Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for Native Beat and we have John Weston in here with is today.
How are you doing there, John, I am doing great. Tom. I'm a lot better than I was back a few weeks ago. Good to see you upright.
Yeah, really, you know, third third time as a charm. I think for upper respiratory infections. At least I'm hoping it is Oco Nagata Hello everyone, Oco, tom ostasun ali, good morning and happy Monday, or as we like to say in Cherokee, Una do doc quah si as always Thom.
It's going to be back.
Like I said, you know, back of MARSL Radio studios, I fought a third respiratory infection and it's just one of those things you can't seem to kick, you know that As we're talking before we went on the air, and yeah, they're even sitting out text to the schools warning you know, parents, if your kids are.
Sick, keep them home. Yeah.
Yeah, make sure these kids wash their hands. That's that's another big thing. Well, you're at a tall order for a kid, it really is. Yeah, It's like it spreads like wildfire and we all kind of know why, but you know that's the main thing. If you're sick, stay home, you know, from work. If your kids are sick, try to keep them home. I know it's easier said than done sometimes, but you know people are often reluctant to stay home. But like I said, it just keeps those
nasty little bugs to yourself. So before we begin today's show, I'd like to thank our sponsor, Coffee Wild Cooperative Credit Union.
What can I say about CCCU.
One of the things that impresses me most about the because this credit union is the hometown field where you get when you walk through the door, you're not surely like another customer, but a friend. And Lyal Martin, who's the president of c CCU, it's probably one of the nicest, most thoughtful individuals.
I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.
If you're in the market for a car loan, financial planning, or need a little extra cash, head on up to Coffeel Cooperative Credit Union. Today now January twenty ninth, the state of Kansas celebrated its one hundred and sixty fourth years of state. We want to wish all of our neighbors to the north a happy Kansas Day and COFFEELD Cooperative Credit Union is celebrating it's eighty eighth year and there's a reason they've stayed in business that long.
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It's where you belong, insured by NCUA and you can check them out of their web page. It's Cooperative cu dot com. Nata Beet would also like to thank you our listeners for your continued to support and tuning in. And as I mentioned on the last show that we recorded, I appeared on Fribred Journeys with Chris Crane on our sister station, the mighty six ninety KGGF on Inauguration Day,
January twentieth. We talked about some of the ongoing projects we have at Washington County Cherokee Association, which is located in Oceanleda, that's where I'm president, and Chris and I exchanged jokes back and forth about the ongoing tomahawk throwing rivalry between our two communities, and I told her be prepared because it's going to start warming up soon.
And I'm not talking about just the weather.
I told him, I was like, make sure you dust off that trophy because we're bringing it home this year. Of WCCA and that's probably when it's going to stay for the next few years. And now that's a tall order. I hope up my actions can match my word when I say that. But anyway, just joking, we have a lot of fun and that's what's important. And the old joke among natives is, you know, if we tease you and we joke with you, then we like you. If we don't, we either don't know you that well or
you're probably not a favorite person. But anyway, I love teasing them, especially Bill Davis. They're president up there. Chris Crane, she's always great. I mean, she's been no stranger with K One Studios, any of it. Tomahawk throwing is something we all brag about, and it keeps our competition alive between our communities. I think that's a good thing. Healthy competition is always a good thing. It just makes sure. I used to used to have a saying, try to
make your best better. You know, if we can do that in communities, that's going to be great. Oh yeah, here's the other great thing about it. It's also low impact. So when we wake up the next morning, we're not feeling sore. If we played a few games.
Wow. Okay, you know, so that's some of the things.
Especially I'm approaching well next year, i'll be fifty the Big five ozero. Most of the people who play with me or a little bit older too, So yeah, it's definitely something that's something we all enjoyed just because it doesn't tear up your body too bad. That's good. Yeah, it's fun to do. It is fun to do. So we have a lot going on locally and throughout Cherokee Nation.
As always, February sixth, at six pm, the Washington County Cherokee Association will be hosting our delegate designee to the US House of Representatives, Ken te Kim, was a very impressive CV. In fact, she's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Of course.
She's the director of our government Relations for Cherokee Nation and senior vice president of government Relations for Cherokee Nation Businesses. In twenty nineteen, the Chief named her our tribe's first delegate to the US House of Representatives because that was a guarantee that was given to us in the eighteen thirty five Treaty of nuw Echota, and it was outlined
in our Cherokee Constitution. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but she was also named a Visiting Sequoia Fellow at her alma Modern Northeastern State University in twenty nineteen, and prior to returning home to the Cherokee Nation, she served as a partner for the Mepetsi Policy Group in Washington, d C. Which is federal avacy group representing Indian tribes and organizations, and she premuly served as president of Barack
Obama's first ever Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs in the White House, and she did that for three years. She's worked for federal agencies develop and implement policies focused on environmental justice, economic growth, public safety, healthcare, education, and resolved long standing disputes. And Kim's work has helped us lead to the Presidential Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and the Executive Order on Improving American, Indian and Alaska Native Educational
Opportunities and strengthening tribal colleges and universities. She guided the administration's support for the UN Declaration and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and she addressed the UN Permanent Forum on Issues affecting the World's Indigenous peoples. She's especially proud of her work toward the administration and support of proposed legislation to hold all perpetrators of domestic violence accountable for their
crimes against Native American women. And that closes your purisdictional rapid gap in Indian country because traditionally that hasn't happened. You know, abuse is something that's often hidden. You know, it's something that isn't always punished, maybe to the.
Extend that it should be.
And she's played a key role in three White House teams Tribal Conferences, which led a government wide team to ensure that progress was being made on tribal policy and legislative priorities. She's also been a senior advisor to the US House of Representatives Native American Caucus co chair Representative Dale Kildee, serving the bipartisan caucus for nearly twelve years. She established an impressive record of accomplishments in a wide
array of Native American issues. And the cool thing is she grew up in Claremore, She's held various positions of Cherokee Nation.
Part of working in Washington.
Came received her BA and political science from NSU and her Juriss doctorate from the University of Iowa College of Wall She also got her start was from Wyler. In one of her presentations, interning for William Mankiller, which aera conation, which to me, that's amazing in itself. I can't imagine
what a great experience that was for her. And milbe An Killer was an inspiration and a mentor to her, which I just think is mind boggling in a way, because we really revere, you know, will a man Killer now for all the accomplishments and the leadership she provided the Cherokee Nation during the eighties. But anyway, we mentioned the Treaty of Nwichota earlier, and Cherokee Nation appointed came our delegate design But the.
Question is what exactly does that mean.
So in eighteen thirty five, the US government and Cherokee Nations signed the Treaty of Nuichoda, which forced our ancestors to give up their ancestral homelands back east and move west on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. And what many people don't know is that that same treaty promised the Cherokee Nation the right to send a delegate to
the US Congress. Article seven of the Treaty of Nwachoda is crystal clear, and it says we shall be entitled to a delegate and the US House are representatives whenever Congress shall make provision for the same. So we've been waiting nearly two hundred years for Congress to honor this promise, and we're still waiting today. We're simply asking for is the federal government to live up to its treaty obligations. We've seen this time and time again with treats. Promises
are made, but they're not kept. Which actually, there was an old joke about in Washington the only promises that you're allowed to have are the broken ones, because that's pretty much that's pretty much the you know, the nature of the beast. But we just want what's promised to us. And it's not even a voting position. It's an observation and it keeps us close to the US Congress and.
Impacting wall that maybe going to impact tribal.
Nations, but also gives us a seat at the table, and I think that's important. So anyway, February sixth Thursday, She's kim t He's going to be here in our little community of Washington, County Cherokee Association. I think that's wonderful. I encourage everyone to come out to our community building Thursday night to meet and hear her. I promise it'll be a great presentation to find us.
We're right next door, just east of the Kouiskui Health Center.
That's on County Road to East West twenty nine hundred, about a mile and a half east of Highway seventy five. And we have a big, beautiful digital sign out there courtesy of Cherokee Nation.
So now we're even easier to find.
And we have construction going on and it's a little bit of a mess, but yeah, it's progress and it's great to see that out there.
Well.
That brings us by the next point with WCCA, we're looking forward to have our building renovations completed. In our community building progress is coming along. We're happy to receive we've received a four hundred thousand dollars grant for completion of these renovations. We're also having additional lights installed in the parking lot. That's one of the things that the
elders have always come to us about. They're like, hey, would you mind putting in some additional lighting in the parking lot because one light just wasn't cutting it.
We'd like to see where we're going. That's exactly right.
Want to make sure we're not tripping over anything, make sure we can find our cars, you know. So they're having those additional lights, as a God said, And we're also extending the size of the parking lot because we really needed to.
It comes kind of cramped from time to time.
Our facility will now have an office, a storage room, conference classroom, and a full service kitchen addition to drop ceilings and walls that are being finished, which brings a whole new look to the facility. And I've been out there a few times this past week, and what I'm seeing is more progress. In fact, the backing for the new edifice we're gonna have on the outside of the
building is coming along. Our vestibule has been framed in, and we've received delivery with some of our kitchen appliances. And so that's exciting to see because you can kind of see it all starting to gel and mesh and come together, and really we all can't wait to see the finished project. Also, just let everyone know we received one hundred thousand dollars grant from Cherokee writ Nation recently
for a storage building on campus. That will allow us to move our equipment that we have in our back room, such as our tractor and our other materials to that storage space. And that's going to free that back space up for a classroom. And like I remarked, we have a huge garage door that opens to the outside for
that space. So if we decide that we're going to participate, say in the Barzel Christmas Parade or the Barzel Veterans Parade, any of these things to kind of make our presence known in the community, we can just back a trailer up in there, and you know, it's gonna be climate control.
It's going to be great.
Hre not I have to worry about the elements, and we'll be able to decorate and do what we need to do. So I think that's one of the great things is because it's climate controlled, we don't have to heat.
And cool the whole building.
We can focus on just a small part of it if we have a small group of people.
I mean, that's that's going to be wonderful for us.
It also provides a great wind break, so half your decorations don't wind up in Lenapore.
That's exactly right.
And I have decorated plenty of parade floats, and so what I've discovered is find a staging area that's fairly close to the parade grounds so that you don't have to worry about everything blowing off in transits, and and of course have a chase car following you just to make sure if anything does blow off, they can collect it alongside the road.
We've been kind of that before too. So a few weeks ago I went to.
Telequan I signed a memoranium of agreement with Cherokee Nation for our seventy five hundred dollars CONTAGRAN, which stands for Community Organized and the Technical Training Assistance. And what that's going to do is help defray the cost of some of the things we have throughout the year that we have budgeted through contracted services, such as the internet supplies we need for things like publishing our newsletter and a surround sound PA system and other things necessarily for a
successful operation of our association. That surround sound PA system is going to be very important to us because I've had elders that sit way in the back of the room and they're like man I can't hear what's going on up to the front, you know, So I'm going to make sure that we have adequate sound, and that's really important if you're trying to get information across the people.
So I am really excited for all that.
It really has, like I said, made an impact on our operational budget and our day to day operations as well, and so it's going to allow us to do more community outreach programs. It's going to make us even better, make us even better community, and give us more of a presence that we need to build a stronger community because people, if they don't know about you, they're not going to know about the association. They're not going to know about what we offer. They're not going to be
able to come and enjoy in our meeting. And the Chief recognizes this as many of us do, that building a strong nation wins with building our strong communities. That's where it all starts. And I'm so impressed with his dedication to this ideal. Anytime I need help with something, I can pick up the phone and call him and he's always there, always willing to help. I've just been amazed, and you know how how tight his schedule is. I mean this guy I do. I really don't know how he ever sleeps.
So we have that going.
We got a twenty five thousand dollars grant that we're going to have coming up, and I went down to Cherokee Food Nation Food Distribution Center.
We're going to sort of food sovereignty program.
In fact, if anyone's interested in taking part in that, you can reach out to me an email at WCCA pres at gmail dot com. And we recently completed our ten week Cherokee language course. We're actually considering continuing it but through a distance learning program. And we realize that, you know, language is inseparable from our culture and is very important. So really there's a lot of exciting things happening. And before we go today, just want to courage everyone.
If you have a community, try to find one. Check out our community Facebook pages for Cherokee Cultural Community in Dewey, the South Coffeeville NAFI community, our Norda Folks over at No Wada, and our Cherokee Association down to Ocean Leda, and also check out we have two official offices open of Cherokee Culture Community in Dewey.
Check those out.
Career services and our Human Resources Office, And as we discussed earlier, don't forget our February sixth, the six PM program we're having with Congressional Designy Delegate km Th.
We hope to see you there.
Catch frivate journeys with Chris Crane a mighty six nine KGGF, and you can catch a nativ on the Barswel radio app or Barswel Facebook page. A big wado, as we say in Cherokee, Janishi is the Delaware would say, Wanzi is the Osage would say. And to all of you listening, do to do gohun me until we meet again