Good money, good money. Good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome this
time now for Cherokee Chat, and we have John Weston in with this here
today. How you doing, John, I am doing great. Tom.
I want to say o ceo nagata ostasana lei, which means hello everyone,
Good morning, Welcome to another edition of Cherokee Chat. How are you Tom?
As you survive the weekend? I did. We had a great weekend,
and I hope, well you look great. You know, I know
you've been moving. You took a little time off yesterday just to celebrate exactly.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's been a chore of for sure the last
week or so. Like I was telling you earlier. You know, it's
amazing after twenty years of marriage, you know, nearly twenty years of marriage.
It's how much you accumulate, how much stuff you actually have, and
then you start to question, why do I have all this stuff? Oh?
You know, so it's uh, yeah, it's definitely a learning experience.
I want to give a shout out to our sister station up in Cofferville,
the mighty sixth ninety KGTF. I was up there last Monday for fry
Bread Journeys with Chris Crane and Amy Dollar. We had a great time up
there. It was great to see the KGGF studio. You know, you
hear about it all the time. It's great to actually be there. Wow
it is. You know, it's right off the main drag about a block
or two and it left to the left and you can't miss it. Exactly.
Good fun and as always, would like to extend a special thank you
to our sponsor, Cooperative Credit Union located the three thirteen West ninth in Coffeeville.
They have some of the best rates around for everything from home loans to
auto loans that retirement accounts. Check them out the day on Facebook or their
website at cooperativecu dot com. As Law Martin, their president says, our
goal is to save you money and who will disagree with that. It's where
you belong. Insured by NCUA. So a couple of weekends ago, I
went out to the Delaware Tribe of Indians. They had their spring gathering.
They had fun and they had fun. Yeah, I love them going out
there. They had the course of the visit from the Easter Buddy. They
had face panting for the kids, a cornhole tournament, had a great Native
art market, and as usual, I brought a lot of stuff home that
I want to have to find places for now now that you're moving. Yes,
that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, I'd never leave with an armload
of stuff from one of those native art markets, no kidding. Yeah.
But anyway, just a few events that we have coming up. On April
fourth, the Washington County Cherokee Association will be having our April Community Meeting.
Our guests will be Brad Wagnan. He's the Community Preparedness Coordinator with Cherokee Nation
Emergency Management. He'll be discussing emergency preparedness, especially within the context of the
potential for storms that might be coming up. So we're getting into that season
kids, the season exactly yeah, kinds of hail, kind of Miss Saint
Travs Wicked Weather Show. I used to come through remember those, Yeah,
they were great. But the medium begins at six pm with our pot like
at six point thirty, followed by our presenter. And if you don't know
where the WCCA is located, we're right next to the Kuyskui Health Clinton near
Oschleda. You can follow us on Facebook. And the other cool thing that
we're having coming up which is something I really love. On April eighth,
we're going to have our first tomahawk practice of spring. And this is something
that was started a couple of years ago between some of the area community Cherokee
Communities in AFI and South Cokinville CCC, the Cherokee Cultural Community in Dewey in
Washington County, Cherokee Association, the Bocahontas Women's Club from Claremore, the Kansas
City Cherokee Community even comes down. That's assist organization to the inn AFI community
up there, and it's something that's a rivalry we have started. It's really
fun. We gave each other a lot of grief on our pages, and
the great thing is it's really building community. And anytime you can get together
and have fun and do something cultural, I think it's a great way.
It goes a long way to building community. So anyway, April eighth,
six point thirty in our community building near Oschleda, you can look for an
announcement on our Facebook page and we encourage everyone to come out, whether you
have never thrown or whether you're a throwing ace, and we encourage you to
bring a launch here in your refreshment. So whatever you want to drink is
bringing on out there. And also that day, don't forget the eclipse.
We have an eclipse coming up and the totality will be hitting the southeast corner
of Oklahoma around one forty five. I have a friend who lives in Broken
Bow and she was telling me that they are preparing the emergency. Emergency management
down in that area is preparing. It's a town of about four thousand people.
It's preparing for an influx of one hundred and twenty five thousand people.
That's what's estimated to be. Well. I don't doubt that at all.
H Yeah, it's all up and down that route. It's crazy because they
want to see that totality. They do. And the crazy thing is,
she said, they're closing down school the schools. They are encouraging people to
stock up on groceries, stuck up on gasoline, and to stay home.
They said, if you don't have to travel, don't do it because the
streets are going to be congested for a town of four thousand people. And
they so they're actually calling out the National Guard to help manage some of the
logistics of everything that's going on because they're afraid that the local law enforcement emergency
services are going to be for four and a half minutes or four and a
half minutes of darkness exactly exactly. Now, I know it's going to mess
up the animals. And yeah, now I went through that when I was
in college in the late seventies. I do believe in all places Terahote,
you don't know if it's light or dark in there anyway, because it's the
pollution Indiana. And I just remember that that was that was a pretty cool
two or three minutes. Yeah, and you know, but I've not been.
I don't think we were in the totality. We were pretty close.
But I but for the folks who are going to witness this, it's going
to be a lot of fun. It is. Yeah. Well, like
I remember as a kid going out and the coolest thing that I can remember
about the it was a partial eclipse and you would see the light filter through
the leaves on our elm tree in our front yard. Nice you saw little
crescent shapes on the ground because it's kind of actually like a pinhole box that
you use for you know, you can do that'azing. Yeah. Yeah,
So you know, the Cherokee we believed in an eclipse was a giant frog
or what we call it what losi and was eating the sun or the moon,
depending on whether it was a solar lunar eclipse. And so we'd go
outside and scream and make a bunch of noise to scare the frog so it
would release the sun of the moon and bring it back and fun game for
the kids. Yeah, exactly right. And they said that as time went
on and we got access to guns and firecrackers and things like that, they
go off and set out these noise makers to bring the sun back. Every
native culture has a little different spin on what they eclipses. Yeah. Yeah,
so that's interesting. So on April nineteenth, the WCCA, we're holding
a voter registration drive at our community building. It's going to be from ten
am to five pm. Our next election for Cherokee Nation will be June fifteenth,
and the registration for that election I actually closed on March twenty eighth.
You can request a voter registration form from the Election Commission. If you're not
registered to vote, you do have to register to vote in Cherokee Nation elections.
It's not something automatic when you have a tribal card. So anyway,
you can download that form. You can fill it out and mail it back
to the Election at Election Hyphencommission at Cherokee dot org. It's doubtful it'll reach
them in time if you send it by snail mail, so I would recommend
taking a clear picture of the filled out form with your camera and emailing it
back to the EC. That's probably gonna be the quickest way you're going to
be able to do that. And if you have questions for him, for
example, if you don't know if you're registered, because some people it may
have been a long time since they've actually voted. Their number is nine one
eight four five eight five eight ninety nine. And you can also do the
same for absentee ballot request forms. If you're not going to be around on
the election day, you can check with the Election Commission and website at Cherokee
dot org and they have a downloadable absentee ballot request form and you can basically
do the same. If you're registering to vote, you fill out the forum,
send it back, email it to the Election Commission. The deadline for
that is going to be April fifth, So if you're interested in voting,
you should do that and they'll be sending out the absentee ballots around the April
twenty second, twenty third, and then we will have the election on June
fifteenth. And what this election for is every twenty years or so, Cherokee
Nation will vote on whether or not to have a constitutional convention. And it's
just a way, and it's just it's kind of interesting because, you know,
Thomas Jefferson, he had actually recommended to the US Constitution be examined every
said every nineteen years, and so I think the Cherokee Nation is kind of
wise at adopting that because it's a way basically, a group of people will
be impaneled to go around to the various districts and actually listen to the people
them, that's it, and find out, you know, find out if
Cherokee Nation is being responsive to their needs. And we think they We think
the Cherokee Nation has done a great job, you know, but I think
it's also important listen to your people and find out if there are issues that
are concerning them as well. I think the Chief has stated that several times
he doesn't want our government to become so big that we don't listen to the
people living here. That's very important can send the government. So anyway,
April twenty seventh, we're going to be having our Cultural Data WCCA now for
Cherokee Cultural Community up and doing. On April sixth, Sage Jellison a Sagebrush
Beads will be instructing a beating class. They had a sign up with their
last general meeting. If you're still interested in attending that particular beating class,
I would call actually I would check on the CCC Facebook page. Go ahead
and message them and see if they have any space left. We basically limit
the class size to ten participants, and the reason for that is it's a
lot easier to oversee ten people working on different you know, beating beating project
projects exactly than having to say fifteen twenty people that are all coming at you
and asking questions and so it's just it's just a lot. Yeah, it's
kind of hectic for her. So it's just a lot easier to manage.
And the other thing is we've had a few people came in and they just
wanted to observe, which is perfectly fine. But we we actually have this
set up for ten participants, you know, because we want we want people
to have specialized attention if they're having difficulty with the project. So and it's
great. This is actually a project that's been funded by the Cherokenation Artists Recovery
Act. We passed had the Chief had basically we passed it had about three
million dollars allocated to our artists different in different ways. Because it was in
the advent to COVID, they weren't able to get out and sell their creations.
And one of the one of the programs under that Artist Recovery Act are
these cultural classes. And these classify as cultural classes the beating classes, and
so they actually pay for the instructor to go in, pay for the materials,
so it's free to the attendees, you know, and it's something it's
something really great. I believe that we've move undertaken. For those who may
not be aware, there is now a Cherokenation office at the Community Building in
Dewey. That building can be found at seven hundred East Orham. The office
there now is Career Services. It's open from eight to five pm Monday through
Friday. Human Services will be there soon opening an office from what I understand,
and we also wanted to announce the winner of last month's contest that we
had, we were giving away a handcrafted, wonderful flute from Cherokee National Treasure
Tommy Wildcat. The winner of that is Kinie Carmen, and the congratulations to
her. Go ahead and reach out to us on our Cherokee Chat Facebook page.
You can message us or message me at Cherokee Chat radio dot com or
actually dot com at gmail dot com so that we can set up a time
to exchange that one letter have that prize. This is a beautiful handmade flute,
It sounds great and the one and only Tommy Wildcat creation. That's exactly
right. Tommy is. He's an amazing artist. I love listening to his
music. He's put out several He's well known around the country. Like I've
said before, he's been featured on Discovery Channel, National Geographic. They were
doing a Beatles anthology and he was in an American Express commercial actually playing his
flute, which I thought was just really incredible. It kind of blows your
mind to see that sort of notoriety for him. But anyway, this month
our prize giveaway is a children's book about the First Fire, which is the
story about how we first obtained fire and it's actually signed by Deputy Chief Brian
Warner. Coincidentally, Brad Wagman our speaker at WCCA Thursday evening. He is
the author of that book and he adopted this story as a children's book because
we're very interested in always passing along stories from the tribe. He's a very
interesting person. I always look forward to speaking with him. We share a
couple of things in common. We both enjoy tending to our Bonzi trees and
throwing tomahawks. And he's really a pretty decent tomahawk tomahawk thrower. It's better
than being a tomahawk catcher. That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's rough. And we have another community meeting for the Norweida folks.
They're located at ten twenty six Lenape Drive. They check out their Facebook page.
They usually have their meeting announcements there. Something they we recently. We
went over a couple of weeks ago. They had a reauthorization of the I
think it's a oh for the head Start program. They had them there and
the chiefs has gone around throughout the reservation and committed forty five million dollars to
support our head Start programs. So it was really a great event. They're
going to be extended. They have a nutrition center over there, are going
to be expanding that to feed more people. So always as always, Yeah,
great things happening in cherokeynation. My gosh, yes, that is absolutely
astounding. Tell folks they can get a hold of you here. They have
questions on Cherokee Chat. You've got your own Facebook page. I do have
my own Facebook page exactly. Say go ahead and follow this on Cherokee Chat.
You can message me on there, or like I said, you can
actually send an email to me at cherokeechat radio at gmail dot com. Very
good, John Weston, thank you for being with us here today. It's
always Tom and for all the listeners out there at do to de goha e.
So until we meet again,