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Crown Oklahoma!

Author:   Matt Deatherage  
Posted: 6/7/02; 1:40:31 AM
Topic: Crown Oklahoma!
Msg #: 272 (top msg in thread)
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Reads: 5273

Several years ago, Jim Lehrer wrote a series of novels about a boy who grew up in Kansas and lost an eye playing "kick the can," and went on to grow up in Oklahoma, becoming a prominent politician and lieutenant governor. At one point in the "One-Eyed Mack's" career, he was lieutenant governor to a boundless and empty governor whose major campaign promise was putting a useless dome on Oklahoma's State Capitol building. His slogan was "Crown Oklahoma! Crown Oklahoma!" It's a very funny book. And, amazingly, it's come true. Vacuous class warrior Gov. Frank Keating, whose major driving force in office has been an overwhelming sense of inferiority to other states he'd prefer to live in, campaigned long and hard to put a dome on the Capitol building. After raising about $20 million in private funding, the legislature approved it and Keating signed it. We don't have money to raise teacher salaries from the bottom 10% in the nation, but we can find money to Crown Oklahoma! And they may wind up needing taxpayer money to finish the Great Semispherical Boondoggle anyway. It even has its own Web site. Sigh. That said, it is happening. Whether we should have done it or not, we're putting a dome on the State Capitol. It's to be dedicated on 2002.11.16, the state's 95th anniversary. The very top is to hold a 17-foot statue called "The Guardian." Picked in a blind judging competition, the figure is a "generalized" Native American ("Indian"). The artist is Kelly Haney -- a state senator and candidate for Governor this fall. The statue is to be raised today, 2002.06.07, and stay atop the dome for 100 years before it needs to be removed for cleaning. All this week, it's been on exhibit at the Capitol, on the ground where people can go see it. So, being on vacation, I went to see it. The Oklahoma State Capitol is a low-key place. For example, look at this: Oklahoma Constitution: The original Oklahoma Constitution, from 1907, on exhibit in the Oklahoma State Capitol, second floor. The smudges that looks like stains are fingerprints on the glass exposed by the flash. Just to the right of this exhibit, at the end of the short hall on the east side of the rotunda, is the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Taken 2002.06.06. That's the original Oklahoma state constitution, on display on the second floor of the Capitol building in a display explaining its progressive roots, something today's leaders would normally like to forget. That's on the east side of the rotunda (which was there before the dome). Go to the end of the east hall and you're in the state Supreme Court. On the south side of the rotunda on the same floor is the Court of Criminal Appeals (the court of highest appeal in criminal matters in Oklahoma). The Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and other officials also have offices right there in the building. So does the Governor. You can see native Oklahoma artwork, the original state seal (moved from Guthrie in the middle of the night to fulfill the voters' mandate that Oklahoma City should be the capital), and lots more. The Oklahoma Historical Society is just down the street, if you want more, but the Capitol is open, accessible, and a pretty formidable building to boot. Dome South Distant: Oklahoma State Capitol dome construction, south face, 2002.06.06 Visitors park on the south side, and even from there, the dome construction is pretty impressive. The detail a little closer makes the dome look distinctive, at least to me: Dome South Close: Oklahoma State Capitol dome construction, south face, close-up, 2002.06.06 The statue has been on the north side of the building all week, right out where people can touch it and have their pictures taken with it. Here's a view from its left side: Guardian Left: "The Guardian" statue slated for the top of the Oklahoma State Capitol dome, left side, 2002.06.06 From further north, you can see the statue in the lower left of the picture, and its destination on top of the dome, a ceremony that's scheduled to take place about nine hours after I'm writing this: Guardian and Dome: "The Guardian" statue and its eventual of the Oklahoma State Capitol dome. The 17-foot statue was on the south steps of the Capitol for one week on exhibition, and was to be raised on 2002.06.07 to the top of the dome, also shown in the picture. It's scheduled to remain up there for 100 years before cleaning, not that anyone's Palm Pilot has that appointment scheduled. The dome is not an incredibly popular project in Oklahoma, like much of what Keating wants. It's all about appearance over substance. The original Capitol architects designed for a dome, but there wasn't money, so the building was completed without it, leaving the possibility of adding it later. For those like Keating who have the Oklahoma Inferiority complex, it's galling that other states have domes (or canals or stadiums or no income tax or more private schools), so if they have one, we have to have one. We don't need a dome. But they're putting it there anyway, adding to the long tradition of Oklahoma politicians doing memorable things at the wrong times for the wrong reasons. At least the dome isn't ugly. The statue is under separate fire, but that's par for the course. Visiting Oklahoma museums is an awkward trip through the history of a state that wants to embrace its past as Indian Territory, but not so much as to give natives a tremendous amount of power or influence. If a tribe in Oklahoma tries to protect itself politically or refuses to give up land that the government wants, the seething of non-native people around here is palpable. For example. My town of El Reno is named after the nearby Fort Reno, a US Cavalry outpost during and after the Civil War. Both Fort Reno (to the west of town) and the Darlington Game Farm (to the north of town) were built on lands leased from the combined Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes, who have a reservation further north of town (Concho, OK). The lease explicitly specifies that when the federal government is done with Fort Reno, and the state is done with Darlington, the land reverts to the tribes and becomes protected tribal land again. The governments can't stand that idea. It's like the tribe is robbing them somehow. The military used Fort Reno as a German POW camp during World War II, but turned it into a USDA research station in 1947. Since then, the USDA has nearly closed it several times, but each time the department closes some other research station, largely so it won't lose control of the Fort Reno facility. In the 1990s, the El Reno leaders had the bright idea of campaigning for a new US National Cemetery at Fort Reno, where there's already a military cemetary from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This, of course, would mean that Fort Reno would never close, and the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes would never get their own land back as they were promised in 1875. So the tribes went to Washington to fight against the proposal, and eventually the cemetery was built somewhere else. The whole plan was one to make sure the tribe never got its own land back, and the local folks were livid that the tribe would oppose it. The leaders were accused of being unpatriotic, anti-veteran, anything you can imagine. But it was their land. A few years later, the state decided to close Darlington, no longer wishing to do research there. Under the terms of the lease, the land therefore reverts to the tribes -- and since it's less than a mile from the Concho reservation (and otherwise out in the middle of nowhere), the tribe wanted it back very much. So the state had to make sure they didn't get it, and rammed through a bill giving Darlington to Redlands Community College (here in El Reno) for "Equine Science" courses -- raising horses. The tribe was furious, as I think they had a right to be. The local GOP state senator scrambled like hell to find some reason -- any reason -- to avoid giving that land back to the tribe that owned it. It was a greed stampede of people wanting a handout like I've rarely seen, and it was disgusting. Later that year, the state wanted the tribes to give a permanent right-of-way on Concho lands to expand US Highway 81 to four lanes, and the tribe wouldn't do it for any price. The state was shocked, shocked by this refusal. Didn't they want progress? A better road to the reservation and the casino on it (the one the state tried to block constuction on)? This would be a huge embarassment to a statewide program to widen 81, so the state offered them land next to I-40 in exchange, land everywhere in the state -- except Darlington, of course. The tribes eventually gave in, but again, the local non-native population was pissed at the Cheyenne-Arapaho nation for wanting its own land back. They're supposed to get it back when the government is done with it, and each time, the government finds some way to keep using it so they can't have what was once part of their reservation. This was not land permanently ceded to private property -- this was tribal land leased to the state, and the state can't bring itself to do the right thing with it. That's the story of native politics in Oklahoma -- we want to embrace the tribes and their culture, even though most of them were forcibly relocated here from elsewhere on the continent. We just get nervous when the tribes become powerful. In 1905, the Indian Nations wanted to form their own state out of what's now Eastern Oklahoma. Called "Sequoyah," the state was to have been almost entirely native. Congress couldn't have that, and in 1906 passed an act that required the Twin Territories (Oklahoma Territory in the west and Indian Territory in the east) to form no more than one state. The natives did get much of their way, though, at least at first: the ultra-progressive Sequoyah State Constitution, with its distrust of big corporations, formed the basis of the Oklahoma State Constitution. Business-friendly leaders have been trying to undo that for 95 years. Although Kelly Haney is a Seminole tribe member, he designed a generic "Indian" to avoid preferring one tribe, another case of Oklahoma almost embracing ethnic diversity but only in generic ways. Oklahoma is the state named from Choctaw words for "red man," the 46th state made out of lands taken from natives who had already been relocated from everywhere else, the state that's never had a Native American governor despite more Native American citizens per capita than any other state. It's somehow entirely fitting that this state that uncomfortably embraces "Indians" will be watched over by "The Guardian" -- safely out of harm's way, made generic to be inoffensive, and yet created by the first legitimate Native American candidate for governor in a long time.

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