CHEROKEE NATION

Hospital October first of Tom. It was a little less than a year ago actually on your show that I one of the first times I talked about this Indian Health Service operates Clamor Indian Hospital has operated it since nineteen thirty is actually born and what they call the old plan Or Indian Hospital Tom in nineteen seventy five. Then they shut the place down and built a new one. So I'm in the old one. There's a new one,

but that new one is now old. That new one's about as old, and the old one was when I was born. So here we are fifty years later. That facility needs to be replaced, as just about any facility like that would need to be. Get this, the federal government no plans to replace it, and not only that, has not taken care of it, and it's really abysmal.

So here's what we did. Since you and I talked about this a little less than a year ago, we sent in a team to say, we want to really get inside clam or Inning Hospital see what's going on, operation wise, physical plant wise, the facilities. And here's what we found. Great people working there, compassionate people, mostly Native people working there in a system that just is operated like the federal government operates a number of things, not

as well as other institutions, governments, et cetera. Could do it. Don't even that, So we knew operationally we can do it better. And we also were shocked by the conditions of clam Wore. When you sort of get behind the scenes, kind of peel back the wallpaper a little bit. Tom look behind the paneling, go into the places that the public doesn't get to go into, so the boiler room, the electrical room where they don't even test the big breakers tom because they don't think they'll come back on.

That's what we're talking about. So here's what we're going to do. Not only we're going to take it over, we're going to build a new one. So I asked the council for two hundred and fifty five million dollars to build a new clam More Health facility. It will take us two years. In the meantime, we're going to have to put about eleven million dollars into the old facility. And I know that sounds like a lot of money,

comp it is a lot of money. But we got to do it because when we take the keys October the first, we're going to be held to the same standard the rest of the country's held to on operating a healthcare system, not the sort of shielded way clam Moore has operated. I'm just telling the truth here, man. It's a difficult situation, but we've got to take it over. One really important thing, we're not continuing the hospital. That concerns a lot of folks. Until you understand that that

facility sees less than four patients a day. We can't sustainably continue the hospital right now, but we can take care of that less than for patient to day patient load in our system, So good times ahead. We're unfortunately going to lose about ten positions because we're transitioning away from inpatient, but three hundred and eighty seven people that work there got the exclusive right to apply for all of those jobs, So I think it's good time.

holistic way. Tom, Let's say do people want an incentive to go get it, go to their local nonprofit gym. Let's subsidize some memberships in these gyms. Let's give it a trial, Let's see if it is impactful. So YMCA is one of the nonprofit gyms that have taken advantage of this. We've been to Muscovie, We've been to Prior, We've been to Grove and Tulsa of course has I

think seven YMCA sites that are participating. So we're looking all over and so people can get in touch with or i should say gyms, nonprofit gens, not for profit gyms can get in touch with our Public Health Wellness team at the Cherokee Nation PHWF dot Cherokee dot org is the email address for those nonprofit gyms that want to participate in this program. And essentially what it is, Thomas, you have a household with a Cherokee in it, the whole household gets a half price discount at the local

nonprofit gym. But YMCA was the biggest of the partner.

behind it. And you're right, Tom, Oklahoma is increasingly a place where movies are produced. That's good news for Oklahoma because that generates a lot of local economic development and our sense and the state sense we work well with the states as if we sustain this and it's not just a one off shot, and look, Killers of the

Fireman was huge. What we need, though, is to make sure that there are continual productions throughout Oklahoma because that's how you build an economy around the film and TV industry. So we're doing it I've talked before on the show about our state of the yard led Greens Greens studio we expanded earlier this year into a massive conventional studio. There's two different places for people in the movie biz.

They know what that means to bring production. And then Oklahoma and Northeast Oklahoma, including the Cheroke Nation, has something that money can't buy, Tom, and that is the beautiful landscape. I mean, the short distance from your studio is just beautiful planes, you know, just just grasslands. And then in Bartlesville Proper, you know, one of the more beautiful downtowns around with some historic buildings. You multiply that times a

few dozens across Northeast Oklahoma. That means we can do this, Tom, but we've got to be prepared to do it. We've got to be ready to do it. We've got to put dollars on the table. We've done that at the Cherokee Nation. We're also doing a lot of job training so that people, and this is important to me, Tom, young Cherokees can look at a movie production and not just dream one day I might go to Hollywood. I

might leave home go to Hollywood. They can say one day I might just go to Owasso, to the studio and still live near my people. I bet I can be in the movie business. Bad is what tomorrow's about, Tom, and we're doing it today.