Jean Dennison

JEAN DENNISON, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, received a grant in October 2016 to aid research on ‘Accountability Nation: Building a 21st Century Osage Government.’ Using grounded ethnographic and archival methods, this research interrogated the varied and overlapping accountability practices that were at work in the Osage Nation in order to understand what they produce and limit. It found that, at their core, these calls for accountability were an attempt to build a system that better meets Osage needs and a critique of ongoing settler colonial structures that have limited Osage governance. Rather than being motivated by a search for individual responsibility or the generalized good of record keeping, Osage officials, employees, and citizens seemed to be far more focused on fostering relational accountability, premised in a variety of ways, but often focused on fostering respect, building communication, and meeting Osage needs.