Osage Congress convenes for the 2009 Tzi-Zho Session

Osage News reformation and more changes and questions will come as Congress convenes for the 2009 Tzi-Zho Session.

“Paying homage to generations of Osage leaders of the past and present, we give thanks for their wisdom and courage,” said Osage Congressional Speaker Archie Mason in his opening address Sept. 8. “Acknowledging our ancient tribal order as the foundation of our present government, first reformed in the 1881 Constitution of the Osage Nation, we continue our legacy by again reorganizing our government.”

“We the Osage people, based on centuries of being a people, now strengthen our government in order to preserve and perpetuate a full and abundant Osage way of life that benefits all Osages, living and as yet unborn,” Mason said in his written remarks.

The session’s opening day kicked off with the flag colors being presented by members of the American Legion Post 198. Flag and memorial songs followed the flag postings by singers Bruce Cass, Vann Bighorse, Kenny Bighorse, John Bighorse, Jasper Clark and Mary Bighorse.

This year’s Osage Nation Princesses Erica and Elizabeth Moore joined the opening day events and performed a sign language interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer while Lou Brock played the keyboard and sang.

Mason said the Nation’s First Congress will end next year with elections in June for expiring terms, but added the inaugural Congress has been successful in its 38-month reign. “We have gathered ourselves, determined new directions, new procedures, new processes and birth of a new identity known as the Osage Nation Congress,” he said.

To date, Mason said Congress has passed 134 bills, has seen nine bills fail, has enacted 117 bills and has experienced 24 bills being vetoed.

Mason said Congress has had the privilege to consider several important pieces of legislation, but warned his colleagues by saying “we must not burn ourselves out. Change is occurring so rapidly and the ’hurry sickness’ is so rampant in our society that avoiding stress damage takes extra effort.”

“We must take that extra effort in order to make good judgment, not for the sake of our sanity, but for the good of greatness of our Osage people,” Mason said.

Principal Chief Jim Gray joined Mason in giving opening remarks and said the Nation is continuing its legacy of exercising its sovereignty which Osages have had since time immemorial.

Gray referred to Webster’s Dictionary for definitions of sovereignty, one of which defines it as “supreme and independent power or authority in government as possessed or claimed by a state or community. Or in our case, a tribe,” he added.

“Today we exercise our sovereignty through the Osage Constitution,” Gray said in his address. “In that very document, all of us made a public pledge to preserve, protect and defend its principles, its checks and balances, its mandates of responsibility upon all of us to put the interests of the nation ahead of our own.”

Gray said in using the constitution, “we must tell the Osage people that our spirited debate is required to address all of these issues confronting the Nation… Of course we will never agree 100 percent of the time and it’s time we come clean with the Osage people and explain that only through spirited debate can better legislation be passed.”

In the Tzi-Zho Session, Congress will consider several bills and resolutions, including the 2010 fiscal year budgets for the Nation’s three government branches.

Gray described debate amongst elected government officials as a strength, not a weakness, and “the fuel that feeds our democracy. For only through responsible, honorable debate based on principles, not personalities, can the best ideas be achieved.”

Gray said he welcomes questions and skepticism as Congress considers the 2010 government budgets to demonstrate that “Osage democracy is alive and well… we accept the challenge of doing our part to bring our debate to the highest level, worthy of our ancestors in producing the best work we know that’s in for us for our Osage people.”

Mason said Congress has appropriated more than $92.8 million in tribal funding to date during the appropriation process with more than $56.4 million in the bank on deposit as of Aug. 31.

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