TULSA – Judge Greg Bigler was presented with the American Indian Circle of Honor award on March 7. The ceremony was held at the Hardesty Regional Library in Connor’s Cove Theater. The award is presented to Native Americans whose contributions to society and culture throughout their lifetimes have enhanced the lives of others in meaningful ways.
The award is presented in even-numbered years by the Tulsa City County Library American Indian Resource Center and is funded by the Maxine and Jack Zarrow Foundation. In addition to community recognition, the inductee also receives a $15,000 cash prize.
The Circle of Honor Award was inaugurated in 2004, and in 2016, Mvskoke citizen Sam Proctor was also recognized with the award.
Prior to the ceremony, Bigler was interviewed on News Channel 8, the NBC affiliate television station in Tulsa.
“It’s a great honor to be there, with all the wonderful inductees that have been there before, I know some of them and they have just done amazing things,” Biger said. “So it’s a blessing to have that and I really appreciate the honor out of the blue for that.”
Bigler was asked about his book “Rabbit Decolonizes the Forest: Stories From the Euchee Reservation.”
“It grew out of just trying to hold a conversation that you might hear with friends and relations in our community, and then of course in the editing process they said maybe you need to explain a few things, articulate it so that those that are outside also understand it,” Bigler shared.
“So it’s just a little bit of an insight. It has both a little bit of memoir to it, some of the old traditional stories. Some of the updated stories, like Wolf learns to eat tofu, obviously, we didn’t have tofu in the old days. But that type of thing and then so much are just short stories.”
Judge Bigler is a Mvskoke citizen who is an active member of the Polecat Euchee Ceremonial Grounds. He is currently the Chief District Judge for the Sac and Fox Nation Tribal Court, District Judge at the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Appellate Judge at the Mashantucket Pequot Nation, and Chief Judge for the Court of Appeals for the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas. He also serves as a Supreme Court Justice for the Quapaw Nation and the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma.
