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In:Storytelling, Identity Formation, and Resistance in Indigenous Cultures in Canada and the United States
Edited by Kamelia Talebian Sedehi
[Studies in Narrative 28] 2025
► pp. 109–124

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Chapter 6
Cultural memory, testimony and witnessing in A Pipe for February

Published online: 2 September 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.28.06sed
Abstract
From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, Osage County, in Oklahoma, experienced a decades-long period of terror. With the discovery of oil in the county in 1897, settlers flocked to the area seeking their fortune. Seeking to access, control, and exploit Osage oil wealth for themselves, settlers married full-blood Osage women or adopted Osage children. The book A Pipe for February (2002), by Charles H. Red Corn, describes a series of murders that occurred among the Osage people in the Oklahoma town of Pawhuska during the 1920s. His account, which focuses on four cousins in their twenties, explores the interplay between modernity, tradition, and ritual among the Osage people. Through the eyes of the cousins, and lessons learned from Elders, Red Corn portrays how stories about the terror affected the Osage community generally, and Pawhuska town specifically. His framing serves to link the past to the nation’s present and future through shared memories. Red Corn’s story illustrates how past and present, as experienced by a people and culture in transition, contributed to defining the future of the Osage. My chapter focuses on the power of storytelling in A Pipe for February by applying Jan Assmann’s conceptions regarding cultural memory and Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s theories on testimony and witnessing. Further, as eyewitnesses to the traumatic incidents of the past, Elders share their experiences with the younger generations in order to bring awareness; in this way, storytelling becomes a method for encouraging people to resist colonial power.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Methodology
    • Cultural memory
    • Witnessing and testimony
    • Analysis
  • Conclusion
  • References
References (25)
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