Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Indians

American Indian tribe in Oklahoma, United States

The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma (or Absentee Shawnee) is one of three federally recognized tribes of Shawnee people. 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. 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. 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 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. 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). 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.

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. According to the Intertribal Wordpath Society, as of 2006, some 200 to 800 people still spoke the Shawnee language in Oklahoma. Pauline Wahpepah, a fluent native speaker, teaches Shawnee for the tribe. 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.