The Osage Nation and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office are battling over whether the nation has the right to grant a water well permit for its casino in Osage County.
While declaring that he would fight to defend the tribe’s water rights Geoffrey Standing Bear, chief of the Osage Nation, did say he was a little puzzled that no one from the Attorney General’s Office had contacted him before sending the tribe a letter on September 29 saying that the water permit the tribe’s Environmental and Natural Resources Department had granted to the Osage Nation Gaming Enterprise broke the law. The enterprise wants to drill a well west of the casino.
“We go to battle and we fight and along the way people will realize, perhaps, that we should sit down and talk,” Standing Bear said.
He was annoyed that instead of the Attorney General’s Office had used an out of state attorney to send the letter, especially since he is on a fairly good relationship with the AG and with the Oklahoma governor.
Not long after he made those comments the Attorney General Mike Hunter called and set up a meeting.
The conflict goes back more than a century to 1872 when the Osage Nation purchased 1.5 million acres from the Cherokee Tribe with cash and created what it considers it reservation. In 1906 the federal government granted the tribe mineral rights—the tribe insists it never gave up water rights. The state insists otherwise.
Hunter later commented: “I look forward to constructive discussions with Chief Standing Bear and am optimistic that we can resolve our differences in a way that respects the correlative interests of the state of Oklahoma and the Osage Nation.”
