By Ben Felder for Investigate Midwest.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Oklahoma News Service reporting for the Investigate Midwest-Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Cole McKinney leapt onto the edge of a metal fence and began banging its side, trying to spook a nearly 700-pound bison into turning around inside its pen. But the bison repeatedly lowered its horned head into the fence, resisting McKinney's order to face the other way.

"This part's not easy," said McKinney, the plant manager at Butcher House Meats, a 19,000-square-foot meat processing facility in Hominy, Oklahoma. Owned and operated by the Osage Nation tribal government, the plant processes mostly bison and cattle.

After about 10 minutes of jumping along the side of the pen, McKinney finally got the bison to turn around and head through a chute leading inside the plant's back door.

"Cows are easier because they will often go right in," McKinney said. "Bison have their own spirit."

Built in 2021, the facility's 10 employees slaughter and package animals for dozens of ranchers in this part of northeast Oklahoma, where cattle mostly scatter along the rolling prairies or clump around its winding creeks. The plant also processes cows and bison from the Osage Nation's own ranch, with some of the meat sold in a store at the front of the building.

The Osage Nation's plant is a source of food and employment in this rural community but it's also an attempt to reverse a multi-decade trend of small and medium-sized meat packing plants closing in response to a consolidating cattle industry.

Today, cattle ranchers across the country have fewer processors to sell to, which many say has deflated their profits. Those who have tried to remain independent often don't have a small meatpacker nearby to do business with.

But the impact of consolidation has been especially jarring in America's tribal communities, where the rate of plant closures has exceeded the national average.

Since 1990, beef processing plants on America's tribal lands and reservations have closed at nearly double the rate of the national average, according to data from the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Services division, which monitors meat, poultry and egg production sites.

In Oklahoma, which ranks second in the nation for beef cow inventory and first in the percentage of Native American residents, 60% of the cattle processing plants that have closed since 1990 were in the state's tribal areas.

From 1980 to 2022, the number of all animal processing facilities in Oklahoma declined from 201 to 82, with more than 70% of those closed plants located in tribal areas, according to the USDA's Livestock Slaughter Annual Summary report.

The USDA currently inspects 722 beef processing facilities across the country, less than half the number of plants that were open in 1980. Today, just 28 cattle processing plants are within tribal lands. Two-thirds of those plants are in Oklahoma.

"There is in this region and in this country far too little capacity for meat processing and it's in the hands of far too few people and far too few corporations," said Chuck Hoskin, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, which opened its own meat processing facility in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 2022.

Over the past four years, the Osage, Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) nations have opened USDA-inspected processing plants in eastern Oklahoma, joining the Quapaw Nation, which opened its own facility seven years ago. Another tribe, the Choctaw Nation, has invested in a recently opened facility in southern Oklahoma.

Supply chain challenges during the early months of COVID-19 inspired many of the tribes to build their own plants, and some used federal pandemic relief funds for initial construction. Using cattle and bison from their own ranches, the tribes are processing meat to supply their daycare centers, senior homes and hotels, as well as some low-income meal programs they operate with federal funding.

However, each plant also processes meat for area ranchers, offering custom cuts and packaging services that have not existed in some communities for many years.

"A lot of ranchers around here were having to travel 40 or 50 miles to get to the nearest processors, but since opening, we have cut down that drive for a lot of ranchers in the area," said Adrian Sinclair, the plant manager at 1839 Cherokee Meat Co., the Cherokee Nation's plant named after the year it formed its constitution. "We are hearing all the time how this (facility) has eased diesel costs and reduced the stress on the animal by not traveling quite as far."

Some Cherokee ranchers raising cattle just for their own family's consumption started commercial operations because the new USDA-inspected facility was close enough to be cost-effective.

"This plant made it easier to (produce) cows because closer is better, closer is cheaper," said Jill Hough, an Osage citizen whose family began processing its herd at the Osage Nation's facility.

According to 2022 USDA figures, bison and beef make up the largest agricultural sector for Native American communities nationwide, accounting for 39% of all Indian agriculture production.

Operating a meat processing facility can give tribal governments more control over their cattle industries, said Chris Roper, a technical assistance director with the Flower Hill Institute, a nonprofit that works with tribes on food sovereignty issues.

Roper once worked for the Quapaw Nation, an Oklahoma tribe that built a meat processing plant in 2017. At the time, it was one of the few tribal-owned facilities in the country. Today, he estimates there are at least 12.

"But there are about a dozen others that are currently working on a new plant that hasn't opened yet," said Roper, who helps tribes across the country plan and build meatpacking facilities. "I think there is a lot of momentum around this, and I project that over the next five years, there will be 50-plus (tribal-owned) plants."

Forced into Oklahoma, tribes built a cattle industry

After being forced to relocate from Kansas to present day northern Oklahoma in the late 1880s, the Osage people struggled to grow crops on their new land. However, its high-nutrient grass made it a prime stop for cattle drives on the way from Texas to the stockyards of Kansas City.

By 1898, the Osage Nation leased more than 431,000 acres to cattle drivers and later raised its own herds, creating a burgeoning livestock industry that attracted new railroad lines.

"Arguably, without Osage grass leases, Oklahoma's modern economy may not have reached its admirable level since fewer homesteaders and businesses would have been able to settle there due to a lack of available transportation," wrote Athena Stephanopoulos in her 2007 research paper, "How the Cows Came Home as Dinner," a history on the Osage cattle industry.

Other tribes followed with their own cattle operations, but the growth in white homesteaders led to the depletion of land suitable for grazing.

Before the end of the 19th century, President Grover Cleveland forced the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Reservation in present-day western Oklahoma to give up 2 million acres of its cattle grazing land to white settlement.

The loss of land for some tribes increased demand for others, including the Osage, whose cattle grazing leases topped 720,ooo acres by 1910.

Over the next several decades, cattle remained a prominent economic engine in the Osage Nation, whose land became home to some of the state's largest ranches, including a few owned by non-Osage citizens.

But by the second half of the 20th century, America's cattle industry was beginning to shift to one dominated by just a handful of producers who built large facilities that often squeezed out smaller packers and limited where ranchers could sell their cows.

Nearly 45 years ago, 84% of cattle in America were slaughtered in processing plants that handled fewer than half a million animals a year. By 1997, those plants were processing just 20% of the nation's cattle, according to a USDA report on meatpacking consolidation.

That consolidation push was led by four companies - Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef Packing Company, and JBS - that now slaughter more than 85% of the nation's steers and heifers.

Large slaughter plants were built in western Kansas, eastern Colorado and the Texas Panhandle, which continued to make western Oklahoma a prime cattle ranching region, especially for large feedlots that fatten cattle just before processing. However, that geographic center moved further away from eastern Oklahoma, where most of the state's tribal communities are located.

In Osage County, which is also the boundary for the Osage Nation reservation, annual cattle production from 1970 to 2017 declined by more than 19%, while statewide numbers increased by 3% during the same time, according to USDA figures.

Of the 21 Oklahoma counties with a cattle population decline of at least 10%, 17 are within tribal reservation boundaries.

Roper, the director with the Flower Hill Institute, said consolidation has also increased the likelihood of supply chain challenges for tribal communities, along with hurting the small ranchers who run their own retail businesses.

"These (tribal) communities realized that they can't rely on the consolidated industry and these big plants to keep the stores filled because at some point that supply chain is going to break down," said Roper, pointing to the pandemic as an example.

Workforce training and more funding needed, tribal advocates say

Sinclair, the plant manager at the Cherokee Nation's meat processing facility, walked past a line of hanging beef carcasses inside a refrigerated room but his eyes studied the floor for any meat scraps or other loose items.

"I take sanitation very seriously," Sinclair said with a laugh. "But I'm proud of how clean we keep this facility, very proud."

In the next room, a team of five employees wearing orange aprons broke down a cut of beef, including one worker on a band saw who sliced through a rib section. In another room, two workers used a machine to grind beef chunks into hamburger patties.

Fourteen people work at the plant, most of whom are Cherokee citizens, according to Whitney Dittman, a spokesperson for the tribe.

During the first three months of 2024, the plant processed about 45 cows for independent ranchers in the area, along with 14 sheep and 16 hogs. The plant also processed more than 46 cows from the Cherokee Nation's own ranch.

The numbers are small compared to facilities owned by one of the four major packing companies. Plants operated by Tyson and National Beef in southwest Kansas each slaughter 6,000 head of cattle a day.

But the Cherokee Nation's meat facility has enough capacity to supply 15,000 pounds of ground beef and 3,600 pounds of roast each month to the Cherokee Nation's several food distribution sites across a 14-county region.

Dittman said processing its own meat helped the Cherokee Nation stretch further a $10 million USDA grant to address food insecurity in tribal communities.

"Having this facility allows us to produce the protein that we would normally have to go out and buy from somewhere else," Dittman said. "It's come full circle with Cherokees producing their own protein for other Cherokees."

Advocates for more tribal-owned meat processing facilities say it can enhance the numerous federal food assistance programs operated by tribes and offer more locally produced meat to users of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what some call food stamps.

Nationwide, one in four Native Americans use federal food assistance programs, according to the Native Farm Bill Coalition.

The federal government provides some funding to help tribes build and expand plants but recent demand has exceeded those amounts.

Last year, 67 tribes applied for more than $350 million in funding through the Indigenous Animal Harvesting Grant program, which had just $50 million in grants to award, according to the Flower Hill Institute.

Several indigenous agriculture groups have pushed for Congress to add more support for tribal-led meat production in the next Farm Bill, not just through grants but also access to credit.

"Congress should ensure that loan and loan guarantee opportunities are available for the development of meat, poultry, fish, and seafood processing facilities in Indian Country," the Native Farm Bill Coalition, a group advocating for federal policies, argued in its 2022 "Gaining Ground" report. "Access to credit will assist Tribal communities in developing regional food systems and support tribal member access to traditional, affordable, and nutritional sources of protein."

Abi Fain, chief legal and policy officer for the Intertribal Agriculture Council, said the federal government should also look for ways to increase training for meatpacking jobs and USDA inspectors, especially since it can be hard to fill positions in rural communities, where many tribes are located.

"If you are in Muscogee you may only be 30 minutes from Tulsa," said Fain, referring to the location of Muscogee (Creek) Nation's meat processing center, Looped Square Meat Company, located about 25 miles south of the state's second-largest city. "But in other parts of Indian country that is not the case. In some tribes in South Dakota you may be two hours from the nearest city or nearest town."

Fain said she expects the number of tribal-run meat packing plants to increase, even among tribal communities that have not traditionally been involved in agriculture production.

Gaining more control over local food systems is enticing for tribes when they see the success others are having, she added.

"Food is power," Fain said, "and having control over your food sources is the difference between independence or subjugation."


Ben Felder wrote this article for Investigate Midwest.


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By Amy Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Judith Ruiz-Branch for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Patty Loew attended five screenings of a new film this year. She wasn't joining box office masses at Wicked or Inside Out 2, but Bad River: A Story of Defiance.

The independent documentary, directed by Mary Mazzio and released in March, drew in masses of its own. AMC Theatres put it up on select big screens across the United States. Peacock started streaming it last month.

The documentary highlights longstanding issues facing the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin. Loew 'Waswaagonokwe' (Torch Light on the Water Woman) is a citizen.

She and other Band members are interviewed in the film, which explores tragic boarding school histories and how members of the Band have faced violence and racism.

The documentary heavily focuses on the Line 5 dispute between the Band and Canadian energy company Enbridge. Loew, who recently retired as director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University (among many other titles), addresses it in the film.

"My little tribe is standing up and saying, 'We're protecting the water, not just for us. We're protecting water for the planet.'"

Behind the Struggle

As it stands, 12 miles of a crude oil and natural gas pipeline run through Bad River land, constructed in 1953. In 2017, Bad River's tribal council voted against renewing the company's rights to use their land. It led to years of protests and activism when Enbridge refused to leave. Last summer, a federal judge gave Enbridge three years to shut down the pipeline on the reservation.

That reservation includes just under 40 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, thousands of wetland acres, and hundreds of miles of streams, rivers, and tributaries.

The documentary shows its beauty. Think grandiose drone shots and stunning water imagery.

"Bad River is where I go when I need my batteries recharged, when I need time to reflect, when I just need to get back in touch with things that make me happy," Loew says.

Last month, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued construction permits for Line 5 to reroute 41 miles south of the reservation and exit Bad River lands by 2026.

But Loew and other Band members who are interviewed in the film say that isn't enough to protect Mashiiziibii land and nearby areas from a potential pipeline burst. They want it shut down.

Enbridge lawyers and the U.S. government say they can't, citing a 1977 energy treaty with the Canadian government. But Bad River citizens say Ojibwe treaties, which established reservations and land rights, predate that by over 100 years.

"If such a rupture were to occur, nearly one million gallons of oil would spill into the river, flowing into Lake Superior and devastating the wild rice beds and fishing populations central to the Band's way of life," stated 30 Midwestern Native Nations in a letter to the White House in February.

There have been over 20 spills along the Line 5's 645-mile route since 1968, including over 14,000 gallons in Bad River land in 1972.

Despite the continued debate, Loew has hope.

"The right thing will eventually happen," she says.

"I think everyone-whether you live in a red or a blue state, or whether you are Native or non-Native-[wants] clean water and clean air, not just for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren."


Amy Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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Arizona State University has developed a new tool that they hope will help researchers analyze connections between illnesses and health determinants within Indigenous populations. The Indigenous Health Research Dashboard is an online repository of peer-reviewed, published studies that focus on medical conditions and diseases impacting Indigenous health since 2020.

Angela Gonzales, a member of the Hopi Tribe in Northern Arizona, and an ASU professor and director of the American Indian Studies Program, said it is important for her to be a part of an initiative that aims to move the needle for Indigenous health equity. She explains that she has seen firsthand the "devastating impacts" of limited access to health care in Native communities.

"By having it public available and accessible, when tribes are interested in trying to find out the latest research, for instance let's say on COVID-19 vaccinations, they have a one stop source to be able to access a lot of that information. You can search by keywords, can search by key topics, it breaks it down into regions," she said.

Gonzales added that the dashboard is what she calls 'bio-directional,' meaning it's an effort that is driven by what tribal partners have identified as major health concerns, and said the project has also allowed students to develop their research skills and learn to synthesize information. They are currently recruiting students to be a part of the team that will continue working on the initiative next year. She hopes they're able to capture a more 'holistic' and historical view of health trends and findings.

Gonzales says they're ramping up outreach efforts to ensure public health professionals and medical providers in Indigenous communities know about the useful resource. But she adds that Native communities have already expressed the need for such information.

"If you're a tribal health professional, the opportunity to do research, it takes away from your other responsibilities that are oftentimes more pressing. By having this dashboard available, they can go right to it," she continued.

Gonzales said that Indigenous health equity has been improving in recent years, but she says as an academic she hopes researchers do better to create a stronger 'knowledge bridge,' and develop resources that are use-inspired. She feels the dashboard is a step in that direction.


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The state of Washington is helping Native Americans access health care after decades of barriers.

Health insurers have made it difficult for tribal members to get care covered, despite state and federal laws that bar this.

Vicki Lowe is the executive director of the American Indian Health Commission, which has led efforts to remove hurdles for Native Americans.

She said health insurers would try to make tribal clinics charge out-of-network rates, and wouldn't honor their referrals.

However, the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner has come out with guidance to prevent this.

"Not only will tribes have more money to help pay for services for their tribal members, tribal members will get care in a more timely manner," said Lowe. "So those two things just are really important, and insurance companies have been a barrier for that for decades."

Washington is among the first states to move forward with guidance for insurers and also enforcement of the law so that insurers will stop putting up roadblocks for tribal members to get care in the state.

Todd Dixon is the deputy commissioner for consumer protection and the tribal liaison for the Office of the Insurance Commissioner.

He said one reason for releasing the guidance was that the agency has seen an uptick in complaints - the number one compliant typically coming from billing managers at clinics.

"It says, 'Hey, we have an enrolled member. He or she was seen at our clinic. We billed the insurance company. They said we're out of network and so "we're only paying 60%." And then they send a bill to the enrolled member,'" said Dixon. "It's not how it works."

The Insurance Commissioner's office has been sending notices to insurers who violate protections for Native Americans.

Lowe said before they got involved, tribes fighting with insurers on their own were getting them nowhere. But it's different with the state backing them.

"Knowing that if somebody violates these laws that they're going to get that outreach from the insurance commissioner and that they have 15 days to respond," said Dixon. "Where if a tribe asked them, they would maybe not respond or respond in some convoluted way - it's a power shift to really have the state agency behind this."