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Total population | |
---|---|
4,576 (2022) [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
United States ( Oklahoma) | |
Languages | |
Shawnee, English, Yuchi | |
Religion | |
Christianity, Native American Church, traditional tribal religion | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, Shawnee Tribe, and Sac and Fox |
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma (or Absentee Shawnee [2] ) is one of three federally recognized tribes of Shawnee people. [3] Historically residing in what became organized as the upper part of the Eastern United States, the original Shawnee lived in the large territory now made up of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and neighboring states. In total, they occupied and traveled through lands ranging from Canada to Florida, and from the Mississippi River to the eastern continental coast.
After Indian Removal, most of the people settled in Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma). In contemporary times, the Absentee Shawnee Tribe reorganized their government in 1936 and became federally recognized; their headquarters is in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdiction area includes land in Oklahoma in both Cleveland and Pottawatomie counties. [4] The other federally recognized tribes are the Shawnee Tribe and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
There are 4,661 enrolled Absentee Shawnee tribal members as of December 31, 2023. [1] Approximately 74% of members live in Oklahoma as of 2020. [4] Tribal membership is based on blood quantum criteria, with applicants required to have a minimum of one-eighth (1/8) documented Absentee-Shawnee blood to be accepted as members, as established by the tribal constitution. [5] Though it is not a formal division, there is a social separation between two major groups of the tribe, based on different histories of their ancestors. Descendants of the traditionalist Big Jim Band have kept cultural traditions and ceremonies; they have their primary community in the Little Axe, or Norman area. The White Turkey Band historically had assimilated more, adopting cultural ways of the European-American majority. Today many of its families are based in the Shawnee area. Regardless of historical viewpoints, the bands cooperate for the future of the tribe.
The tribe operates its own housing authority and issues tribal vehicle tags. It owns a gas station, two smoke shops, two casinos, and the AST Health Center and Plus Care, in Norman or Shawnee, Oklahoma. [6] Its casinos, both called Thunderbird Casino, are east of Norman, near the tribal headquarters in Shawnee. [7] As of 2017, the tribe's economic impact is over $145 million. The tribe has 1,130 paid positions and paid $55 million to workers. [4]
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe has all the inherent powers of sovereignty held prior to the Constitution of the United States. Such powers include adopting and operating a form of government of its choosing, defining the conditions of tribal membership, regulating domestic relations of its members, levying taxes, regulating property within its jurisdiction, and controlling the conduct of membership by legislation and a justice system.
Its chosen form of government evolved over the first half of the 20th century. In 1938, the current government was formalized under a constitution written to provide statutory authority. The current constitution was ratified on December 5, 1938, and it was last amended on August 13, 1988.
The tribal government is composed of two separate branches: the legislative/executive branch (also referred to as Executive Committee) and the judicial branch. In addition, an independent body, the 'Election Committee,' conducts annual elections.
The legislative/executive branch has five members, all elected at-large: Governor, Lieutenant, Secretary, Treasurer, and Representative. Terms are four years. The Executive Committee sets policy, administers government programs, and executes the will of the tribal membership.
The current administration includes the following:
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking people, and at the time of European encounter, they had bands living in present-day Eastern United States and parts of the Southeastern United States.
During the American Revolutionary War, many Shawnee moved from the area later defined as the Northwest Territory near the Great Lakes to Cape Girardeau, Missouri; some later moved into Spanish Louisiana. These bands were later joined by other Shawnee groups from Alabama. Some relocated southward into Arkansas Territory, Spanish Texas, and French Louisiana after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States of former French-controlled lands west of the Mississippi River. Due to encroaching European-American settlement, the Shawnee in Missouri negotiated an 1825 treaty, ceding their Missouri lands for reservations in Kansas.
However, prior to the treaty, a group of Shawnee (later known as the Big Jim band) had already left the region to migrate to Texas Territory, then controlled by Spain. Collectively, the band would become known as Absentee Shawnee, as they were referred to as such in the provisional clause of an 1854 treaty regarding Kansas reservation lands. [10] Later, the Texas-Mexico War compelled numerous Absentee Shawnee to leave Texas Territory and to relocate into Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Historians believe that other Shawnee bands, also once in Kansas, had already resettled in Indian Territory beginning around 1839, the year that the Cherokee Nation were removed from the Southeast to this territory.
In the late 19th century, an Indian Agent of the US government brought soldiers from Fort Reno to force the traditionalist Big Jim band of Absentee Shawnees out of the Deep Fork River area, southward to Hog Creek and Little River area near present-day Lake Thunderbird, Norman. Their descendants, federally recognized since 1936 as the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, continued to live here, in communities now called Little Axe, and Shawnee.
In 1872, the US Congress gave the Absentee Shawnee title to shared lands occupied on the Citizen Potawatomi Nation-Absentee Shawnee Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area (OTSA). [10] [11] In the late 19th century, the communal land was allotted to individual households in an effort to force the tribes to adopt subsistence farming and assimilate to mainstream European-American ways. They lost control of considerable land in the process.
In 1936, the tribe reorganized and gained federal recognition as the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma under the new Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, with the current constitution ratified on December 5, 1938. [12]
Since the early 21st century, the tribe has created the Cultural Preservation Department to support cultural and language preservation. They offer a Shawnee language class and immersion program for children. [13] According to the Intertribal Wordpath Society, as of 2006, some 200 to 800 people still spoke the Shawnee language in Oklahoma. [14] Pauline Wahpepah, a fluent native speaker, teaches Shawnee for the tribe. [15]
George Blanchard, Sr, Governor of the Absentee Shawnee from 2009 to 2013, has more recently also been working on language programs and teaching both children and adults. Since 2014 he has worked as a language specialist at the Eastern Shawnee Cultural Preservation Department in Seneca, Missouri, near the Oklahoma border. He grew up speaking Shawnee and did not learn English until he was five years old. At Seneca, he teaches Headstart and elementary grade classes, as well as adults two evenings a week, to encourage families to use Shawnee at home. Since the early 21st century, he has also provided translations and language coaching on TV projects, such as Ric Burns’s 2009 PBS series We Shall Remain and the 2018 History Channel documentary series Frontiersmen. [16]
The official emblem was designed by Leroy White (October 4, 1928 – July 25, 2002), a great-grandson of Big Jim and direct descendant of Chief Tecumseh. His work was selected in a 1974 competition sponsored by the Absentee Shawnee for a tribal logo.
White said about his design:
Leroy White was born and raised in Little Axe, Oklahoma, on land allotted to his family in 1886, in the break-up of communal tribal lands. White was immersed from birth in the Shawnee language and traditions.[ citation needed ] In 1976 he was selected to succeed his uncle, Webster Little Jim, as the traditional chief of the Big Jim band of Absentee Shawnee Tribe. His interests included painting. In 1974, with the encouragement of his family, White had entered the contest sponsored by the Absentee Shawnee Tribe for design of a tribal logo. He included what he believed are the most important symbols to the Absentee Shawnee people. White won the contest, and his design was adopted as the official emblem of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe.[ citation needed ]
The Kickapoo people are an Algonquian-speaking Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe, originating in the region south of the Great Lakes. Today, three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes are in the United States: the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. The Oklahoma and Texas bands are politically associated with each other. The Kickapoo in Kansas came from a relocation from southern Missouri in 1832 as a land exchange from their reserve there. Around 3,000 people are enrolled tribal members.
Pink is a town in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States, and is part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area. The only town in the United States bearing this name, Pink lies within the boundaries of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The population was 2,091 at the time of the 2020 Census, which is 1.6% above the 2010 census figure of 2,058, which itself was a 76.7% increase from the figure of 1,165 in 2000.
The Kaw Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma and parts of Kansas.
The Iowa, also known as Ioway, and the Bah-Kho-Je or Báxoje, are a Native American Siouan people. Today, they are enrolled in either of two federally recognized tribes, the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma and the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.
The Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples. Originally from the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan area, they were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s and are predominantly Sauk. The Sac and Fox Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area (OTSA) is the land base in Oklahoma governed by the tribe.
The Shawnee are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language.
The Peoria are a Native American people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.
The Wyandotte Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe headquartered in northeastern Oklahoma. They are descendants of the Wendat Confederacy and Native Americans with territory near Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Under pressure from Haudenosaunee and other tribes, then from European settlers and the United States government, the tribe gradually moved south and west to Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and finally Oklahoma in the United States.
The Plains Apache are a small Southern Athabaskan tribe who live on the Southern Plains of North America, in close association with the linguistically unrelated Kiowa Tribe. Today, they are headquartered in Southwestern Oklahoma and are federally recognized as the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. They mostly live in Comanche and Caddo County, Oklahoma.
The Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma is one of two federally recognized tribes for the Iowa people. The other is the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Traditionally Iowas spoke the Chiwere language, part of the Siouan language family. Their own name for their tribe is Bahkhoje, meaning, "grey snow," a term inspired by the tribe's traditional winter lodges covered with snow, stained grey from hearth fires.
The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe of Cherokee Native Americans headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. According to the UKB website, its members are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers" or "Western Cherokees," those Cherokees who migrated from the Southeast to present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817. Some reports estimate that Old Settlers began migrating west by 1800, before the forced relocation of Cherokees by the United States in the late 1830s under the Indian Removal Act.
Citizen Potawatomi Nation is a federally recognized tribe of Potawatomi people located in Oklahoma. The Potawatomi are traditionally an Algonquian-speaking Eastern Woodlands tribe. They have 29,155 enrolled tribal members, of whom 10,312 live in the state of Oklahoma.
The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes in the United States. There are also Kickapoo tribes in Kansas, Texas, and Mexico. The Kickapoo are a Woodland tribe, who speak an Algonquian language. They are affiliated with the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, and the Mexican Kickapoo.
The Shawnee Tribe is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma. Formerly known as the Loyal Shawnee, they are one of three federally recognized Shawnee tribes. The others are the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
The Otoe–Missouria Tribe of Indians is a federally recognized tribe, located in Oklahoma. The tribe is made up of Otoe and Missouria peoples. Their language, the Chiwere language, is part of the Siouan language family.
The Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, also known as the Ponca Nation, is one of two federally recognized tribes of Ponca people. The other is the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. Traditionally, peoples of both tribes have spoken the Omaha-Ponca language, part of the Siouan language family. They share many common cultural norms and characteristics with the Omaha, Osage, Kaw, and Quapaw peoples.
The Poarch Band of Creek Indians are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans with reservation lands in lower Alabama. As Mvskoke people, they speak the Muscogee language. They were formerly known as the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi. The Poarch Band of Creek Indians are a sovereign nation of Muscogee (Creek) people with deep ancestral connections to lands of the Southeast United States.
The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is the only federally recognized Native American tribe of Miami Indians in the United States. The people are descended from Miami who were removed in the 19th century from their traditional territory in present-day Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized Shawnee tribes. They are located in Oklahoma and Missouri.
Earnest Spybuck was an Absentee Shawnee Native American artist, who was born on the land allotted the Shawnee Indians in Indian Territory and what was to later become Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, near the town of Tecumseh. M. R. Harrington, an archaeologist/anthropologist, was touring the area documenting Native Americans, their history, culture and living habits. Interested in the religious ceremonies of the Shawnee which included the use of peyote, Harrington had ventured to the Shawnee Tribal lands. There he learned of Earnest Spybuck's artistic work and encouraged Spybuck in his endeavors. While Spybuck's work was obviously art, Harrington saw that he was illustrating detailed scenes of ceremonies, games, and social gatherings which could be used to illustrate many anthropological publications. Spybuck's work was received positively by both Native American and non-native artistic communities. Many of his works are now held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.