Bite size highlights from 2025: The Osage Nation Series

Our curtain-raiser series of bite size highlights drawn from the 2025 wrap up episode continues, with the trinity of episodes (and bonus extra) from the Osage Nation in current day Oklahoma. 

It was an exceptional opportunity to speak with the Chief, featuring a powerful exchange capped by some funny anecdotes (one of each is in this clip). And Jann's breathtaking music accompanies the lot here, played on the Grand Piano of her ancestors relating back to the time depicted in the blockbuster movie Killers of the Flower Moon. All thanks to local filmmaker and friend, Nicol Ragland.

Here are the voices, places and tunes you're hearing:

0m - Nicol Ragland (ep 261), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (introducing the series)

0.46 - Piano piece played by Dr Jann Hayman (from ep 263)

1.32 - Chief Standing Bear (ep 262) 

2.26 - Dr Jann Hayman (ep 263), Secretary of Natural Resources for the Osage Nation

3.50 - Dawn Wormington (ep 263 bonus) (with a funny tale from the filming of Killers of the Flower Moon)

Title image: Chief Standing Bear (supplied)

To access all episodes, including the full 2025 highlights package in ep 289, head to the website (where there’ll often be photos with each episode), or wherever you get your podcasts. 

With thanks to our wonderful guests and the musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here.

And thanks for listening and supporting the podcast!

Chapter markers

Chapters

• 0:00 Listening And Storytelling As Tools
• 1:38 Building Sovereignty Through Local Infrastructure
• 2:05 Language As Cultural Backbone
• 2:26 Flexible Funding Without Red Tape
• 3:53 Pineapples In A Greenhouse

Transcript

Nicol Ragland: 0:25

To learn that and to to listen, to constantly listen and to be, you know, in my particular case a storyteller and to try and you know use my tools to um enhance their their story and to and to possibly build on what they're already creating in the world of food sovereignty.

Chief Standing Bear: 1:37

So I said, our butcher house, our harvest land. Look at these as pilot projects. Let's become self-sufficient. Otherwise, we are internally weak in our sovereignty. We're internally weak, which makes us weak when we try to expand or protect ourselves external. It's that's how I see it, and that's how I act. The language carries the culture. And so uh our young people are the success, they'll see me in the grocery store and talk to me in those stage, and I'll say, Yeah, yeah, sure. And I kind of like, God, what did you say?

Dr Jann Hayman: 2:26

And I've heard Jeff talk a lot about that, but there weren't any, it was really just given to the drive to do with it and what we needed to do. So there wasn't, I mean, we still coming from the environmental department, we still did our own 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.

Dawn Wormington: 3:53

They kept their food here in our cooler and our freezer, and one day they were going out whacking the tops off of pineapples to go feed the people, and our horticulturist asked if he could grow them. And I said, absolutely not, because it takes about three to four years. Well, in a greenhouse, it only takes about a year. He made us famous. The news came out, everybody was here, they're growing pineapples in Oklahoma.