He was a tall man, like her father and brothers, and still held himself straight as a man decades his junior. Sometimes he reminded her of Jacques Cousteau; he had that same tough resiliency, like a weathered blackjack oak—and although age had weathered him, it had not twisted him. He wore his iron-gray hair long, in a single tight braid, though forty or fifty years ago he had sported a crewcut like everyone else in his neighborhood. He had been an aircraft mechanic, first with the Army Air Corps, then the Air Force, then at the small-aircraft side of the Tulsa Airport. No one who knew the family casually would have guessed then that he was Osage. No one who knew the family intimately would have ever thought otherwise, but there had been few who knew the Talldeer intimately, and they were all to be trusted with the secret that could have instigated discrimination.

Now he wore his heritage openly, much to the delight of the neighbors’ children and grandchildren. He told them stories, taught them simple things, got involved in their ecology projects, all things their parents had no time to do. Things that their grandparents, who might be half a continent away, could not do. Half the neighborhood called him “Grandfather.” And he tricked the children as well, teaching them with his tricks that the world was not a universally friendly place for a child, teaching them in ways that would not hurt them to be careful even with people they knew.

That was not “traditional” teaching although it grew out of Osage tradition; it was teaching adapted to the modern world. The neighborhood kids learned Osage legends—but the lessons were to respect and protect nature. They learned how to defend themselves against the adults who would hurt or even kill them. They learned that Native Americans, far from being ignorant savages, had knowledge and information and a wisdom no different from their schoolteachers.