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JUSTICE
“You can also commit injustice by doing nothing." –Marcus Aurelius
Rebecca Jim
Mar 173 min read
Flossie and Grey
The little woman who was my down-the-alley neighbor turned 100 this year. After she sold her home she moved into Neosho Ridge housing. Her daughter gave me Flossie’s address. I really didn’t need it. I could have walked the neighborhood and known her place. It was the one with Egyptian Walking Onions Allium Cepa Viviparum in pots out front. These “green onions” go to seed, form small onion clusters and when too heavy for the stalk, they fall over and walk all over your gard
Rebecca Jim
Mar 173 min read
Twice Loved
How do we change the world? We do it when we help others learn how.
Rebecca Jim
Feb 283 min read
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JUSTICE
“You can also commit injustice by doing nothing." –Marcus Aurelius
Rebecca Jim
Mar 173 min read
Flossie and Grey
The little woman who was my down-the-alley neighbor turned 100 this year. After she sold her home she moved into Neosho Ridge housing. Her daughter gave me Flossie’s address. I really didn’t need it. I could have walked the neighborhood and known her place. It was the one with Egyptian Walking Onions Allium Cepa Viviparum in pots out front. These “green onions” go to seed, form small onion clusters and when too heavy for the stalk, they fall over and walk all over your gard
Rebecca Jim
Mar 173 min read
Twice Loved
How do we change the world? We do it when we help others learn how.
Rebecca Jim
Feb 283 min read
Slow Train Wreck
Lead poisoning kicked this off, then the knowledge and understanding that the land beneath whole parts of our county put anyone there in danger. Both were the un-seen threats. The un-seen moved governments to action, mostly for people who were and may still feel no gratitude.
Rebecca Jim
Feb 184 min read
The Indian in Me
There was a phrase I heard used by my mother’s mother. Maude Bradshaw. She was my size, and my mother’s size, so of course I deemed her my Little Grandma. Maude was a stern mother to her 6 children. Her words became legendary in our family and many of her practical ways are part of my life. My Big Grandma was Cherokee and was a big woman, who I never heard claim knowledge from her heritage. Not like my Little Grandma who had a single black braid that when it wasn’t wrapped ar
Rebecca Jim
Feb 123 min read
Broken Record
We want a clean Tar Creek that won’t poison our land, our fish, and our hopes for the future.
Rebecca Jim
Jan 33 min read
Off to the East
Off to the east, the sun was shining on the small set of cattle just across the fence line, the light there and the darkening setting in where I stood seeing them become the image of what the rancher sees as money growing on the plain and I saw as the image my father and his father would have seen as the cattlemen they both were for times during their lives.
Rebecca Jim
Dec 16, 20253 min read
The Desk not the Table
"use the years we are gifted to do more with our lives. Fill yours, reach out and connect with a child, do more than sit out your years. I will suggest you find a table and gather your people around it and decide to change the world."
Rebecca Jim
Dec 11, 20253 min read
Rising Star & Mexican Water
I spent an afternoon with a rising star film maker and the stars she has created, reluctant me and Dana Tiger , absolutely delighting in every moment of the attention. Jane Breckinridge asked us to come to the Euchee Butterfly Farm outside Bixby, OK to screen both of Loren Waters’ short documentaries, Meet Me at the Creek and her latest film, Tiger and to sit for a panel discussion after the viewings. The afternoon’s event began with Creek tribal hymns sung a Capela. I becam
Rebecca Jim
Dec 2, 20253 min read
Reclaiming our Water
“It takes all of us to make a difference for all of us.”
Rebecca Jim
Nov 20, 20253 min read
Piney Woods
Out here on the land I am taking back to tallgrass prairie, the electric company and the pine bark beetles are both taking their roles seriously to help in that endeavor
Rebecca Jim
Nov 12, 20253 min read
Nominated by Grace
At the annual Oklahoma Native American Elder Honor celebration, I joined 48 others from 23 Oklahoma tribes to be recognized this year. It was held at the First Americans Museum
Rebecca Jim
Nov 8, 20254 min read
A Sounding
It was a sound event I was allowed to host, on land being stewarded so differently than the places the group had spent so much time experiencing during the last year
Rebecca Jim
Nov 6, 20253 min read
Jonny’s Gifts
When I met Jonny Skye , the Peoria tribal citizen, she allowed LEAD to choose one of her paintings to visually represent this year’s Tar Creek Conference, only to discover the title “It is in the Water” would also serve as our theme. The other paintings needed to be seen and I was pleased when she agreed to allowing us to host an art show for the public. Downtown Miami came to life one night this week at the time most towns close up. LEAD Agency held space open to the public
leadagency
Oct 29, 20253 min read
Reflecting on the 27th Tar Creek Conference
Earlier this month, LEAD Agency held our 27th National Environmental Tar Creek Conference on Oct. 7, 8 and 9 at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami.
To kick off this year’s conference, on October 4 we co-hosted an inaugural disc golf tournament, the Tar Creek Open, at the Veterans Memorial Disc Golf Course, located near Tar Creek in what used to be a residential neighborhood before residents were forced to move due to repeated flooding. It’s been our dream for many
Kim Barker
Oct 23, 20253 min read
The Project: What’s in the Air in Your House
The investigation of what’s in the air inside homes in Miami, OK in the far NE corner of Oklahoma is based on a discovery made 28 years ago.
A family moved into a home in a nice neighborhood, moving from a state that required childhood blood lead testing, both testing negative. After living in their home only 6 months 2 of the children tested positive. Upon investigating the playroom, the air vent cover was lifted and the HVAC duct had deteriorated and what seemed like gr
Rebecca Jim
Oct 13, 20253 min read
Native American Designs
A gift from a friend is always special. But when I peered into the little flowered bag, and pulled the single item up to the light and held it in my hand, I was transformed. Going back decades to the event held each May, the Gilcrease Rendezvous. Each year for maybe twenty years, I would load many of Miami’s Indian Club dancers and all of our regalia into a school bus and head out of Tulsa straight to The Gilcrease Museum. With our dresses, shawls, bustles and suitcases, we w
Rebecca Jim
Sep 13, 20253 min read
Over
Over has been one of my “go to” words through the decades.
The only real loan I took out with my home as collateral, when the last payment was made and I burned the papers, that over was sweet.
Driving home down the long dirt road with my signed divorce papers after an eleven-year long marriage, wrong from the start, gave me a great feeling of over. So much so, I began to laugh.
Over was more than a word, it became a feeling. The word could explain feelings that ranged
Rebecca Jim
Sep 7, 20253 min read
Heavy Metal Heron
I work surrounded by art, encouraged by artists who see this damaged place, mourn with us and lift up the hope for a better tomorrow through the art that challenges reality with their mockingly clever creations.
While at the LEAD Agency office just this week, a gentleman who I had never met walked in with a sack and was about to leave when I stopped him to introduce myself, while another man hollered out his name in great familiarity. The gentleman stopped and handed me the s
Rebecca Jim
Aug 13, 20253 min read
Murderland
When you live in the country not all your mail is in the mailbox. Laying flung into the tall grass was a book I had ordered just a few days ago. The timing couldn’t have been better. I was experiencing a great deal of shoulder pain and the PA instructed me to rest to not further complicate the injury. So, with those instructions, I dove into Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser. It’s been a long time since I picked up a book and too
Rebecca Jim
Aug 5, 20254 min read
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