Cherokee Chat is an independent production and is not affiliated or endorsed by Cherokee Nation
or any of its entities, businesses, government, or otherwise. Any views,
opinions, or content express in this program are solely those of the host
and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Cherokee Nation.
Good morning, good morning, good morning, and I'm going to try this
here, mister Weston O c O O c O. Tom Oh. There
we got souna lee, which is good morning. And another word phrase we
like to use on today, especially is osto chunky losi losti, which just
means happy wash day. Okay, I think it's hinting I might need a
bath. Uh. It's Cherokee Chat. And you brought friends, as you
always I did, I did. I brought with me that kind of commissioner,
Mitch antl Uh, And we just want to welcome everyone to another edition
of Cherokee Chat. Everyone's having a good morning out there. I was driving
around the other day around Barnesville, and I noticed that we seem to be
doing pretty well with our cleanup efforts here. And I've noticed a few ward
up windows still and things like that. But it seems like we're starting to
get things back on track, so that's always encouraging. Sign to see my
guest this morning. We'll have a little more to say about that here in
a bit. As always, would like to extend our thanks to our sponsor,
Cooperative Preyer Unit located at three thirteen West ninth Street in Coffeeville. They're
all about providing you with great personal financial services. They want to remind you
that when life happens, a little extra money can help and who doesn't need
that right and unexpected car repair, home repair, medical bills can really add
up. They want to remind you they're here to help you. And Cooperative
Prayer Union it's where you belong. Check them out today on Facebook or their
website at Cooperative COOPERATIVECU dot com insured by NCUA. So I mentioned Washday at
the top of the broadcast. That's what it translates to in Cherokee when we
say Happy Friday. Today's day when everyone would get together, well before we
had washing machine machines and basically the women would get to there and wash everyone's
clothes with the tribe of the towns. It started me thinking about another tradition
we have in Cherokee Nation, and that's the going to water ceremony, and
that's something that's very important to us in daily life. The Cherokee acknowledged the
spiritual significance of our local rivers and our streams and ponds with the ritual ritual
called going to water, and each morning at daybreak, a party at Cherokee
would be let out to it by a healer down to a running stream,
where the group would face the rising sun and immerse themselves completely in the flowing
water, which was sort of a kind of a rebirth. This ceremony of
a communion touched on nearly all spheres of social life. Going to water was
part of the ritual for obtaining long life, for winning the affections of a
woman, for recovering from an illness, and for calling down prosperity upon the
family at each return of the new moon, and for century before the force
will removal back east. The Tennessee River was so closely associated with them that
English, Spanish, and French settlers often referred to the waterway simply as the
Cherokee River. It stood not just as the political and an economic center of
much of the Cherokee world, but also the spiritual center. And the Cherokee
word for river in fact is longman or more literally person long heat, which
evokes something of the sacred essence of these bodies of water, which the Cherokees
saw living as entities and now with their own unique personalities and attributes. And
while a lot of American settlers they would see it sort of as an economic
opportunity, we've viewed it as a sacred aspect of our culture. And from
the Cherokee perspective, when you radically transformed a river or a body of water,
you were basically killing it, because when the water stand still, they
often become stagnant and are considered dead waters. And that's why today we still
have going to water ceremonies, but we will never use just a standing body
of water for that ceremony because those are considered dead waters. And so today
I have with me District one County Commissioner Mitchannel. Mitch is a member of
Washington County Cherokee Association. I'll mention that, and he's been a great ally
to the Cherokee people. Mitch, how are you today? I'm well,
John, you great, great. It's great to have you here with us.
I understand your little road where you've been out working hard for the people
of Washington County and it's been a week. It's been a week. Yeah,
absolutely, So you know, one of the things that I always like
to bring home if we're talking about the border commissioners or a county commissioner's position
is people often equate it with the office or with the office of maintaining roads
and bridges and infrastructure things like that, which, yes, that's a very
important part of what you do. But would you elaborate on some of the
other responsibilities you take on being a commissioner because there may be a few people
out there listening that really have no idea what your function is. Sure,
I don't want to oversimplify the roads and bridges section. Yeah, but that's
about ten percent of what I'm responsible for. And honestly, we've got road
crews. Each district has a road foreman. Yes, each district has an
assistant to that that position, if you will, that kind of handles the
monetary side of things. So I've got one person that makes sure they've got
money to operate and one guy that actually handles the day to day operations.
And then we have those road crews. Our road crews handle most of that
and it's almost seamless to us. So because we've got a crew under you
absolutely worry quite as much about being taken care of. Absolutely. Yeah,
And my road crew District one is exceptional. We're the smallest road crew out
of the three districts. But we also have the fewest road miles. We've
got about one hundred and sixty miles give or take that we maintain in fifty
two bridge structures, so that's quite a bit. A lot of those are
farmed market roads, these smaller roads that just gets you out to a major
collector, which gets you out to a highway. So there's a system behind
all of this that I wasn't aware of. The funding is even more of
a system. But that's that's usually administratively where we we in Washington County put
our focus. But apart from that, the committees, groups, organizations that
we're a party two simply by the auspices of the office have just floored me.
I mean, there are so many organizations that we're involved in and regions
or region the regional concept of governance is nothing new County government has seen through
the years. Hey, we need to consolidate county government. We need to
do things differently. And every time those measures, you get them before the
people and they fail. So that's something that's been pushed for years. But
what we're now seeing in light of our in exchange with that concept of consolidation
is a regionalization. So Washington County participates on several organizations and committees and other
entities that place us in anywhere between a seven and an eleven county region in
the northeastern corner of the state. So we have to interact if we want
the citizens of Washington County to have benefit of those programs. Things like your
Council of Government. Ours is Grand Gateway Economic Development Association over in Big Cavern,
So I'm back and forth to Big Caven several times. Our Circuit Engineering
District is an eleven county conglomerate. UH Workforce Development is a seven county conglomerate,
and and then the list just goes on and on and on, card
services, pre k service. There's so many things that I had no idea
we were we were tasked with, and a lot of these things are our
mandates that that we're we're tasked with through the legislature by way of statute.
I know that. I go to church with Commissioner Bovia. We were just
talking one day after church and he mentioned that he felt extremely lucky. And
the crazy thing is, I've heard this, you know. I don't think
he was just speaking a good line. I've heard this from other people that
are county officials, and they said that we have one of the best counties
as far as inter office relationships, communications, working together, and everyone in
the commission, you know, gets along really well. From what I understanding,
You're all working for the benefit the citizens here, you know. And
I think that's wonderful because he pointed out that not all counties are like that.
That is absolutely correct. They are not all like that. Yeah,
And to that point that that's the thing that a lot of people don't understand
about leadership is it's about relationship, it's not about policy. That's exactly right.
And in Washington County, we've ate that the eight of us have come
together and done that. I think that's made easier by the fact that we're
managed financially by a budget board, which consists of those eight elected officials.
So instead of us being the board of county commissioners. That says, Okay,
tell us what you need in your budget, and we're gonna, you
know, we'll split the pie up. The three of us aren't beholden to
just that project. We've got all eight elected officials around a table making those
decisions because the electorate elected all eight of us, So it makes sense.
It's difficult for some counties to do that. And most times when I hear
problems from other counties or issues that are going on, they're not policy issues.
It's relationships. Relationships exactly. Yeah. Well, I read recently that
about twelve hundred phone was homes where our damaged right here and Barzel's thanks to
the tornado. What amount of damage occurred not only in Barzweil, but across
Washington County And what steps in the count as the county taking to help those
folks out or help the situation, which was interestingly confined to Bartlesville itself.
We had very little damage out in the county. I believe District two had
a couple of trees down that they worked. We had one up in District
one that we worked on a dead end road, So we really didn't see
that damage extend. And I'm sure you've taken a look at some of that
tornado path data. So the Weather Service is a nice little map up that
shows that bath absolutely and well, one of the one of the employees here
at the radio station put something up from Noah Nathan. Yes, that's who
it was, and I was able to capture that and use that. So
maps to me communicate a lot better than words and statistics and numbers. So
when you put it on a map, suddenly people can visualize it and that
makes sense. So anyway you look at that damage path and that damage string,
we had two major pockets that kind of fit within the districts of Washington
County. A lot of people are, well, what are county are what
are county personnel doing in the city limits. They're still in our district.
As far as the county is concerned, we certainly don't self deploy. I'm
going to reach out to the City of Artlesville and say, hey, District
one has some damage over here, and I know you guys are working to
clean it up. What can we do to help? How can we make
this process go a little more smooth for you guys, Because it's that's a
lot of material that ends up moving even even in our case, and I
consider us lucky and blessed because of the fact that this this particular event was
kind of rotating above us. When we look to our our neighbors to the
west and see the devastation in Barnsdall, we were just genuinely blessed. Yes,
So it's easy for us to take this large amount of material and reduce
it to a a chipped form versus the loose material form, and that reduction
ratio is about fifteen to one. So I've got a crew of four guys
that went out, primarily four guys some days. It was three over six
days, and we moved one hundred and sixty two cubic yards of chipped material,
which translates to about twenty four hundred qubic yards of loose material. When
I use the term loose material, I mean stacking brush at the edge of
your property allows us to come by collect it and reduce that waste substantially.
So we moved a lot. District three was moving it with dump trucks,
so they were just taking the loose material and moving that. They moved over
one thousand yards qubic yards of material over five days. So those pockets of
damage that we saw Osage twenty third Street area, and then over here north
and north of Tuxedo, east of Highway seventy five, that's where District run
work, District three was working down here. Annuinely, we were just in
town to help help out help the City of Bartlesville do what they are continuing
to do. We knew it was going to be a long process for everybody,
and Keith Henry at the City of Bartlesville, he's run a great show
with this. You had mentioned at the outset, watching these recovery methods play
out and getting back to normal, and they're having in a very orderly manner,
you know. And in fact, well I still notice that we have
State farm officials out at the lowest parking lot where a satellite link up,
you know, which I think is very interesting. They're staying out there in
a travel trailer. But I think that's wonderful thing. And we offer the
community here. Government moves intentionally slow on most things because we want to make
sure we're expending taxpayer funds correctly. In a disaster recovery mode, we need
to step that game up. So that's what we were doing. Sure and
make it move faster in it. Okay, Well, I wanted to thank
you for coming on the air today, Mitch. It's been a great having
you on and kind of explaining everything that's going on with the county and our
efforts there. I just wanted to mention everyone to follow us on the Cherokee
Community Facebook pages for the latest event news and meetings. Just to also remind
everyone, we're going to have the fifty ninth Annual Delaware Powow coming up May
this weekend May twenty fourth, twenty fifth, and twenty six. That's on
Road six hundred, just three miles east the Highway seventy five, just about
a nine mile north of Copan. Just also want to touch on this.
This month's prize giveaway is two coffee cups and blazing with the Cherokee Nation Seal.
For those that don't know, the Cherokee word for coffee is cawie.
We're going to go ahead and drop the emoji in the comments section. We
can go ahead and do that, and we are going to be back with
you here on the air on June third at nine to forty five. We'll
discussing the upcoming election in Cherokee. Nation whether or not we should hold a
constitutional convention. You can follow us on Facebook a Cherokee Chat or catch us
on the Barcel Radio Facebook page. You're on the band of the Barzel Radio
app, available on the Apple Store. A big waldo to my guest Mitch
Channel and to all of you. Go to the goha e until we meet
again. Cherokee Chat is an independent production and is not affiliated or endorsed by
Cherokee Nation or any of its entities, businesses,