Chief: Pawhuska casino set for Oct. 4 soft opening

The principal chief of the Osage Nation said Sept. 7, at a Pawhuska Chamber of Commerce luncheon, that Oct. 4 is the projected date for a soft opening of the new Osage Casino at Pawhuska.

The Osage Nation broke ground on the casino-hotel, which is to have 47 hotel rooms, in June of 2021, with the intent of completing the project by the fall of 2022. Supply chain problems and increased costs slowed the work.

Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear told the Chamber audience of about 35-40 people that he anticipates the opening of a new casino-hotel at Bartlesville a couple of months after the Pawhuska soft opening. He was the featured speaker Friday, for a “Lunch and Learn” meeting held by the Chamber at the Community Center.

Standing Bear commented on a range of subjects, including the status of a proposed outdoor health/recreation park planned for downtown Pawhuska. He said the current anticipated price tag for the park is about $12 million, and explained that he is still trying to obtain all the needed funding commitments.

The Osage Nation Congress opposed helping to finance the park, Standing Bear said, but he held out hope that political considerations may change minds. He noted that six of the 12 seats in the ON Congress will be up for electoral determination in 2024.

“I’m going to make it an election issue,” he said. “I just did, I think.”

Standing Bear said the Osage Nation acquired the materials from the building that movie makers used in downtown Pawhuska for a rail depot labeled “Fairfax” for purposes of filming “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and the ON plans to reassemble the building in the town of Fairfax as part of the tribe’s contribution to economic development efforts in that community.

Other projects that Standing Bear discussed briefly were the planned development of a new ON health clinic in downtown Pawhuska, the construction of residential treatment center facilities for drug-and-alcohol abuse rehabilitation, and a planned expansion of tribal museum and tribal heritage center space.

“We’re not doing this for us,” he said, explaining that the efforts he and other Osage leaders are making to develop new facilities and programs are for the benefit of younger generations – today’s children and grandchildren.

The chief also shared a brief, positive review of the Martin Scorsese film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is projected to be released next month.

“The final version, I am still amazed at how much of the Osage language is incorporated,” Standing Bear said, giving the movie makers credit for a concerted effort to do justice to the cultural aspects of the story they largely filmed in Osage County.