Piece description from the artist
I used my grandfather's house in Hominy, Oklahoma, as a model but set it further out on the prairie. It includes outbuildings for outdoor living and an Osage Native American Church (Peyote Church) Meeting House. As portrayed in Martin Scorsese's 2023 movie, "Killers of the Flower Moon," one might have seen a house like this in the 1920s when Osages went through the Reign of Terror. I suspect my grandfather would have built out on the prairie like this in the 1920s to avoid the murders of wealthy Osages by unscrupulous individuals, as seen in Scrosese's movie.
The Osages are one of the only tribes that have fixed wooden buildings for their Native American Church meetings. It's the last tall, six-sided building on the left (with its small wood shed next to it). The buildings house an "altar" and are maintained by one family.
Even though Osages don't have the money we had in the 1920s and 1930s, I still prefer to live in the country myself. The painting is signed on the lower right with my name in our Osage Indian script (pronounced Hootha Don) and in English.
Duane BigEagle is of American Indian descent from the Osage Nation of Oklahoma. He was born at the Claremore Indian Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, in 1946. He has a B.A.Degree from the University of California at Berkeley has been painting, writing, and publishing poetry since the early 1970s. Images are story for him, and he has mostly been known as a poet. He has also taught creative writing to young people with the California Poets In The Schools Program since 1976 and is a past President of the Board of Directors of that organization. He was awarded three California Arts Council Artist in Residence grants in the late 1980s and has received several awards for his poetry, including the W.A. Gerbode Poetry Award in 1993. He has been a college teacher since 1989 and a lecturer in Native American Studies at San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, and presently at the College of Marin. He is a founding Board Member of the Northern California Osage and the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, CA. He is also a traditional American Indian singer and an Osage Southern Straight dancer. He is inspired by his Native American cultural traditions, his world travels, by the Ukiyo-i Japanese woodblock print artist Hiroshige in painting, and by the poet Cesar Vallejo in poetry.
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