A standing institution
Une institution permanente
The diaspora
The Wah-Zha-Zhe — the People of the Middle Waters, the Osage — are a Native nation whose historical territory once spanned a great swath of the central interior of the continent. The Osage Nation, federally recognised and headquartered at Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is sovereign and speaks for itself. Osage Group is the diaspora’s standing civic and commercial house, distinct from the Nation and operated by descendants and standing partners on the principle that some institutions must outlast their principals.
Mission and motive
Two impulses converge in the Group’s founding. The first is the discipline of stewardship — the same discipline that allowed the Osage people, of all the peoples on the plains, to hold the wealth they did. The second is the memorial impulse: the Group is a standing institution in part because it carries the memorial to Maj. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker, the highest- ranking Native American in U.S. military history, lost at the Battle of Midway. The memorial is held at osage.memorial; the standing programme that carries the name is Tinker Scholars at Osage Foundation.
The four lanes
From the beginning the Group operated in four lanes — capital, civic, infrastructure, and markets/community — with deliberate architectural separation. The separation is what made it possible to grow without becoming captured. Each lane developed its own house; the houses together carry the umbrella.
The standing partnership
On 4 March 2026 the Group entered into its first standing partnership covenant, with the Cyrus / PARS Foundation under HRH Cyrus Pahlavi. The covenant is documentary, public, and on file at /partnerships. It is the first of what we expect to be a small number of deep, century-class partnerships rather than a broad book of transactional engagements.
The officers
H. “Smoke” Dupont is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. HRH Cyrus Pahlavi, Chief Investment Officer; Zachary Kelling, Chief Cryptographer; Sheikh Mansour Al Fahim, Chief Compliance Officer; Prof. Amii Omara-Otunnu, Chief Education Officer (UNESCO Chair, University of Connecticut); Jack Ma, Chief Strategy Officer; Ashlie Christie, Chief of Staff. Chairman Emeritus — in memoriam — Maj. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker. Officer biographies are at /board.
Sovereignty
The Osage Nation is a federally recognised sovereign tribal government. The Nation speaks for itself at osagenation-nsn.gov. Osage Group does not represent the Nation; it represents the diaspora and the standing observances the diaspora chooses to carry in writing.
The next century
We are a small house, deliberately. The framing is over a hundred-year horizon; the staff who arrive this year will hand the institution to the staff who arrive in 2126. The documentary record is in the open, the chain is the source of truth, and the standing partnerships are public. That is the plan.