And we have a Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chalk Hoskin Jr. Boy, you got a lot on your plate today, young man, don't you.
Hey, it's been a great summer. We've been very busy, but yes, sir, we do.
Man.
We've got the big national holiday coming up here, the Cherokee Nation National Holiday, that is huge, and we ought to be seeing probably a bigger turnout than we've seen in a while, I think so.
I think for a number of reasons. One is, year after year it's growing course, as you and I know, because we talked during those time frames. Yeah, COVID knocked us off course, but when we came back to in person, it just was overwhelmed. Not overwhelming in the sense we couldn't handle it, but just sort of wonderful to see huge crafts, one hundred thousand visitors descending on Tallequall for our celebration, and of course it's Indian and non Indian,
it's people from all over and that is wonderful. So I think it'll be the highest turn out ever, not just because we keep getting bigger, but the weather I think is going to be in our favor. We'll see you never know, but anyway, I'm looking forward to lots of stuff to do.
We've got a big event coming up.
We've got the well I believe it just happened, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Addiction Center.
Yeah, that is one of the most I think important things we've done. Now if you measure it by the amount of money for this particular facility, not the biggest square footage, not the biggest, but tom this is about drug and alcohol treatment for Cherokees who need it. We don't presently have an adult facility. We have one for youth, and sadly we need it. It stays busy, but we
need one for adults. We contract out a lot of the services right now, and some of the contractors are very good, some not as good, but all of them are not uniquely Cherokee. So this time will be in Tahlequa, nineteen thousand square feet. It'll be a residential facility. So this is for Cherokees who go into the initial phase of you know, sort of a crisis where you're getting stabilized and then you're sort of in a residential setting, but also with healthcare providers because you still need it.
It's one of a number of phases we have to build out. So there's two great things. One is it will bring healing to those who use this service, and there's so many that need it. The second thing is tom and then I've talked about this before on the show. We're making the opioid industry pay for every single penny of it because we we took them to court, we settled the case, we stared them down, we exposed them
as a menace. We're taking all those dollars and putting it into real opportunities for healing, the flagship of which will be this facility.
This is not the only thing that Cherokee Nation has been building lately. Boy, I want to tell you you've had people working, working, working. We've got the new Cherokee Immersion Middle School going up there.
We do and just taking it from you know, thirty thousand foot level. We're in the middle of one point one seven billion billion with the be in capital projects at the Cherokee Nation, and it spans a lot of things, and we'll get to the immersion school in the moment. But it could be you know, a single home we're building for an elder, It could be a housing addition, could be a hospital which we're building four hundred and fifty million dollars, could be you know, the drug treatment
center we're talking about. So it's all over the region. It's and it's creating a lot of economic impact, putting a lot of people to work, putting a lot of folks who are in some cases new to being business small business owners getting a chance to provide services to these jobs. So we look at the immersion school time.
We've talked before about our robust language program. We've gone an immersion school that teaches kids from pre k to sixth grade reading, writing, and arithmetaking Cherokee, and it's part of the strategy to save the Cherokee language. This is another piece. This is the middle school so that kids that go through that experience can continue on in an
immersive environment. This will be a thirty million dollars facility in Tahlequall, sixty six thousand square feet, state of the art, and it really helps build up what is a language revitalization campus, but I think is unmatched in the country. Along the way, we're putting a lot of Cherokee fluent and second language learning speakers to work. So it's really something that's part of this bigger strategy. We're very excited about it. We just broke ground recently.
My goodness sakes, and you're getting a very valuable piece back from museum.
I understand the gill Crease Museum in Tulsa. Many listeners know of it or have been to that museum. It's a wonderful institution. Here's what is so special about it. Mister Gilcrease the turn of the twentieth century acquired a lot of items, and in this particular instance, he acquired a printing press that was used by the Cherokee Nation in the nineteenth century, so the post removal era in about the nineteen forties until the turn of the twentieth century.
The sad story of that printing press is when the government of the United States allotted our lands and imposed the state of Oklahoma over Cherokee Nation and other tribal nations. The United States actually shut down our newspaper, took our printing press, and that was the end of an era of Native American journalism. To think about that time, I loved this country. That wasn't a great moment for it when the country literally dismantled the free press and the
Cherokey Nation. Enter Thomas Gilcrees, who acquires this after it goes to different places. I'm talking about what is now a very old printing press from the nineteenth century. He acquires it, cares for it, keeps it in the Gilcrease Museum. They've loaned it to us for really about a decade
now in our Supreme Court Museum in Tahlequaal. But what's so special is right now in this era, we've got institutions museums who are thinking about their collections and trying to repatriate them to tribal nations or to otherwise be more responsible with them. Gilcrease sets a high standard and so they have signed over that printing press to the Cheroke Nation. There was no law that said they had, no law said.
They had to.
They just thought it was the right thing to do. And I think people need to know that story. I hope they come see the printing press because if you see the printing press, and people can see it, if they come down for the holiday during that Labor Day weekend to see that printing press, you realize what the Cherokee Nation was doing in the nineteenth century, that we had a newspaper, you start to learn about the Cherokee Phoenix. That would be an experienced lost if not for Thomas Gilcrease and.
Great now up here locally, we've been doing business pretty darn well up here in Dewey at the new facility that about a year old.
Now, I do believe it is, and we've been doing some additional remodeling work. We're talking about the Cherokee Nation Community building in Dewey. It's sort of right off the main drag there as you go into town, and it's the home of a Cherokee run nonprofit called Cherokee Cultural Community. So what you're seeing increasingly at this facility, which is a former church but we have brought it back to
really a wonderful facility. But what you see there with the nonprofit is opportunities for community members to sort of learn about Cherokee culture and language and share a meal. It's just sort of a place for getting together and not just Cherokee. Tom We've got Cha Indians and nan
Indies that go to these different media. But we have an increasing presence with career services helping people get jobs in the area and human services helping people with the safety net if they are, you know, maybe in financial free fall because they got a bad break and let's face it, Tom, we're all sort of a bad breakaway from needing help. Well locally, Now in Dewey people can get those services. That is I think just the latest chapter and what will be at many more chapters in
increasing our presence in Washington County. And I got a credit counselor dor Patskowski, who's just been the greatest advocate for these kind of efforts.
The word is wow, does that save a drive?
It does? And look, Tom, if you're driving down for the holiday, that's great, and I want people to do it. If you're driving down because you need to get a job and you're driving a talklar or clamoor man, that's too far. So we're going to keep it close to home.
That is great. A lot of great things happening.
And of course the big holiday coming up to what else do you have on your calendar here? Because I know with the big holiday that's taking a chunk of it here, you've got a lot going on, a lot going.
On, And just briefly on the holidays, just to remind listener, it's Labor Day weekend. Yeah, people can people can come down, you know, the real big days or Friday and Saturday. Some things on Sunday though, so a person could come down for the weekend, come down for a day. There's lots to do, a parade. The powow is really known across the country an inner travel pow wow. Friday night. Saturday night, I'll give a state of the Nation address sort of talking about our vision for the future. That'll
be Saturday, and so lots to do. But beyond that, you know, we're staying busy. My dear friend and partner in this effort, Brian Warner, our Deputy Chief. I got to tell you Tom, he's the hunter in this partnership. He's the guy. He's the outdoorsman. Not so much meat, thank goodness, though he's Deputy Chief because he's had the vision to make sure we've got more hunting and fishing opportunities for the Cherokee people. And so we've got some
what we call controlled hunts coming up. We've got a lot of acres of hunting and fishing Preserve, four thousand alone in Sequoia County. That's where we'll have some controlled hunts. Cherokee citizens can go to that got dooogie portal which citizens are familiar with and register for a random drawing. So we may have veterans at a controlled hunts so they can go experience that youth, fluent speakers, elders, different groups that may not always have the opportunity to do
what many people love to do. And so thanks to our Deputy Chief that these annual controlled hunts, people can go to our website Cherokee dot o RG will learn more about those.
Chief.
Don't mean to put you on the spot, but I just remembered this. I remember seeing that Cherokee Nason was looking to expand its hospitality around the Bartlesville area, plans to do some building in nearer Bartlesville.
We've got property in Barlsville and we've applied to put that in trust and that all of course has been public. Here's the interesting thing about the Indian gaming industry. You got to be strategic. That's true in any business, but the hoops you have to jump through in Indian gaming
to be strategic are different than other markets. So other businesses can acquire property and then decide sort of is this strategically where we want to go and what do we want to use the property for the world of Indian gaming come, you've got to take some legal steps to make a property potentially available for gaming. I'm saying a lot to get to an answer to the very simple question, but it does get complicated. And so we
do have that property in Bartlesville. We're always evaluating different uses and we're always looking at an ever changing gaming market, and so could we have gaming in bartlesviill it's possible. If we were any sort of other kind of business, this would just be another piece of property that business owns and we would just strategically decide what to do with it. In the world ndiing gaming, there's a lot of necessarily public notice about it, which gets people talking
about there's a casino coming in. I can tell folks there's no concrete plans for a casino, but we wouldn't be buying land and going through this process if it wasn't a possibility. I don't mean be coy about it or non responsive, but it's complicated. But here's the thing. We can compete and win anywhere. Bartlesville is such a great community, and anywhere we go, I promise you will be good partners. You can go anywhere we've developed any sort of business, and I think we're sort of the
best friends you could have. So stay tuned. I promise you Tom, as we get further on the road, you and I'll talk about it more.
That sounds great, and I understand the legality.
There's nothing like a lot of tape to go through and get things done. Chief Chief Chuck Honskin, Junior Prince Jeep of Cherokee Nation, thank you for spending time with us today.
Thanks Tom,