James LeClair hops out of his Otoe-Missouria Emergency Management vehicle and walks toward the tribe’s Encampment Grounds.
He picks up pecans that fell from the towering trees and opens a few to see if they are fruitful. They are not on this early September afternoon.
LeClair is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna. He moved to the Red Rock area in northern Oklahoma when he was about 10. He remembers the land being fuller then—so much so that if someone went out into the timber with a pocket knife, they could supply food. Pecans were plentiful.
“Back then, you could survive on the land, such as pulling berries and stuff from trees,” LeClair said.
Like the unfruitful pecans, signs of climate change are everywhere in Red Rock, including the tribe’s sacred Encampment Grounds.
“When I was a kid, it could rain lightly for weeks upon end,” LeClair said. “Now, we get a heavy rainfall that's like inches in minutes to hours, and that's causing high erosion rates throughout the landscape, into the flood plain.”
In recent years, a snakelike stream that winds around the grounds has overflown, filling the flat land with water from Red Rock Creek.
Eric Payne, a former chairman of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe’s Encampment Committee and former police chief for 18 years, said those grounds are essential to the tribe not only because of the annual reunions but also because tribal citizens participate in milestones of life here, like naming ceremonies.
Payne comes from the Bear Clan, known to make their camp around the edge of the grounds to aid with protection; today, flash flooding threatens the grounds most.
“We've had so many times a storm come in,” Payne said.” I don't recall the campgrounds ever flooding during one of our dances, but I know I've had several close calls.”
He explained that when the water in the creek hits the crest line, the water flows across the Encampment Grounds and causes damage to the area.
“Probably three feet is about the deepest I've seen,” Payne said. “It’s washouts where they've had to go in and make major repairs to the grounds.”
Protecting the Encampment Grounds means ensuring the Otoe-Missouria Tribe’s traditions and culture — which the U.S. government attempted to eradicate — remain on the same tracts of land as they had for more than a century.
It’s a mission Payne, LeClair and other tribal leaders don’t take lightly.
Payne carried on his family’s legacy of leaders in the tribe, providing solutions. Back then, it ensured tribal members could eat. Now, for Payne, it is protecting the Otoe-Missouria’s Summer Encampment.
LeClair’s primary focus has been applying for grants to help return to this greener way of life.
So far, he has installed riprap, or what he refers to as “riff-raff,” to limit erosion on the creek. He also works with the University of Oklahoma Hydrolometerology and Remote Sensing Laboratory to find nature-based solutions.

One of the researchers he works with is Theresa Yellowbear Tsoodle, an elder and enrolled member of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
In 2023, she helped lead a study that found the risk of heavy rainfall and flooding will increase for Indigenous communities in Oklahoma. The research showed Native American communities face the highest risk because of the severity of the weather, population size and vulnerability, which includes socioeconomic status.
Recently, Tsoodle received an MIT Fellowship, proposing to look after the land by safeguarding and utilizing the Otoe-Missouria Tribe’s traditional ecological knowledge by creating what she calls a “ThriveMap.”
“The extension that I wanted to do was to look at the Otoe-Missourias, what they brought from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas…when they were moved to Oklahoma, and how that was transformed to their present-day TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) and what we might learn from that, as we again dynamically transform the Indigenous intellect in the community, the Indigenous science of remaining resilient, and surviving and thriving in climate change,” Tsoodle said in an interview.
A significant component of this research is ensuring the tribe has a seat at the research table, which Tsoodle said includes having free prior and informed consent. She also wanted to guarantee the tribe would own their intellectual property and that it couldn’t be accessed by artificial intelligence.
She said her ultimate goal is to help the Otoe-Missouria community and environment thrive in the way the tribe sees best, letting their ecological wisdom lead the way.
“We should be able to go back to how we balanced, initially, our relationships with our environments, and how it looked like when it was pristine and beautiful,” Tsoodle said. “And people came over and said, ‘Oh my God, look at this beautiful, lush land.’ It didn't get that way overnight, and it took careful tended respect and relationships and those were taught to us from our ancestors.”
To help those lands return to that lush state, LeClair has established gothic and high wind tunnels for improving soil health and growing greens. He said it’s been a work in progress because having a green thumb doesn’t come naturally to him.
“We grew mustard green spinach, dark leaf lettuce and collard greens, which they just blossom,” LeClair said. “So this year we're trying squash (and) tomatoes….We've got okra growing. I've tried a bean in there to try to help it with pollination.”
Pollination is a key focus of LeClair’s, as it helps nurture healthy ecosystems.
He is working with St Louis Zoo Curator of Invertebrates Ed Spevak to bring eight honey beehives to Red Rock in the coming months. He will then begin planting wildflowers to support the bees. He said Spevak donated a Gothic tunnel— a greenhouse structure shaped like a gothic arch— to the tribe and hopes to plant fruit trees there soon.
Despite the steps forward, Payne is concerned for future generations and worries climate change has already gone too far. Like LeClair, he has noticed animals he used to see as a kid disappear, and destruction has caused structures on the Encampment Grounds to be continuously rebuilt.
“I think, human nature, that we wait until it's too late,” Payne said. “Then we try to say, ‘We're sorry, let me fix that.’ And sometimes it's just too late to fix that.”
Tsoodle said the mass production of material items and the sheer amount of natural resources it takes to create them are hurting the planet.
“It trickles down to that person that works a $20 an hour job, and they save up their money,” Tsoodle said as an example. “And they go out and buy them a Michael Kohrs bag. …it takes water to make those things. It's going to end up in a landfill anyway.”
Though much of the damage has already been done and continues to occur, LeClair said he is not giving up hope. He will continue applying for grants and pursuing projects to create lasting impacts on the land and community.
He noted other tribes across Turtle Island have asked for his guidance regarding the grant application process and are trying to pursue their environmental restoration projects.
“Everything takes time, but now they're starting to see the need,” LeClair said about climate change. “You know, we need to think about our kids and our grandkids, what kind of world we're going to leave them. So if we can make it a lot better for them, and maybe it'll just continue to grow.”
