Gathering Transcription

2020 Virtual Citizen Gathering
June 25, 2020
7 p.m.


Jay Keel

Good evening. Welcome to the 2020 Virtual Citizen Gathering of the Chickasaw Nation.

My name is Jay Keel, the secretary of family services for the Chickasaw Nation. In response to COVID-19 impacting Chickasaws around the world, we are broadcasting virtually to provide information on how the Chickasaw Nation is surviving and thriving during this incredible time.

As is our custom, let us begin with a prayer. Providing the invocation this evening, please welcome Chickasaw elder, Pauline Brown.


PRAYER


Jay Keel
 

Thank you, Ms. Brown.

This pandemic has impacted us all. For some, we have experienced the tragic loss of loved ones. For all, our daily lives have been changed in some way as we cope with new challenges.

Tonight is meant to provide you with the opportunity to hear from our leaders about the efforts being made to serve you. It is also an opportunity to build upon our faith in each other as we unite.

Our unity is derived from our strength as a people, united in the common bonds of ancestry and heritage.

One way in which we celebrate our heritage is through storytelling. Over centuries, Chickasaw storytellers have had the distinct honor of connecting new generations to the history and traditions of our people.

Sharing with us tonight is one of our storytellers. Please welcome Stephanie Scott, Chickasaw Nation Storytelling Manager.


Stephanie Scott
 

Chokma! My name is Stephanie Scott and I am the storytelling program manager at the division of arts and humanities.

Today, I'd like to share a story that was told by Te Ata, one of our more well-known Chickasaw storytellers. It is called, "Why Owl and Rabbit Do Not Get Along."

A long time ago, Old Earth Maker was quite proud of everything that he made. He would often look down on his creation, the earth, and admire all of the living things and creatures that roamed the earth.

One day, he noticed rabbit had started doing a song and a dance. He looked down and saw rabbit and thought, "Hmm, I wonder what he's doing?

He’s asking me a question in his song." So, he began to listen. Of course, rabbit was basically asking the Creator if he could come and fix him.

He was not happy the way he was made and he wanted to be able to have Creator to come down and give him different things so he would be able to survive in the cold, cold winter.

In his song, he wanted to have long fur to keep him warm, and he thought maybe he would like to have long ears so he could hear better. He also wanted long legs so he could be like the deer and glide over the cold winter ground.

He began singing and dancing even more, and the Creator was quite happy with this song. He thought to himself, "Hmm, because rabbit did give me such a wonderful song, I will fix him," he said.

So, he went down to the earth and gathered all the animals and all the different creatures among the earth and said, "Now everyone, I am going to make magic and fix rabbit, but all of you need to close your eyes because you do not need to see the ceremony. So everyone, cover your eyes or look the other direction as I fix the rabbit."

So everyone abided and they closed or covered their eyes or looked the opposite direction and he began his magic.

First, he grabbed rabbit’s ears and he began to pull them up and stretched them out. Then, he looked and he thought, "Yes, I could go ahead and give you some longer fur." So, he made rabbit's fur a lot longer and, of course, it was silky and soft.

Of course, that is how we all know rabbits tend to be - nice and soft and fluffy. As he began to reach for rabbit’s legs to make them longer, he could feel someone watching.

So, he looked over his shoulder and that’s when he saw the owl perched up in a tree looking down staring and observing everything that was going on.

Of course, Old Earth Maker was quite angry because for one thing, he told all the animals to cover their eyes and it even made it more so that owl was not listening and respecting his wishes.

So, he stopped in the middle of what he was doing and he went over to the tree, grabbed the owl and put his hand on top of owl's head and said, "You should have listened to me."

And he pushed owl's head down into his shoulders and, of course, it was like he had no neck. He told owl, "Because you did not listen to what I said, you now must stay up in that tree perched at all times, even throughout the night and you will not be able to see the sunlight ever again."

So, owl was forever a being in the night and watching all things. He would sleep during the daytime and miss out on all of the exciting things.

During this time, rabbit grew quite impatient and he began to decide, "Well, he's never coming back to fix me," so rabbit hopped away. Of course, because he did not stay, his legs were not finished yet. So, when he tried to run away, with his legs being halfway stretched, he had to hop. Kind of like this.

As we all know, rabbits all still have those same legs that they hop with.

To this day, rabbit does not like owl because owl caused him to not get all of his body fixed, and owl does not like rabbit, because now he must stay forever awake at night, and miss out on all the excitement during the day.

And that's the way it is.


Jay Keel
 

Great job, Stephanie! Thank you.

The Chickasaw Nation continues to work to serve Chickasaws all over the world.

And, it is the strong leadership of our Governor that has brought us to this place.

At this time, I welcome the Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, Bill Anoatubby.


Governor Anoatubby
 

Chokma!

Welcome to our first virtual Chickasaw Gathering. It has been quite some time since we have seen each other and I do miss getting to speak with you and see you in person.

Like most people around the world, we are adapting to the ever changing circumstances posed by COVID-19.

While much different than the gatherings we have held in person, virtual events like this have many benefits.

We are not limited to a geographic area or bound by travel concerns. Like many families, we are scattered both near and far …yet we remain family, united together as Chickasaws.

Now, more than ever, it is important that we seek out opportunities to connect with each other.

We are creating many new options to provide information to you, as well as opportunities for you to share with us.

Soon, our Chickasaw connection and community council meetings will resume online. We are still working out the specifics, but we will be reaching out to our citizen groups soon with details.

Our team is working hard to provide all the wonderful experiences that we have come to enjoy each year at the Chickasaw Nation, just in an online format.

We have a number of virtual events planned for this summer. We will soon celebrate the talented Chickasaws who were selected to be inducted as the 2020 class of the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. The Chickasaw Hall of Fame is a great honor and we will one day gather to formally induct these remarkable individuals.

In the meantime, on July 2, we will premiere a video featuring a glimpse of their incredible achievements.

We will soon be celebrating the 10 year anniversaries of the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center and the Chickasaw Cultural Center, as well as the 100th anniversary of the McSwain Theatre.

All of these virtual events and celebrations will be available to view online.

And for the first time, our Annual Meeting and Festival will be provided in a virtual format. This will provide an opportunity for more Chickasaws than ever to experience and enjoy the culture, heritage and progress from the safety of your home. Hopefully, we will be able to return to our historic capital of Tishomingo in years to come.

There will be a series of online experiences designed to help everyone connect with our Chickasaw culture and hear important announcements and updates from the convenience and safety of your own home.

These are unusual times that require many adaptations to our normal way of doing things, and you probably have questions. We hope to address some of those subjects today, and if you still have questions, we would love to hear from you.

After all, this gathering is about communication and connection, and that always works best when it is reciprocated.

We know that one of the concerns you may have relates to our businesses temporarily closing and how that has affected our finances. As you may recall, in March, we declared a public health emergency within the Chickasaw Nation and implemented a plan to close specific offices and businesses while maintaining employee pay. We were able to do this by utilizing funds that had been set aside for development projects.

For many years, we have implemented sound fiscal policy, allowing us to pivot when necessary.

While many of our offices and businesses were closed for employee and customer safety, certain businesses deemed essential remained open to continue providing necessary goods and services to the public.

Immediately following our decision to close our businesses, the Chickasaw Nation's commerce and health departments collaborated on a phased reopening plan to ensure we could safely reopen at the appropriate time.

Here to tell you more about the reopening is secretary of commerce, Mr. Bill Lance.


Bill Lance
 

Thank you, Governor. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Chickasaw Nation businesses were performing very well and benefiting from an overall strong economy.

However, COVID-19 is an unprecedented event, and it presented the Chickasaw Nation with an enormous challenge, which impacted our businesses and interrupted services.

It became clear that as cases and deaths due to COVID-19 began to increase, strong measures were going to be required to protect our citizens, customers and employees.

Under Governor's leadership, we began temporary closures of our businesses, including entertainment, hospitality and tourism related properties.

Some businesses, such as our Chickasaw Travel Stops, hotels and radio stations, remained open to continue providing essential goods and services to the public.

To protect our employees and patrons at these locations, we implemented a number of changes, including facility modifications, requirements for use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and enhanced cleaning procedures.

A critical element of our reopening plan was to ensure that each and every employee returning to work received a COVID-19 test with a negative result prior to their return.

The Chickasaw Nation Department of Health was able to quickly stand up several touchless drive-thru testing sites at key locations across the Chickasaw Nation.

The health team worked closely with our human resources and operations teams to schedule thousands of employees for testing over the course of a single week – a truly monumental effort.

The Chickasaw Nation Department of Health has also conducted extensive close contact tracing for those employees and follow-up testing for the individuals who tested positive.

Additionally, the department closely monitored and analyzed testing and epidemiological data to support informed and timely decision making.

During the closure period, modifications were made to facilities to support responsible distancing.

These modifications included installation of custom plexiglass barriers and hand sanitizer stations, as well as relocation of nearly 500 electronic gaming machines at WinStar to create additional spacing between players.

Facilities were also deep cleaned during the temporary closure period, and fully stocked with additional cleaning and sanitation supplies and PPE.

Based on recommendations from the department of health, we began the phased reopening of our tribal gaming businesses on May 27 at a 25% occupancy and with robust safety protocols.

Customers have adapted well to our safety precautions, and early financial results suggest we may expect a return to normal business performance sooner than we initially anticipated.

On June 10, we transitioned to the second phase of our reopening plan, which returned us to 24-hour operations and closed zones in a rotation to allow for deep cleaning procedures.

This phase also included reopening the WinStar golf courses and pool areas with responsible distancing measures.

As we remain vigilant and adapt to new information, we hope to move forward to phase three and four of our reopening plan over the next several weeks.

We will continue to monitor the situation and adjust our business practices in whatever ways necessary to uphold the importance of public health.

Thank you, Governor.


Governor Anoatubby
 

Thank you, Bill. Our commerce and health departments have done a fantastic job of collaborating and coordinating their efforts.

As you might imagine, our health department has been incredibly busy over the last few months.

Because we declared a state of public health emergency within the Chickasaw Nation so early in the outbreak, we were able to pivot from conventional care and focus on the testing, treatment and prevention of COVID-19.

We were also very fortunate to have the resources to open COVID-19 testing and treatment to the entire community.

Tents for testing were set up at the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center in Ada and at our clinics in Ardmore and Purcell. Patients drove through the stations and remained in their vehicles for testing in order to make the process convenient and safe.

All in all, our response to this pandemic has been extremely successful, and our next speaker had a great deal to do with that success. Please welcome our secretary of health, Dr. Charles Grim.


Dr. Charles Grim
 

Thank you, Governor. I'm happy to be able to provide everyone an update and speak about how the Chickasaw Nation Department of Health has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the steps that we're taking as we move forward.

First, I want to thank Governor Anoatubby for his leadership through the pandemic. He has made and still continues to make many crucial decisions that are helping us combat COVID-19 in our communities.

Health professionals all around the world believe that the measures enacted to mitigate the spread of the virus, like those taken by the Chickasaw Nation, have worked because of widespread participation.

And locally, we've seen the success of these measures at our Chickasaw Nation health facilities, where only a small fraction of the tests administered have resulted in positive cases.

We've been able to administer over 20,000 tests to the general public at our outdoor testing stations those are located at the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center in Ada and at our clinics in Ardmore, Tishomingo and Purcell.

Our drive-thru testing tents are designed to make the process convenient and safe for both the staff and the public.

And no one is turned away, including those who don't currently have a primary care provider or insurance. The testing results are usually available in less than a week.

Within the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center, we've been using the Abbott ID laboratory machines to rapidly test patients in the emergency room or the hospital. These test results can be available in less than an hour to our staff.

And as we're starting to reopen elective surgeries, every patient will receive that test prior to their surgical procedure.

We've also employed contact tracing as a strategy in the fight against COVID-19. Many of you have probably heard of that term before.

The purpose of this strategy is to effectively contain outbreaks and stop the spread of the infection. It involves contacting people by phone or in person to determine those who had close contact with an infected patient.

The vast majority of people coming through our testing centers at this time are testing negative. However, any positive test we see triggers several responses from our health system.

After checking the condition of the infected patient, a trained member of the Chickasaw Nation team of contact tracers asks permission to conduct a contact tracing interview.

They will ask about close contacts and try to understand a few things … where that person might have traveled over the last one to seven days, who they may have come in contact with and if there were any high risk contacts.

After they have those names, our contact tracers will start the other part of the investigation, which is to reach out to determine if we want to invite those people considered close contacts of the infected individual for testing or just have them isolate at home.

The idea is to keep those possibly infected from going out to the broader community and putting others at risk.

Though much of our focus the past several months has been on combating COVID-19, we know there are others who still need to see a provider for various reasons.

Throughout this pandemic, we've been working hard to ensure vital health services go uninterrupted and that patients are able to see or speak to providers when needed.

We've taken measured steps at each of our facilities to minimize unnecessary contact between those in the facilities, and we've enhanced our already high level of cleaning to keep patient care and waiting areas clean and sanitized.

In some cases, we've modified our facility, such as the emergency room, where we've constructed new triage facilities and altered our process to enhance the safety for those suspected COVID-19 patients and for those who are here for other emergent reasons.

We've also utilized technology as an ally in our health facilities as patients are being treated virtually or through telemedicine for minor conditions.

And, we are currently reviewing all our services and the ability to bring them back on line as soon as it is safe to do so. You'll hear more about that as we reopen the facility more widely.

Moving forward, we need to still be vigilant in our fight against COVID-19.

The keys to control this will be personal responsibility in adhering to known preventive measures, robust viral testing and contact tracing.

The virus is still in our communities, but thankfully we've been able to reduce the spread significantly through the many public health measures put in place.

Seeing our own testing data has been very helpful to evaluate our mitigation strategies, and if we need to, we can make necessary changes to help make our workplaces and public areas even safer.

If there are more outbreaks, we are prepared to rapidly identify them and respond, isolate those individuals, contact trace them and their close contacts, and not only protect our workplace but our communities in which we live and work.

In closing, I'd like to assure you our leadership team is monitoring the data and the spread of the virus in an ongoing effort to protect our patient's, our employee's and the public's health.

We are all in this together, and I'd like to encourage everyone, please continue to do your part in controlling the spread of the virus. Thank you.


Governor Anoatubby
 

Thank you, Dr. Grim. Ensuring you and your family remain safe is our main priority right now.

We also understand that there are families who rely on our programs and services for basic needs and assistance.

To this end, many programs and services have continued to serve Chickasaws during the shelter-at-home period.

By modifying our delivery of services using drive-thru, online and virtual platforms and devices, we have been able to provide these services safely and effectively.

For instance, area offices have initiated a curbside intake for services to reduce occupancy in waiting rooms.

They are currently open to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, and staff is available to provide assistance over the phone from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Our community health representatives are still operating, and screening participants by phone prior to completing a home visit.

The Chickasaw Nation Department of Family Services continues to offer a place for domestic violence survivors to turn to for assistance during the ongoing pandemic.

Our department of aging has continued to feed our elders through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Transportation services are continuing to provide transport to medical appointments. Education programs continue to operate, such as higher education grants and scholarships, higher education technology grants, child care assistance grants, the Chickasaw Honor Club and tutoring reimbursement.

While we continue to deliver services and meet immediate needs, there is much happening on the legal front as well.

As you have likely seen in the news recently, there is still more activity about the gaming compacts. For months, we made numerous attempts to resolve the issue of renewal in accordance with the plain language of the compact.

When those attempts were unsuccessful, we filed legal action to resolve the dispute. That case is pending in the Western District of Oklahoma U.S. Federal Court.

Recent headlines stated that the two new proposed compacts by the state had been "approved" by the Department of the Interior (DOI). Those stories explained that the DOI had taken no action on those proposed compacts and that these proposed compacts still face significant legal challenges.

These recent developments arise as a part of the dispute with the state regarding automatic renewal of the compacts. It took several years to establish these expansive, legally binding tribal-state compacts.

That was not easy work nor was it work any of us entered into lightly. The resulting compact framework has served us well and has proven a critical element to economic health and growth, for both the tribes and for the state.

We hope to continue being a major positive economic force in the state for years to come. After all, we have much work to do and many plans for the future, not just in our communities, but also in cities and communities outside our borders. To continue that work, it is essential we continue to defend our sovereignty.

McGirt vs. Oklahoma is another example of our efforts to protect the rights of our citizens and preserve our exercise of tribal sovereignty.

The core legal issue is whether the Muscogee Creek Nation reservation had been disestablished or diminished. We expect the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on this case soon. The full court is now considering this case about criminal jurisdiction.

The decision will affect the scope of federal, state and tribal criminal jurisdiction. Federal, state and tribal law enforcement agencies share a common commitment to public safety and already work well together.

Regardless of what happens with the ruling, we believe that commitment will serve as our guide going forward as we address and resolve any uncertainties.

McGirt vs. Oklahoma is a modern reflection of the very complex history we all share in Oklahoma, which at one time was Indian Territory.

While we face challenges at times, we have an admirable record of working together, building partnerships and doing what is best for all Oklahomans.

We are very appreciative of the funding we have received to assist with the unexpected costs that have resulted from COVID-19.

There are many rules and guidelines that govern the use of the funds and we are working diligently to ensure the proper use of the additional resources.

We have established a multidisciplinary committee to oversee the use of the CARES Act funding. The funds are to be used on those things that can specifically prepare, prevent and protect.

Some of what we are going to be able to do are purchase needed PPE, build storage for PPE and supplies and other items needed.

We are developing an overflow unit at the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center in the event it is needed. We are expanding our lab and testing abilities as we know that testing is one of the best tools we have to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Through some of our partner agencies, we have funding that can be used for a number of social services for those who have been impacted by COVID. We will continue working hard to do what we can to help our communities recover as well as prepare for the future.

These are difficult times, but throughout our history, the Chickasaw people have encountered many such difficult situations and even infectious illnesses.

Time and time again, we have demonstrated our strength and determination, and we will overcome our current challenges, just as we have many times in the past with resolve, perseverance and determination.

We will meet our modern adversities and our neighbors at our side, equipped with the best available science and data. There is no obstacle too difficult for us to overcome.

We all draw strength from our past, from our families and from our communities.

We will continue to modify programs, services and outreach to meet the constantly changing circumstances. At this time of uncertainty, be certain of this: the Chickasaw Nation is strong and our people are stronger.

By the way, don't forget to complete your census. It is important to the Chickasaw Nation and its people.

Thank you.


Jay Keel
 

Thank you, Governor. I'd like to close our gathering tonight with a benediction, so please join me as we pray together.

Our God, we bow before you a grateful people. We are amazed that the God of the universe, the living God, is for us.

We understand, Lord, tonight, that you are for us. Throughout the ages, the Chickasaw people have found favor with you.

And we ask, Lord, that that favor would continue. You've made us a great nation, and we believe in the days ahead we'll be even greater because of your grace, because of the strength that you give us.

And now, dear Lord, I pray for our people. I pray for those who are mourning a loss. I pray for those who find themselves in need, and I pray for those who serve in this government, Lord, that we could be led to those folks, and that we could help meet their needs.

Thank you, God, for blessing our tribe. Thank you for our Governor, our Lieutenant Governor. God, thank you for the legislature and for our judges.

We lift our leaders up to you. Please continue to give them wisdom and strength. Thank you, God, for this time. And Lord, lead us away from this gathering in the name of Jesus. Amen.

We hope the information provided today has been helpful. For more information on programs and services, please visit Chickasaw.net.

Thank you and have a great rest of your evening.