But that—the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] agent made all the decisions of what size of a lawn mower. And I was sitting right there, and when he called down to the store and, said, “Well, now, Mrs. Standing Bear, no, she won’t need that. No,” etc. And so he said, “Oh, they’ll have it for you.” We went down there, picked it up, but we never had any say-so. We don’t know how much we paid for it.

Financial Well-Being and Importance of Financial Education

Disparities faced by Native Americans are not just part of this country’s past. Today, Native Americans experience significant barriers to financial inclusion, including limited access to banking and few opportunities to develop financial knowledge. In census tracts with majority American Indian and Alaska Native populations, almost half of the residents live in banking deserts (12 times the national average).

Chief Standing Bear noted that financial education is an important tool for tribal leaders to promote financial well-being for their peoples.

Why Financial Education Is Key

Principal Chief Standing Bear illustrated the importance of financial education with a story about one family he knew who ran into difficulties with property taxes.

Transcript

Megan Cruz: As you know, Chief, we work on financial education with tribes across the country for our program, Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment, or NEFEE for short. And one thing in talking with tribal leaders, the question that I get that they’re interested in is, how can in this modern era they promote financial well-being for their people but still honor their traditional values of wealth and culture? What are your thoughts on this?

Chief Standing Bear: Well, it’s not like we’re talking too far in the past when we talk about the present. I’d say I practice law. When I look out the window, the courthouse of Osage County is right on the same hill, and it makes me think of this man who was one of the last of his generation. He was a peyote priest. It’s a peyote ceremony. And his older brother had died some years ago. And he had these four sisters, and they have children and grandchildren, and I know all these people. But they had this beautiful home, built in the ’20s, on a ranch, with Native American churches, traditional. But they didn’t pay their property taxes to the county, and they didn’t understand the property taxes.

So, when they got the notices, and they did get notice that they owed so much money—well, you’d have to be able to understand what that meant. And they had gone to school and learned English, but they didn’t understand when the county tax assessors came in, or the Treasurer’s Office sent something out to them saying, “You must owe this,” or this lien. What a lien…they didn’t know what a lien was. So even though they could read, you don’t learn things in sixth grade about what a foreclosure is, what a lien is, what a debt is. And so they lost everything, and they’re all in poverty. And that family, most of them, well, many of these families live in government housing, federal government housing.

So the federal government is spending money, along with us, to provide decent housing when they had everything. And just because they couldn’t understand what these concepts were, they lost it all. And that is so common among the Native people, and I would think other communities that are not Native.

Tribal nations, as sovereign governments, are positioned to provide direct support and programs to citizens of all ages to encourage wealth building and to help individuals protect their wealth. Tribal governments are also able to serve their communities in a culturally appropriate manner. Financial well-being is often viewed through a western, Eurocentric lens and is not always inclusive of Native cultural values, including the importance of giving wealth away within a community.

Culturally appropriate financial education begins in partnership with tribal nations and Native communities. Since they are not monolithic, it’s imperative to engage tribal leadership to better understand the unique financial education needs of their peoples.

For example, the Osage have historically had a communal view of wealth. Chief Standing Bear illustrated that view with a story about a visit from an elderly visitor when he was a teenager. The man and his wife had “nothing,” and Standing Bear’s parents had to give them gas money for the trip to their house, the chief said. Standing Bear told the man that he really liked his jacket.

“And he goes, ‘You like that, Grandson?’ And I said yeah,” Chief Standing Bear said. “He just took it off. And it was a little big for me, and he goes, ‘You keep that. You keep that.’ And I did, had it for years.”

Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment Program

Building on the Bank’s economic education expertise, the St. Louis Fed began partnering with tribal nations and Native communities to provide financial education to their members and citizens in 2018. The first partnership was with the Osage Nation, a fitting tribute to the Tribe’s deep ties to the Eighth Federal Reserve District, which spans all of Arkansas and portions of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. As demand for this education increased among Native communities, we established the NEFEE program in 2020. Since its inception, NEFEE has partnered with over 40 tribal nations from the Pacific Northwest to Florida. The Atlanta Fed also supports NEFEE initiatives and engagement activities.

Tribal government staff and Native educators are provided training and empowered to conduct financial education programming. They are closely connected with their communities and are best-positioned to meet the needs of the constituents they serve. NEFEE also seeks opportunities to honor tribal nations’ languages and cultures within curricula for as early as pre-K.

As tribal nations and Native communities are in the process of rebuilding their economies, financial knowledge gives individuals more tools to help shape their own decision-making and futures.

St. Louis Fed’s Role in Promoting Economic and Financial Inclusion

My ancestors found prosperity in the St. Louis region. While over 150 years have passed since the Osage arrived at their Oklahoma reservation, the ancestral homelands have not been forgotten. Chief Standing Bear highlighted the Nation’s continued connection with the Eighth District, including ongoing efforts to share Osage culture and history with communities in the region. There are also still reminders of the Osage people who once called this place home—in location names and in the remnants of our mounds and our sacred sites.

In our current time, the St. Louis Fed can contribute to the economic and financial well-being of Native communities through the Bank’s leadership in economic and financial education. As we seek to create a more inclusive economy, we must not forget the First Americans.