The Osage Nation is vast in both size and population, spanning about a million and a half acres across Oklahoma, with 20,000 members and counting. While the Sooner State is home to 39 federally recognized tribes, the story of the land encompassing the Osage Nation Reservation, also known as Osage County, is as fascinating and complex as the rangeland ecology itself.
To understand Osage Nation land today is to recognize that it bears a storied history rife with colonization, displacement and the discovery of oil, with land changing hands often many times over the past several hundred years. While some land parcels stewarded through generations were well cared for, the health of many Osage Nation acres went neglected, prized only for the rich “black gold” underground.
Today, Osage Nation leaders are restoring the landscape and creatively strengthening the local food supply chain, rooted in a thriving, sovereign Tribal community.
“When the ranch came up for sale, it was a one-time opportunity to get this property back, to make it better for our grandkids and generations to come,” says Berbon Hamilton of Osage Nation Ranch, LLC, referring to their 2017 purchase of land back from Turner Ranches.
Watch the tallgrass sway in the wind across the expansive tallgrass prairie, and you’ll understand why leaders want to restore this beautiful corner of Oklahoma and bring the land back, one piece at a time.
Restoring the Land for Future Generations
This spring, America’s Conservation Ag Movement visited to learn more about the restoration efforts happening in Oklahoma’s Osage Nation. From nourishing a growing bison herd and repairing rangeland to tackling innovative supply chain solutions, the work happening on the ground in and around Pawhuska is nothing short of inspiring.
Other advocates such as ACAM partner and agricultural nonprofit, Farm Journal Foundation, are launching additional programs and initiatives to support Native American cattle farmers and ranchers with climate-smart grazing practices. According to the foundation, agricultural leadership is the foundation to achieving global food security.
“Tribal producers play an essential role in strengthening our food system and regional food security,” says Maddie Skellie, Farm Journal Foundation’s senior program manager. “Native populations are in key rural areas, thus investing in Tribal producers allows rural America to build necessary infrastructure and uplift communities.”
Agriculture and climate-smart practices are the building blocks for this investment, Skellie adds.
“According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, Tribal producers nearly doubled economic revenues in the past five years, reporting $6.4 billion in 2022, up from $3.6 billion in 2017,” she added.
Case in point: creatively using all the tools in their tool belt, Osage Nation organizations across rural Osage County are doubling down and restoring the vast acreage once overgrazed and advancing food sovereignty across the entire community.
Leading the charge, the Osage Nation Department of Natural Resources and the Osage Nation Ranch, LLC have been hard at work. Standing up new programs and practices, they are fostering restoration, conservation land management and food sovereignty gains across the Nation.
One step at a time, Osage Nation leaders are using range management tools such as strategic spray plans, prescribed grazing and strengthening food sovereignty resilience by establishing a butcher house open to the public and building greenhouses along with other cultural programs and stewardship practices.
To achieve this, privately held Osage Nation Ranch, LLC has leveraged Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) cost-share programs available to Historically Underserved producers to gain technical support and defray financial costs associated with implementing a comprehensive, multiyear conservation stewardship plan.
“The NRCS has been a tremendous tool for u;, I don’t know if we could have done all the things we’ve done without them,” says Mike Alexander, Osage Nation Ranch foreman.
NRCS conservation planning and technical support has resulted in prairie restoration, improved rangeland management and water access on the Osage Nation Ranch. What’s more, after three years of conservation planning and work in partnership with the NRCS, the Osage Nation Ranch went from a stock rate of 25 acres per cow to 10 acres per cow.
“If you had seen this ranch before and then see it now, it doesn’t even look like the same place,” Alexander continued. “It’s absolutely a beautiful ranch — it’s been a total transformation.”
NRCS Tribal liaison Cody Parker agrees, adding that conservation planning helps ranchers get ahead of challenges instead of remaining stuck reacting to crises as they unfold.
“Once you get things under control, it goes back to a maintenance standpoint,” Parker says. “[You’re] spending pennies to maintain things instead of dollars to fix problems.”
Witnessing firsthand the red-gold embers of a prescribed fire crawl across the rangeland, incinerating invasive grasses to make room for native grasses to thrive, it’s clear that they’re on to something.
Building Momentum
While pandemic challenges spurred innovative food sovereignty programs by the Osage Nation Department of Natural Resources and an exceptional land deal empowered the Osage Nation Ranch, LLC to implement conservation land management practices, more programs and projects are underway to increase support for Tribal producers and indigenous communities.
One such program, a Climate-Smart Commodity Grant for Native American Producers interested in using grazing practices to sell more beef, is being spearheaded by the Farm Journal Foundation in partnership with other like-minded advocates. Benefits from this grant include direct payments, training and other technical resources for producers.
“Farm Journal Foundations’ climate-smart program supports Native American beef producers with both financial and technical assistance,” Skellie says. “An enrolled producer will receive direct monetary incentives for implementing climate-smart grazing practices, such as prescribed grazing, wells and watering facilities, fencing and planting of native grasses, as well as technical assistance delivered by trusted and skilled specialists from the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC), one of our partners.”
What’s more, producers will have access to technical workshops and an online resource library curated by rangeland management experts from land grant universities and Tribal colleges in the grant’s pilot states of Oklahoma, Florida and Montana.
“Many producers may already be practicing some form of rotational grazing or planting native and perennial species of grass, or other practices,” Skellie says. “This program allows producers to continue those practices, while maybe making some slight adjustments so that they line up with NRCS specifications to match the practice standard. Making these potentially minor changes opens up the possibility for the producer to be incentivized by direct payment to maintain those practice standards.”
One of the aspects Skellie appreciates about this grant program is that it creates “a space and empowers producers to make the best conservation decisions for their operations.”
“I’m excited to learn from each of them about the land and animals they work with every day, and how cattle came to be a part of their life and their community,” she says. “It seems like I’m learning something new about grazing every day from the producers who know how to do it best. There’s nothing quite like the sight and sound of seeing and hearing a bunch of healthy animals munching on some top-notch forage.”
The way she sees it, Tribal producers are at the forefront of climate-smart agriculture today because they have been stewarding and caring for natural resources in many ways for centuries, building deep wells of knowledge and expertise.
“The concept of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has been guided by native peoples’ deep understanding of the relationship between living things and the environment. We have a great opportunity to find synergy between TEK and climate-smart agriculture as we learn and are led by Tribal voices and communities,” Skellie says. “The funds this program provides will hopefully allow those voices to be amplified.”
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