Forty four degrees. But that's all going to change. Oh goodness sakes, let's see we have on the line here. I do believe we do have Chief Chuck Hoskins Jr. From Cherokee Nation.
How you doing, cheap, Tom, I'm doing great yourself.
You know, I get the biggest charge out of our conversations. How's that for an opener.
That's a great opener. Because we've got dollars for charging stations. We'll be able to charge anything you need.
And tell us how this all came about. This is this is not a cheap This is an eighty million dollar trust settlement.
Yeah, eighty million dollar trust settlement. This is significant and so a context in history is really important here, Tom, So primarily during the twentieth century, but not exclusively, but primarily during the twentieth century, think about what was going on. The federal government had suppressed the Cherokee Nation's ability to self govern almost out of existence. So the Cherokee Nation, on behalf of the Cherokee people, has various natural resources timber,
coal land on which leases were let. Who is supposed to manage those resources? Not the Cherokee Nations Because we were suppressed the Government of the United States as our trustee. Fast forward to the early part of the twenty first century. My predecessor, Bill John Baker says, you know what, I bet the United States mismanaged it. I bet they can't even account for these resources. And it's just like any
business deal. Tom. Think about this, if you put your affairs in the hands of somebody and they were supposed to take care of them, and they did, and boy, there'd be some legal consequences. That's what Chief Baker was concerned about. In about twenty sixteen, he asked his Attorney General at the time, Todd henbry Go, ask the United States to account for all those resources. Tom surprised surprise. The Department of the Interior could not do it. Could
not do it because they mismanaged it. They did this with other tribes. We filed a lawsuit refiled in twenty nineteen. If people look at the record, they think, well, this happened in nineteen. Third team we refiled it in a different court. We bent the United States to a settlement.
Not an easy thing to do, Tom, And what we agreed to was eighty million dollars in damages, again for not accounting for what happened to all the cold, the timber, the land that was leased for various reasons, perhaps cattle. Perhaps Hey, we did a lot of really deep dive diving into archival records. I mean, you had a lot of people on the front lines who kind of toiled an anonymity that were in the archives of the United States looking at all these different records and saying, hey,
this is evidence of mismanagement. So here we are today with an eighty million dollars settlement. It's a great day in history, and it's really good for the United States to kind of cleanse itself of another wrong, an injury towards an Indian tribe who were very pleased with. But just to put a sort of an EndNote on this eighty million dollar settlement, here's what we planned to do.
The Deputy Chief and I Brown want our center, legislation, our council that says, look, this was a settlement about resolving an injustice through most of the twentieth century. Let's make an investment in justice in the twenty first century for the cherkerenation. So we're going to build a judicial
center in taal Quah. It's going to house our Supreme court, the primary district court that we have our Attorney General's office mcgird as you know, and we've talked about this many times on your show, has really tested the Cherito conation in terms of not only exercising sovereignty, not just in the academic sense, but in the real sense. That means people, that means buildings, that means justice, justice system. We've got to have more space. We're going to build
a state of the art Justice center. We're also going to build a district courthouse. We're setting aside some of these dollars for a district courthouse to build out in the field, so to speak, out elsewhere in the reservation, because we've got growing pains and a solution to that as this settlement. Glad to talk about though, the charging station charging station funds, which is a really significant investment.
Yeah, I want to go back to the federal your federal buildings. That's cool. What part of Taliqua are you going to be on. Are you going to be on some of the historic parks or maybe some other places in town that Yeah.
So the Justice Center itself will be situated near the complex and Tahlequa. People who have visited here including yourself, will know that we've got a government complex kind of on the outskirts of tallequal in an area known as park Hill really, and then we've got historic buildings in the downtown area. We'll be out of the government complex where we're building up a new public safety center. We're building up the Mankiller Park that we've talked about on
your show, the existing complex, which we've added to. If people haven't been the Tallequi in a few years, if they go by the complex, they'll really be blown away at the amount of construction. This will be construction that will have to be planned. It's in the planning phases, has to be approved by our council, and then we'll be you know, we'll be about the business of turning dirt, but it'll be out here. And I've seen the next
few years, we'll see this justice center. I may not be chief at the time tom when this is done, but I hope they invite me to the grand opening.
It would be nice. Yeah, Okay, now on to the electricity. There we go.
Yeah. Charges. So you know, this is an amazing week in the chery Co nation. It started with an announcement of ten point seven million dollars and it's ending with an eighty million dollars settlement. So the ten point seven million dollars was going to sort of be our top
story and tell the trust settlement. But I don't want to understate the significance of the ten point seven million dollars from the US Department of Transportation to its stall one hundred and twelve publicly accessible electric charging stations across twelve communities. This is a big investment. It's a lot of dollars. It makes us I think forward looking in
terms of where we're going in this country. The twelve sites they're closest to Bartlesville include the Koyschool Clinic and Oceanleda, the Cherokee Casino in South Coffeeville, and then a little further down the road at the Will Rogers Health Center in No Water. Throughout the reservation, you'll see these at our business sites or our healthcare facilities. Here's the thing, Tom, I've been watching the social media response to this, and
it's mixed. It's a lot of people that are excited and there are some people that take a dim view of ev charging green energy. There's plenty of room for debate and for all that. Here's what I'd like folks to know. When the United States said they're going to spend millions and millions of dollars, really billions of dollars on ev charging stations, all I thought was, we're going to bring those federal tax dollars, are hard earned tax dollars.
We're going to bring them home. We're going to bring them home to Northeast Oklahoma, to Cherokee Nation, and then we're going to put Oklahoma's to work building these charging stations. That's where my mind when is we're not going to let these dollars go somewhere or else come because if we wouldn't have applied for this grant, these dollars are going somewhere else. Maybe they're going to California, maybe they're going to the East Coast. They're coming home. That's important
to me. The other thing is this, this is where the economy is moving. This is where transportation is moving. We can debate whether we like it or not, we can debate the merits of it. The trends seem clear. This is where the economy is moving. I want Cherokeynation to be on the leading edge of that, not the back edge. Of that, and we're going to put some people to work. We're going to bring ten million dollars home. We're going to be ahead of much of the rest
of the country. If I could make one more comment though, on charging Stessons, Tom, some folks will say, well, boy, there's not a lot of ed cars around here. I'm telling you, when you're talking about tourists driving through Oklahoma, driving past the Neda, for example, where we've got this amazing cultural center, I want them to pull off the road, charge that vehicle and go in and shopping Benita, or I want them to be stopping in Tahlequah. I want
them to stop in Noah. Folks got people across the country with electric vehicles. I don't want them to pass Oklahoma by it. I want them to stop in Oklahoma, spend some money, boost our economy. Cherokee Nations on the leading edge of that.
Very good, Very good. We have a new acting Marshal, can you tell us about that?
We do so our longtime Marshall, Shannon Buell, who is probably one of the longest serving Executive Branch officials in the history of the Cherokee Nation. That's a big statement. Tom but he served a long time. He did well, but that's a job that is very demanding, and it's twenty four to seven. So Shannon Buell is retiring, but not really retiring because he's going to consult with Cherokee
Nation businesses on security matters. I'm talking about our businesses, Tom that spanned the globe, span the country, multi billion dollar portfolio. Security is an important issue. He's going to handle that. The Council authorized me to name an acting Marshal for or not to exceed a year. That man is Daniel me Daniel Means an eighteen year veteran of the Marshall Service. He's a decorated combat Marine. This guy has been tested many times in his life professionally in
the military. He knows what he's doing. He's going to guide this department for the better part of this year. We're going to do a search for a Marshall. Daniel will be considered, but we're going to search far and wide for our next Marshall, which is a key position.
People should understand. That's the key law enforcement officer in a growing law enforcement agency that has always been regarded I think as top notch, really the best in the business, but it's growing and growing and growing because, as we've talked about on this show, Tom, in the post McGirt era, we've got responsibility for every square inch of a seven thousand square mile reservation. Daniel meets up for the job, we're all excited for him.
I understand you have a new partnership with FEMA.
We do. We do have a partnership with SEMA. We've worked with FEMA for a long time. And anybody who in the Bartlesville area, you know, there was a tornado last spring, at least in that part of Oklahoma, and there was a lot of damage done, and then I think it was a couple of weeks later, tornadoes hit Claremore. When that happens and it went through Mas County in places like that, when that happens, Tom, here's the reality. The first responders are your friends and neighbors or yourself
though those are really the first responders. And then the first responders in a professional capacity are local folks typically, but it takes all different layers of governments and jurisdictions to really come in and do response and recovery. That's what we have seen time and time again. So we've worked with FEMA. We're taking it to the next level. This is the first time in history that a tribe has signed an inter governmental agreement with THEMA. What does
that mean. It means that there'll be more opportunities for our emergency management team to get the kind of training that FEMA provides at a really high level. Significantly, it means that there'll be a stronger working relationship when it comes to responding to No only disasters that hit our region Northeast Oklahoma, but we've got such a great team Tom that will work with THEMA elsewhere. I mean, just a few months ago we saw a hurricane move inland
in the United States. It really shocked me, but I think it's the way things are moving in terms of climate and so there's going to be a need for all hands on deck in this country. And some of the best hands on deck COOM turned out to be the Cherokee Nation Emergency Management Team. That's why we've got this first in the history of the country agreement with THEEMA. It's a good thing. It means better resources for all of us here, whether we're charity or not.
Wow, very big news. Indeed, A question that some folks have had around our area. Is that and we brought this up before on the show. Is how soon will try Key Nation be building a casino near closure to Bartlefield with wonder remote is great?
But yeah, yeah, no specific plans yet. So here's what we did, and there was actually news yesterday or at least an action yesterday. We purchased land. We talked about this on your show before in Bartlesville. We went through a process called placing that land in trust for gaming purposes tom That takes a route through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, up through the Department of Interior, a sign
off by the National inning Gaming Commission. You're talking about levels of federal bureaucracy that you can just kind of hurry up and wait most of the time, which we did. It requires some local notice, which we did as well. That was approved just excuse me, earlier this week, and it was placed in trust filed there in Washington County.
That means we could tomorrow come in and game. We're not going to come any game tomorrow tom In fact, we don't have plans on the books right now for what gaming could look like, but we do have that piece of land where we could do it, we don't have the impediment of what is often a year's long process to get land and trust. In this case, I think it's maybe a little over a year that it took to get land in trust. But if in the world of business, you've got to be ready to move quickly,
in the world of Indian gaming, nothing moves quickly. So we had to get that bureaucratic process out of the way so that we can keep looking at the market decide when to build in Bartlesville. We know where. It's just a question of when. I don't have anything to report though on the win, and if I did, I would and I'll say you what when I do, we should do it on the show tongue, Well.
It sounds great. The where is just south of just south of Barlsfield? Correct in the game, right, that's.
Correct, that's correct. And one other thing I should let folks know. People when a casino is potentially coming in the community, there's all sorts of questions and not everybody's happy, but many people are. What I would say is look at our other properties. If people want to see what the experience is, not just the gaming experience, what's the experience for the community. If you go to Katusa where the hard rock is. Boy, I can remember and that was almost a tent for Bingo and now it's one
of the best casinos in the market. But here's what happened around that area. Economic development, jobs, increase in tax revenue for the community. That's what happens everywhere that we invest. It would happen in Bartlesville if we were to invest. And I want people to know we care about the community. We're not some outside corporation just coming in to PLoP down a casino. We live here, Tom, we live in Bartlesville. We want it to be a thriving community.
Jeez, it's always great to talk with you. And we'll do it again next month.
Let's do it again, Tom, take care, but all right, Chief.
Chuck Hoskin Jr. Principal Chief of Jerokee Nation right here on Kaewa. Thank you all righty, And we've