Research streams

Wazhazhe Studies

Continuing the work of John Joseph Mathews and his successors. Archival recovery, oral history, and the long history of the Osage on this continent. The stream cooperates with the Osage Nation Museum, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and the Daposka Ahnkodapi language school. Standing emphasis on twentieth-century Osage history — allotment, the mineral estate, the Reign of Terror, and the long aftermath.

Sovereign Systems

Applied research on identity, money, and governance for sovereign peoples. The stream asks what an Indigenous nation looks like when its institutions run on infrastructure it owns; how cryptographic identity supports tribal-citizenship verification without surveillance side-effects; how settlement layers carry treaty-grade records. Cooperation with the engineering arm at Osage Tech.

Air Power and the Pacific

Reopened scholarship on the Battle of Midway, the Wake Island raid, and the strategic case Maj. Gen. Tinker articulated about Japan in the months before Pearl Harbor. The stream maintains a working relationship with the Air Force history office and the Maxwell Air Force Base archive. Output to date includes a forthcoming monograph on long-range bomber doctrine 1936–1942.

Fellows program

The Institute admits up to twelve fellows per academic year across the three streams. Fellowships are residential for a portion of the year and remote-with-quarterly-convening for the remainder. Stipends cover full living costs; output is a working paper or monograph subject to external review.

• Cycle. Applications open March 1; close June 30; cohort begins September 1.
• Cohort size. Up to twelve, distributed across the three streams in proportion to the strength of the incoming applicant pool.
• Eligibility. Doctoral candidates, post-doctoral scholars, mid-career scholars on sabbatical, and unaffiliated researchers with a demonstrated track record.
• Output. One Institute working paper or monograph per fellow during the program year.

Letters of inquiry to [email protected] (under 500 words). Full applications invited from letters that match the streams.

Publications

The Institute’s working-paper series is published in three forms: a LaTeX preprint distributed openly under CC BY 4.0, a peer-reviewed working-paper version held in the Institute archive, and (for monographs) a clothbound first edition through the Foundation press. Forthcoming titles in 2026 include:

• Long-Range Doctrine: Tinker, Arnold, and the Strategic Case for Air Power, 1936–1942. (Air Power and the Pacific stream.)
• The Mineral Estate: One Hundred Years of the Osage Headright, 1907–2007. (Wazhazhe Studies stream.)
• Sovereign by Design: Identity, Settlement, and the Tribal Nation Online. (Sovereign Systems stream.)

Governance

• Funding. Funded by the Osage Foundation under a multi-year program grant. Editorial independence is structurally protected; the Foundation does not approve specific working papers or monographs.
• Faculty. Senior scholars affiliated with partner universities; the Institute does not maintain its own tenure track.
• External review. Every monograph and every fellowship paper passes external review before publication.

Contact

Submissions, fellowship inquiries, and partnership questions: [email protected]. Press: [email protected].