Bringing Innovation to Business at the Osage Nation

Jim Gray is the Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, the youngest Chief in the history of the Osage Tribe. Gray serves as Chairman of the Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association (ITMA) deliberating on the Federal Government’s mismanagement of Native American trust funds and is Co-Chair of the National Budget Council, which sets the priorities for the Bureau of Indian Affair’s $2.3 billion budget.

Formerly Chief Gray was co-publisher of the largest independently owned Indian Newspaper in America, the Native American Times.

The Osage Nation has seen enormous change in the past decade, as its Principal Chief I have engaged the Osage people on an unprecedented level and instituted a system of governance that continues to engage and challenge the Osage people to strive to do their best. In the field of economic development, our vision of an integrated system is becoming a reality.

In 2002, when I was first elected, the Osage Nation had a form of government similar to many tribes in the United States, in that it was tribal council; albeit of different origin and with a different past than other tribes. Political participation for Osage citizens was determined by their inheritance of a share in the tribally owned mineral rights held in trust by the federal government. Then in 2004, the Osage Nation was successful in getting their sovereign right to form their own government and citizenship reaffirmed by the United States Congress.

LESSON LEARNED – Work within your system for long term positive change, don’t fight the system from the outside!

With the sovereign re-affirmation, the Osage Tribal Council courageously began a government reform process to draft an Osage Constitution, and get it passed by popular referendum before the end of their term in 2006. During this process, I assumed the role of a watchful and influential interested party; then I gave control of the process to the Government Reform Commission and their staff.

LESSON LEARNED – Empower others and give them a stake in the process. This minimizes your detractors and increases the synergies of your stakeholders for greater commitment and success.

Against the backdrop of the government reform, the Osage Nation was continuing its economic development efforts, utilizing its unique reservation status in Oklahoma to open its first casino in 2005 on land it purchased; which qualifies as Indian country for gaming purposes. While the Osage Tribal Council system of government allowed many elected leaders to appoint themselves and their relatives to serve on Osage business boards, change was coming.

As has been proved across Indian Country, this arrangement leads to complications as elected leaders make business decisions based in political rationality and not based on wise business reasons. So I abstained from serving as an Osage business decision-maker to demonstrate my commitment to this conviction that business and politics should be separate.

LESSON LEARNED – People model what they see and sometimes your future health and wellness comes from what you do today!

Under the new Osage Constitutional three branch government, with its system of checks and balances and separation of powers, the Principal Chief appoints board members, and the Osage Congress confirms them by resolution. With ongoing businesses, I appointed three new Board members to oversee Osage gaming operations, and other board members to oversee Osage Nation Enterprises, Inc, and Osage Business Enterprises.

While there were ongoing business interests of the Nation, it was clear to me that reform must also come to their operating structures. Before fully launching these major reforms, I sought the advice of the Osage public by calling for the creation of a 25 year Strategic Plan based on a citizen-participatory model. The Strategic Plan took roughly14 months to complete, and reached out in over 26 community meetings and a 7200 person survey, the results of which were honed into priorities by expert groups, and finalized in a one community-based facilitated summit.

Rather than inserting myself into business operations we began a program of governmental reform of the Osage economic structure. The results of these Reforms and subsequent Acts were to separate business from politics and realign ongoing businesses under the new structures. While elected leaders are outlawed from participating in the business decisionmaking and day-to-day operations, the Principal Chief and the Osage Congress have many roles to play in passing commerce laws and overseeing their implementation.

LESSON LEARNED – Make short term decisions with the long term goals in mind every time. It may not make your immediate decision very popular, but it will serve you well in the end!

Combined these commerce, economic development, regulatory and human resource measures constitute an integrated system stressing innovation and success. When we attracted talented Osage team-players back to the reservation to work for the Nation in previously unheard of numbers not only do the individuals have the motivation, qualifications, and integrity, they bring with them their networks; linkages to ideas, the new and best practices in their various individual fields of expertise. Through thoughtful recruitment of these individuals, their connections help ideas and best practices flow into the Nation, and likewise positive news of the Osage Nation flows into numerous professional fields which in turn will continue to offer many intangible benefits in ways we may not be able to quantify for years to come.

LESSON LEARNED – Give your most valued asset, your people, a reason to stay and your talent pool a reason to come back to you and your long term success will be assured.

So, on the one hand, I may be leading innovation in commerce and economic development at the Osage Nation by instituting an integrated approach, but on the other hand, we must be mindful of fulfilling an ancient destiny, one quietly handed down through generations. Osage ancestors built the Cahokia civilization, the major center of trade in North America where the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers converge.

There, peoples from across the continent converged as well to trade, share beliefs, products, ideas, education, and technologies.

The complex Osage societal structures of those times, are not what we have today, but with our sovereignty re-affirmed, and our government designed by our own people once again, Osage leaders are flourishing and because of it, so are our people.