by Yousef Khanfar

Daughter/mother Victoria Fattig and Monica Sutter were both inmates at Mabel Bassett Correction Center in…

 

Beau Jennings and the Tigers perform “Lawn and Garden” for our performance series, This Land…

 

by This Land

This week, we go left or we go right.
John Hood stands at the vertex…

 

In an explosive feature for This Land, reporter Denver Nicks goes deep into the life…

 

by Natasha Ball

Water. Once, it was oil; now H2O is said to be king in Oklahoma. Last…

 

06/10/2013 | Okiecentric

The Man in the Black Jersey

By Ian Dille

Thirty years ago, a petite woman with curly blonde hair approached Greg Saunders at a bike race just west of Austin, Texas. At 22 years old, Saunders, a Tulsa native, was proving himself as one of the best road cyclists in the country. The woman told Saunders her name was Robin Morton, and that she was putting together a professional cycling team from the U.S. th…

06/05/2013

The Silence Teaches

By Greg Horton

Sitting down to speak with Oklahoma City photographer Yousef Khanfar about his art leads almost inevitably to one name: Georgia O’Keeffe. The love of the desert, the commitment to a task, and the accumulation of silence create resonance between their art forms. For O’Keeffe, it was the high desert around Santa Fe, but for Khanfar, it was the vast dese…

06/03/2013 | Okiecentric

Cherokee Nation’s Constitutional Crisis

By James McGirk

Cherokee Nation has what seems to be an unusual fixation with lawyers and writing—at least for an outsider looking in. Cherokee museums are dense with detail about treaties, newspapers, and literacy. Sequoyah, a silversmith who invented the Cherokee syllabary in the 19th century, is arguably their greatest hero. And, most telling of all, their judi…

05/31/2013

THIS LAND PRESENTS: Horse Thief “I am the Bear”

Horse Thief performs “I Am the Bear” for This Land Live, our musical performance series sponsored by Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer.…

05/30/2013 | Do

75 Free Things to do in Oklahoma This Summer

By Natasha Ball

Summer in Oklahoma isn’t for the faint of heart. Between the heat, the never-ending hours of sunshine, and the kids climbing the walls at home, it’s easy to start filling your calendar with trips to the nearest lake and evenings alone with your air conditioner.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But between road trip ideas, activ…

05/24/2013

THIS LAND PRESENTS: Kim Doner

Kim Doner is a professional illustrator who rehabilitates wildlife out of her house in her spare time.…

05/23/2013 | Special Report

Dealing With Brady’s Legacy

By Holly Wall

Editor’s note: The following news analysis article represents a deeper level of commitment to community news coverage. Look for more in-depth reporting in the future.
Inside the square glass castle of Tulsa’s City Hall last week, the grandson of a Tulsa Race Riot survivor, James L. Johnson, implored the Tulsa City Council to change the name of dow…

05/23/2013 | Okiecentric

Fifteen Faits Divers on the Tulsa Race Riot

By Brian Ted Jones

05/22/2013 | Okiecentric

The Tulsa Race Riot from a Writer’s Perspective

By Evan Ramspott

Originally published on the blog The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 on March 18, 2013.

It is normal that we look upon an event as tragic as the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 with a need for answers. We want to single out someone culpable. We look for some trigger to the destruction. Who could have caused the outbreak? Who tried to cover up its very existence? It’s part of human n…

05/20/2013

Struggle of the Three

By Hannibal B. Johnson

Native Americans within the uprooted “Five Civilized Tribes” found a new home in “Indian Territory”— Oklahoma. Decades later, these Indians would seek, unsuccessfully, to create an Indian state—“Sequoyah”—in order to hold on to sovereignty and self-governance. Instead, the federal government combined Indian Territory, which…

05/18/2013

THIS LAND PRESENTS: OK Sweetheart “Traitor”

OK Sweetheart performs “Traitor” for This Land Live, This Land’s new music performance series sponsored by Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer.…

05/17/2013 | Original Okie

Shaun Perkins

By Natasha Ball

Shaun Perkins forged the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry out of her father’s old machine shop as a tiny monument to the power of poetry in the daily lives of Oklahomans. The barn-red metal building is wedged between a centenarian oak, a fledgling Locust Grove vineyard, and Perkin’s own home, where she writes her poetry on the walls.…

05/16/2013

From One Fire

By Marcos Barbery

On an oppressively hot evening last May, David Cornsilk addressed a room of so-called “black Indians” at Gilcrease Hills Baptist Church in northwest Tulsa. He wore a leather-braided bolo tie clasped by an emerald quartz. Though Cornsilk never formally studied law, his voice bellowed with the rhetorical ire of a white-shoed seasoned litigator.

05/15/2013 | Notices

Cherokee Freedmen Cover Explained

By Michael Mason

Questions have arisen regarding the May 15, 2013 cover image of This Land magazine which warrant an explanation. The cover is an illustration of a silhouetted figure of a Native American wearing a headdress, with the text “One Fire: The Cherokee Nation’s Identity Crisis” displayed over the figure’s face.
The cover image is…

05/13/2013 | Okiecentric

Queen’s Gambit Declined

By Matthew Crouch

May 21, 2008. Radisson Hotel, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Frank K. Berry U.S. Chess Championship. Two International Chess Masters sit at an ugly green table in a cramped room, taking a deep breath. Two deep breaths.
Both women were born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Both women scored an impressive 7.5 (of 9 possible) in the round-robin st…