Good pony, good money, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for our community connection right here on K one. The one you trust and standing by patiently is the principal chief of Cherokee Nation, Chief Chuck Hoskin Junior. Welcome. How you doing, Tom?
I'm doing well yourself.
I'm going to try this, Oh CEO. Is that correct?
He nailed it? Man here right up with me now.
Well, Cherokee Nation has been bustling because I got a long lust here of things that we really need to cover. First of all, I know that there are a lot of people looking for jobs or maybe looking for what you call another job, perhaps a better job. And that's something that you've got going on down in Tulsa, don't you.
We do. It's the first time we've done it at this location, that is Greenwood Cultural Center. So what's going on as a career event as well as a contractor event. So we are large employer, Tom. We've got about fourteen thousand employees worldwide the ball co from here north east Oklahoma. We're always hiring on our business side or a government side. So we're just bringing some human resources staff out to
the Greenwood Cultural Center. From ten am to two pm, so that folks who are interested can look for that job or at least get in our system. So it's all electronic and so you can set up aile profile to do that. The other thing is we're doing a lot of construction. You and I've talked about this a lot on this show. A billion dollar construction portfolio. A lot of that is far into the completion phase, but there's still a lot more to do. One of the things we've got to do is try to get contractors
local where we're building. And so at North Tulsa we're building a two million dollar community center, which we'll break ground on here in a few months. We've got about two million dollars worth of housing planned, along with some other partners coming up. And so we just want to make sure that folks out there that are contractors, vendors, all sorts of folks that could do business with the
Chairy Nation can do business with the Chag Nation. Ten am to two pm, three twenty two, North Greenwood Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa.
Wow, that's great. It's going to be an interesting set up there. Imagine you're gonna have a lot of folks I hope, so Chernky Nation, you have a one million dollar public Health and Wellness Partners program going on. Tell us about that.
Well, that's a way to help small towns and even larger towns, even cities that are within the reservation, public schools, and nonprofits with primarily capital investment that supports wellness. So I'm talking about you know, your local park, Tom that the town may want to improve and maybe they need to put some dollars together. We want to help them
with that. Maybe the school, as many schools do, serve both the students, but it also serves you know, the little league after school, and they've got a ball field, they need to fix that up. We want to be helpful there. We want to be helpful with that nonprofit that maybe operates some kind of a facility that maybe serves elders and nutritious meal. Maybe it's your Senior Citizen Center and they need to do some capital improvement. We
want to be there for the long haul. During ARPA, those ARPA funds that came down, we shared a lot of that. We talked about that on your show a lot of time. I mean, I would guess forty fifty million dollars we shared we've got to keep doing that. ARPA is gone, but we got to keep doing that because it's just the right thing to do. And so we're taking a portionable color Public Health and Wellness Funds,
which is a million dollars for this purpose. People can go on our website, Cherokey dot org and find out more about it Public Health and Wellness phw H at Cherokee dot org. We'll get that website for your wether. We'll get that email adress for your website corrected, and so folks can reach out.
I see you're extending your Artist Recovery Act to help Cherokee artists. I've had to do with some of the lag that took place during the pandemic.
That's right. So coming out of the pandemic, one of the concerns we had was not purely economics, but partially economics, but as it related to something that's more important, which is our culture, our life ways and perpetuating those and that's in the hands and the hearts and minds of
our artists. And a lot of them are elders, and even if they're not elders, they took it on the chin economically during COVID as many many people did, but they took it on the chin in terms of accessing streams of commerce to sell their art, they took it. They had it tough in terms of not being able to teach classes like they used to to, particularly young people coming up that want to learn art ways the communities.
So what did we do. We put initially three million dollars in to buy art, just buy art, but also give them some tools to access modern streams of commerce, you know, using digital tech anology to do that, or just paying for them to be able to go out to art markets across the country. And then we also funded a lot of art classes that helped them get back into the classroom and get students back into the classroom. Talk about community art classes. That's helped. It's meant we've
helped sustain them economically. We put another million dollars in that time, and we extended the law through the end of twenty twenty six because we've got some more to
do in terms of lifting them up. The good thing is is when it's all said and done, Tom will have hundreds and hundreds of art pieces created by Cherokee artists, great artists that'll be owned in the perpetuity by the Cherokee people, held by the government of the Cherokee Nation, placed in some of those facilities that we're building.
Wonderful. Now, you know this is a big deal about this time every year, but boy does it go fast. You just wrapped up your heirloom seed bank and we had the councilwoman Dora spent Vatskowski telling this that it's a it's kind of a crowd that gets into the portal trying to get those seeds. How well did it go this year?
Well, we did it different this year. We did it as a as a random draw, and so we think it'll go. We think it a little better in terms of you know, I guess I guess you could say fairness. I mean, not everybody. You know, it's like you know this, you've probably been on the receiving end of this through your career time. But you know many of us would call the local radio stration trying to be the fifth calling, you know, to get to win a to win a prize, so so you know, or get up early and make
the phone call. So rather than do that, we wanted to do a random draw. You sign up on our doogie portal and get chosen for the seeds thing. It's going to go well because I think it's going to spread it across the population across the country doing something else tho time, We've got a lot of community organizations and cancer Patkowski's helped develop some of those organizations, including one in Dewey Uh. There's an example of an organization that if they chose to, they could get a special
batch of these seeds to grow as a community. We got to find ways to spread the joy and the interest in this subject. There's a huge demand and one of the ways we can do that is having people share their seeds, and so community organizations sharing their seeds is a way to at the end of the year is a way to do that. Now, Tom, I try to grow every year. Sometimes I do good, sometimes I don't do good. Last year I had like two years
of corn, so I kept them all for seeds. I'm I'll try to grow those again, so we'll see it.
Now. This is great. The story behind this is that these seeds come right, they come from long before the trail tears.
That's right. We've done genetic Yeah, we've done genetic testing on these to determine the origins, or at least to take it back. You know a few centuries that coupled with oral traditions. You know, stories that have been handed down and other evidence shows that these seeds were with us before removal. So it's a great connection. It's a
great cultural connection. Does something else, Tom, which is, you know, we can't all grow our own food to support our families in this modern era, but we can do things to think about and teach, particularly our kids and other young people in our lives, where food comes from and the scarcity of food that can happen and why it's important to have some control over your food. And you can't have that control if you don't have knowledge. And
so there's another reason to do that. There's lots of reasons to try to grow food and to share that knowledge, both historical, cultural, and just sustaining ourselves.
Wonderful program. Wonderful Program. Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. Is our guest, and he is the principal chief of Cherokee Nation. You made an announcement this week regarding the Health Work Group. What's going on with this?
Well, from time to time in our health system, there are some issues that kind of percolate to the top, and there were of sort of formally studying. And so three issues have come up, particularly through our council in the past. You know, six seven months. One of telemedicine, now, Tom, during the pandemic, there was an increase in telemedicine across this country, and many of your listeners, maybe you certainly
I participated in telemedicine. Telemedicine personally. Now, that's not going to cut it for every type of health care visit, but it can help in some visits and in some occasions, and it can't help spread access to healthcare. So here's the question, what can we do to increase access to telemedicine, particularly Tom, when you think about the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of Cherokees living across the country. Can there be a future in which we have telemedicine
for them. Well, we can't do it if we don't study it. So that's one thing we're studying. The second thing we're studying is dialysis. Now, dialysis, Tom, anybody who's dealing with you know, die be these things of that nature, UH is going to unfortunately at some point maybe need dialysis because it could be some kidney issues that you're dealing with, and that's a really you know, difficult process to go through. We don't do a lot of that directly.
We do that for our inpatient system, but not our outpatient system. So council members said, look, can we study ways to expand that for Cherokee citizens. We're going to look at that. The third is Medicare. Now, health insurance is important for everybody, tom everybody qualifies for Medicare A when you get of age, and Tommy, you and I aren't there yet, So I am okay. So tom you may be are in house expert, but you know, Medicare
A is the basic plan. There's Medicare B, C and D. That's a range of benefits and sometimes it's difficult to understand. So helping our patients understand that, particular elder patients who are just now uh, you know, understand trying to understand the world of Medicare. And then are there ways that we could financially support these patients. We don't know, But again we don't know if we don't study it. So
those are three issues we're studying. We believe in taking a hard look at issues and getting to a conclusion at the chair condition. So that's what we announced recently.
All right, very good.
Now I.
Took a little trip. I do this every now and then, usually for a funeral. I got to run back and forth between here and Indiana. But my goodness sakes, you have a beautiful, nice facility right off the big highway there in Benita, the Cultural Center. That is really something else.
That is a great facility at the point of pride for many of us. It was something that my wife, our first Lady January, encouraged us. Now people would say, well, probably didn't hurt Cheese, that that was your hometown. That's probably true. But here's the deal, Tom. You were driving, and I think I've made many trips in Vienna's wife family's from. But you know, you're going up the interstate and you see something you could take your family to
or as a personal interest. If you can get off the interstate pretty efficiently and some have a good time like that, you're going to do it. Well, that's where Benita is. You know, it's right on the Root sixty six. It's right off I forty four. And this facility is something my wife said, Look, we ought to spread Cherokee culture throughout northeast Oklahoma and also try to connect with the millions of travelers coming across Oklahoma on the interstate.
Pull them off the interstate, have them learn something about a Cherokee culture. And that's what you can do at the Anna Mitchell Cultural Center. I mean, if you exit off I forty four time and take it right you're there, man, Oh you.
Right there, data section of sixty six and forty four. Maybe you're right there. That's right, my goodness sake. I would invite you folks if you if you have the time to do that, please do that or just make a day of it. It's really worth your time and your effort absolutely alrighty Now, if folks have questions about especially Cherokee citizens, you have a website. It's a portal that kind of takes you just about anywhere you need for a wide range of services.
What is that, Yes, the god Doogi Portal. So people go to Cherokee dot org and click on god Doogie portal g A d U G I has got to do you Cherokee works for working together. You can access sort of your citizen interface with the nation. So when we're talking about that feedbank that's where you go. And if you go to that website. You know, I fumbled around earlier when I was trying to think of the email address to our public Health and Wellness Partners grant.
But if a person just goes to Cherokee dot org, you don't have to worry about the Chief messing up an email address. Says hey, it's all right there, Tom.
Hey, Chief, thank you for being with us. I know you're a busy, busy guy, but I really appreciate the time you spend with us here at K one.
You got Tom, take care, Take care.
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