18-04-2025
From stage to page: A Chicago poet honors her prima ballerina mother and Osage heritage
CHICAGO (WGN) — Some believe destiny is whispered through the wind. Among the tall grass of Oklahoma's Osage Tribal Reservation, many stories slip between its reeds.
Some stories are about wealth, greed and murder, but one is of a mother and daughter who would make certain the world wouldn't forget the elders who lived it.
Elise Paschen is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. She is the author of six poetry collections, gracefully penning the words her ancestors once spoke.
Forced relocation to reservations in Fairfax, Oklahoma, was deadly for Osage Indians. Oil was discovered on the reservation, and headrights, or royalty payments from the oil produced, were given to those in the tribe.
What followed was a period known as the Osage 'Reign of Terror' when as many as hundreds of Osage Indians were reportedly murdered by outsiders hoping to gain control over the valuable assets.
'The year my mother was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma, white men were marrying Osage women and killing them for their headrights,' Paschen said. 'My mother was born a year after the Indian Citizenship Act was passed.'
The hallway outside her Chicago home displays framed photos of Paschen in graduation tassels from Harvard and Oxford, clippings of her work in Poetry Magazine, and a faded Newseek Magazine featuring the first U.S. prima ballerina – an icon Paschen knew as 'mother.'
'My mother, the prima ballerina, Maria Tallchief, grew up on the Osage reservation,' she said.
As a child, Paschen watched her mother dance across the world's most prestigious stages.
'Standing in the wings and watching my mother perform and turn into these amazing creatures, into Cinderella, a swan queen, a firebird… then she'd come out of the wings, and she'd be panting and catching her breath and mopping her brow,' Paschen said.
But it wouldn't be until years later that Paschen realized her mother's greatest act was refusing to let the world trim her name to fit their tongue.
'They wanted her to change her name to Maria Tallchief,' Paschen said.
Ignoring the headline 'Red Skin Dances at the Opera,' Maria demanded the playbill proudly reflect her Osage name.
'It was huge that she held onto her last name and didn't succumb to the Russian influence,' she said.
While her mother danced out her identity, it was words, not movement that called Paschen. She began to write about the sepia pictures hanging in the hall, braiding a beat of generations with her own coming of age.
When Maria Tallchief took her final bow, passing in the presence of her daughter in 2013, Paschen knew their art, though different, pulsed with the same purpose.
'Nothing gives me greater pleasure than writing a poem,' she said.
This week, Paschen released her latest collection of poems titled 'Blood Wolf Moon,' a moving dance of words in both English and Osage Orthography.
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