Go to the Cherokee County Clerk’s office and pull the deeds yourself. In 2025, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma bought land worth more than thirteen million dollars. It’s all on file, in a cabinet anybody can walk up to. The deeds don’t even agree with each other on the exact number.

Now go find the paper that says the Band was allowed to buy any of it.

One purchase has that paper, like for sure. Diamondhead, 63 acres, closed Jan. 24, 2025, for $3.3 million. Council voted on it, 7-2, behind closed doors, and that vote is in the minutes from Dec. 7, 2024.

The rest don’t have that paper, at least not one we’ve found yet. Highway 82, $5.8 million, closed Jan. 3, 2025, signed by Chief Joe Bunch on his way out of office. Willis Road, $900,000, and Park Hill Road, $2.8 million, both signed after Wacoche took over. A tract off Highway 51 Spur, $350,000, filed Feb. 4, 2025, also under Wacoche — this one doesn’t even show up in earlier counts of these purchases. Mimosa Lane, $130,000, lists the Band as the buyer in real estate listing records, though we haven’t pulled the actual deed yet.

Add up every deed on file and the total changes depending on which ones you count, and which ones you’re only trusting secondhand instead of the real filed paper. The county clerk’s office can’t hand you one clean number for what a tribal government spent on land in a single year.

Federal rule 2 CFR § 200.317 lets a tribe use its own buying rules instead of the government’s competitive-bidding process. But there’s a catch: the tribe needs a written policy, and it has to use that same policy for its own money, not just federal money. If there’s no written policy on file, federal rules take over automatically. UKB members haven’t seen a written policy. They haven’t seen bid records either.

Then there’s 2 CFR § 200.439. It says if ARPA money pays for land, the federal government has to approve it in writing first, every time, no matter the price.

According to a source with direct knowledge of UKB financial operations, ARPA funds ran out in December 2025. That source says directors were told back in July 2025 that the Band was short almost $3 million, and that by late fall, staff were told to use ARPA codes for purchases instead of returning the leftover money. A person who worked in UKB accounting, in a written account reviewed for this story, described weekly transfers of $60,000 to $100,000 out of the general fund just to cover accounts that were coming up short, and payroll pulling $120,000 to $150,000 every two weeks out of a $250,000 general fund account to make it work.

The Constitution’s By-Laws spell out the Chief’s job: preside over Council, keep an eye on Council’s business, do the duties of the office. Nothing in there about signing off on land deals.

Council met in August 2025, in the open, streamed live for anyone to watch, and voted to move money from the Corporate Board to each representative’s personal spending account. District Representatives got their share. About a week and a half later, one of those representatives told an Adair County family — hit by storm damage and no power — that he had no money to help them. A representative from a different district stepped in instead.

Here’s something most UKB members probably don’t know: the Band already has a law for this.

Section 406 of the UKB Crimes and Punishment Act makes it a crime for anyone in charge of public money to handle it “in a reckless or wasteful manner which significantly risks loss,” or “in a manner not authorized by law.” If you break it, you have to pay the money back. Section 405 covers any public official who, trying to gain something or hurt someone, “performs an act in excess of their lawful authority.” Both laws have been sitting there the whole time.

You don’t even need a criminal conviction to remove someone from office over this. The Constitution’s Article IX lets Council remove any officer for misconduct, after a hearing, with a two-thirds vote. Articles of Impeachment were filed against former Treasurer Sonja Gourd this year, over the same kind of financial recordkeeping problems this story keeps running into. She resigned before it went any further.

Nobody’s said whether Section 406 applies here. Nobody’s said it doesn’t.

That’s worth asking about at the next Council meeting, or next time you run into your district rep at the store, and it’s a smaller question than whether the Chief spent too much. The Band already used this tool once this year, against one person, over recordkeeping. It hasn’t been picked up over five purchases of tribal land worth thirteen million dollars, some of them signed by a Chief on his way out and some by the one who came in after him, none of them with a council resolution anybody’s found yet.

This story was updated Sept. 3, 2026. The original version, published Aug. 29, 2026, listed Mimosa Lane as one of five properties and did not include a fifth deed, a $350,000 tract off Highway 51 Spur recorded Feb. 4, 2025. Both properties now appear above. The Highway 82, Willis Road, and Park Hill Road figures and dates are unchanged.

SOURCES

Cherokee County Clerk, deed filings, United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma property acquisitions, 2025 (Diamondhead, Highway 82, Willis Road, Highway 51 Spur — recorded deeds reviewed for this story). CoreLogic/MLS property records, Park Hill Road and Mimosa Lane (secondary source; recorded deeds not yet reviewed for this story). United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma Constitution and By-Laws, Art. I, §§ 1, 4; Art. IX. 2 CFR § 200.317, Uniform Guidance. 2 CFR § 200.439, Uniform Guidance. United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma Crimes and Punishment Act, §§ 405–406. Articles of Impeachment against former Treasurer Sonja Rae Gourd, filed July 15, 2026. Video recording of the August 2025 UKB Council meeting, livestreamed publicly, reviewed for this story. Anonymous source with direct knowledge of UKB financial operations. Written account from a former UKB accounting employee, reviewed for this story.

ROSE, Okla. — The wastewater doesn’t ask permission. It moves downhill, off a contract grower’s land in Adair County, into a creek, into the Illinois River watershed, past families who didn’t sign anything.

Oklahoma sued the poultry industry over that water in 2005. Hannah Cole, the Democratic nominee for House District 86, draws a careful line on who’s actually responsible.

“My opponent is widely known as the poultry farmer’s friend,” she said. “I would like to reframe that. My opponent is Big Ag’s friend.”

In her account, contract growers are the ones absorbing the risk in that arrangement — processors like Tyson, Pilgrim’s and George’s setting tournament-style pay that pits neighboring farmers against each other, requiring upgrades before a contract renews, and in at least one case she cited, threatening not to renew a contract before reversing course.

“Tyson and the likes do not provide benefits for farmers,” she said. “No healthcare. No retirement funds. Nothing.”

Rep. David Hardin, R-Stilwell, has held the House District 86 seat since 2018 and is now defending it against Cole. He urged Attorney General Gentner Drummond to withdraw the lawsuit outright after a federal judge rejected the state’s first settlement offer in April. In August, the Tenth Circuit stayed the underlying judgment in light of a new settlement Drummond struck with all six poultry companies, sending the case back to district court. Under that settlement, the companies will pay $41.671 million into an environmental relief fund, $420,000 in penalties to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and $1.9 million for an independent compliance monitor, while phasing down litter application in the watershed over seven years.

Cole doesn’t locate the failure in a missing law.

“We have the laws that say you cannot do this,” she said, “but we do not have any form of enforcing said law.”

She’d have voted no on HB 4118, the 2024 bill Hardin authored that would have granted poultry operators immunity from nuisance liability for waste application under an approved management plan; that immunity language ultimately passed as part of a separate measure, SB 1424, which Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law that May. Her fix: make the companies pay for containment, not the growers.

She names a similar imbalance as the reason she filed to run for office.

“When I became aware of the school voucher program and how it is mostly utilized by wealthy individuals is what solidified my decision to run for elected office,” Cole said. “Witnessing that transfer of wealth from Oklahoma’s bottom to the top was when I decided enough was enough.”

On taxes, she draws a distinction.

“I do not believe in burdensome taxes, but I do believe in fair taxes,” she said. “When productive members of society pay their fair share, we all benefit.”

She’s a licensed practical nurse — has been since she was 19, and still practices today — trained in home health and phlebotomy while she was a junior in high school through the Indian Capital Technology Center. Families in District 86 travel long distances just to see a doctor. Cole doesn’t have a bill number yet for closing that gap.

District 86 runs through Adair, Cherokee, Delaware and Mayes counties. Adair County’s poverty rate is 21.5%, according to 2024 Census Bureau estimates, against 15.3% statewide. Cole says that’s exactly where her first bill would start — funding rural schools well enough that a diploma actually means something on the other side of it.

“Remember school house rock? Knowledge is power,” she said.

She’s also shown up at community meetings opposing the proposed aluminum smelter in Inola and the data center planned for Okmulgee County, neither project inside her own district. She’s shown concern for students outside a campaign stop, too, answering questions from a 10-year-old at Rocky Mountain School — a kid who raises and sells his own eggs and wanted to know what happens to his setup if the poultry industry takes a hit.

Hardin ran unopposed in 2020 and 2022. In 2024, he defeated Democrat Anne Fite in the general election. Cole says the district didn’t get more competitive by accident.

“Folks across our state are realizing just how important being engaged in local government truly is,” she said. “District 86 is now competitive due to the real hardships everyday Oklahomans are facing. They are ready for true change, not lip service.”

She and Hardin have met — cordial, she says, surface-level, the kind of thing where his wife jokes about wanting one of Cole’s campaign t-shirts and he tells her she can have one, after the election.

She didn’t expect company on the primary ballot, either.

“I constantly asked others if they had heard of anyone wanting to run,” she said. “All I heard was crickets.”

Sally’s List found her instead — an Oklahoma group that backs Democratic women candidates. She met their Rena Cook at a Panera in Tulsa, got a “candidate check off list,” and their support, without anything asked in return beyond her positions on women’s rights.

Like Hardin, Cole is a Cherokee Nation citizen, born in Tahlequah at the Nation’s own W.W. Hastings Hospital. She hasn’t sat down directly with tribal government, but she’s precise about the question she keeps fielding versus the one she wishes she got.

“Do you have the support of the Nation” isn’t “do you have the support of the Native communities,” she said, and that’s a big difference.

On McGirt v. Oklahoma, the 2020 ruling that found the Muscogee (Creek) reservation was never disestablished by Congress and remains Indian country for purposes of federal major crimes jurisdiction, she’s specific about where she’d focus: emergency services and policing.

“Those in law enforcement who provide this public service should also be held to a higher standard if being cross deputized to patrol and protect us in Indian Country,” she said.

If she loses in November, she says she’ll keep advocating for elders, disabled people and kids regardless. She also plans to go to law school, so she can help elderly Oklahomans safeguard what they spent a lifetime accumulating.

When the final school bell rings in Adair County, a working parent’s day isn’t over — it just moves to whatever the school district can afford to run after 3 p.m.

Adair County sits in the far eastern corner of Oklahoma, along the Arkansas border, home to small towns most of the country has never had reason to learn: Watts, Westville, Zion. For families there, the gap between the end of the instructional day and the end of a work shift is bridged by whatever after-school infrastructure the district can keep the doors open for. On August 18, 2026, that infrastructure got a five-year boost when the Oklahoma State Department of Education distributed more than $3.2 million in 21st Century Community Learning Center grants.

Three local districts split $719,286 of that total. Watts Public Schools received $196,000. Westville Public Schools received $251,689. Zion Public Schools received $271,597, the largest share among the three, spread across a district that stretches deep into the county’s rural east.

Without federal out-of-school funding channeled through Title IV, rural districts face a choice: cut academic tutoring programs, or leave working families without supervision for kids ranging from pre-kindergarten to high school.

The grants come with requirements attached — tutoring in reading and math, plus robotics, art, music, health education, and adult literacy classes for parents. It’s a federal award routed through a state agency, landing in classrooms where the lights stay on long after the buses have already gone home.

BARON, Okla. — Statewide and legislative candidates met Monday night with Adair County residents at the Mid-County Community Organization in the Baron community, where discussions focused on health care access, broadband, environmental protection and poultry industry regulation.

Brandon Wade, the Democratic candidate for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District, framed broadband, health care access and paved roads as baseline infrastructure for rural communities rather than separate public services.

Hannah Cole, a health care worker running for Oklahoma House District 86, centered her remarks on rural health care availability and public school funding across a district that includes Adair County and portions of Cherokee and Delaware counties.

Dr. Kelly Forbes, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, addressed rural economic issues and questions about mental health services, while Troy Green attended the forum representing U.S. Senate candidate Jim Priest.

Adair County has roughly 20,000 residents. About 42% of the population identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, and more than one in five residents lives below the federal poverty line, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Access to emergency medical care in the county changed following the closure of Stilwell Memorial Hospital in June 2025. The closure left the county without an inpatient hospital, requiring residents to travel outside the county for hospital care.

Broadband access remains limited in the area. About 29% of households lacked a broadband internet subscription during the 2020-2024 period, according to census data.

Agricultural runoff in the Illinois River Watershed formed another focus of the meeting. The watershed crosses northeastern Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas, where phosphorus runoff associated with poultry litter has been the subject of decades of legal and regulatory disputes.

Oklahoma’s long-running federal environmental litigation against six poultry companies concluded in July 2026 with a settlement providing nearly $44 million for watershed monitoring, stewardship programs and limits on poultry litter application.

For residents in a rural county where health care, internet access, roads and agriculture all shape daily life, the issues discussed Monday extended beyond individual programs to questions about how state and federal policies reach communities such as Baron.

Troy Littledeer is an award-winning Indigenous writer, photographer and researcher based in Stilwell, Oklahoma. A member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Littledeer has more than 20 years of experience covering tribal governments, education, sports, public policy and rural communities.

Littledeer received the 2025 Tim Giago Free Press Award from the Indigenous Journalists Association for his work defending tribal press freedom and received a first-place photography award from the Oklahoma Press Association in 2019.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma Tribal Council met Aug. 14 to consider impeaching Treasurer Sonja Gourd. Hours of executive session later, the council voted 6-5 to dismiss the articles and accept her resignation instead. That’s according to UKB attorney Victoria Holland, who gave the account to the Tahlequah Daily Press.

Six to five out of how many eligible voters is still an open question.

The UKB Constitution builds a 13-member council: nine district reps, four officers. The Canadian District seat’s been empty since this council was sworn in Jan. 4, 2025. No one filed for it in 2024. The Constitution lets the council fill a vacancy for the unexpired term, but it doesn’t require one.

The Impeachment Code seats a hearing panel of nine district reps and four officers, minus the accused. It takes two-thirds to convict. Article IX of the Constitution says the same thing: two-thirds of the council removes an officer.

Here’s where the math splits. Pull the vacant seat and the accused officer, and 11 members are left standing. Two-thirds of 11 is 7⅓, so eight votes convict under that count. But the Constitution doesn’t say however many members happen to be seated — it says the council is 13. Two-thirds of 13 is 8⅔, which means nine votes.

Did anyone produce the document that says which number governs when a seat sits empty and the accused steps out of the room?

The 6-5 vote wasn’t an impeachment vote, and it wasn’t a clean majority either. By Holland’s account, it was a motion to dismiss the articles and accept a resignation. The underlying council vote split 5-5. Chief Jeff Wacoche cast the sixth and deciding vote. UKB bylaws give the chief a vote only to break a tie, and a 5-5 split among council members is a tie.

That squares the earlier math. Nine district reps plus four officers is 13, minus the vacant Canadian seat is 12, minus Gourd herself is 11. If the chief votes only to break ties, 10 members voted first. Ten voting 5-5 is the tie the bylaws require before the chief’s vote counts.

Before any of that, Assistant Chief Amos Ketcher moved to clear the room of non-UKB members and non-family, a category that included people enrolled in both the United Keetoowah Band and the Cherokee Nation. It passed 10-0 among the council members present.

David Cornsilk didn’t leave quietly. He’s a UKB member and a Cherokee Nation citizen, and he told the room his UKB membership entitled him to stay, arguing that removing him over his Cherokee Nation citizenship violated the UKB Constitution.

Article IV puts membership on the roll and hands the governing body authority to set future membership rules. It doesn’t define “Exclusive Member.” Article XI says all members enjoy freedom of worship, conscience, speech, press, assembly and association without hindrance. Neither article says dual enrollment ends UKB membership, and neither spells out an unconditional right to sit in every council meeting.

“Exclusive Member” isn’t a Constitution term. It’s a 2025 Election Ordinance term, one-fourth Cherokee blood minimum, not enrolled in another tribe or band, and it governs election eligibility. The ordinance doesn’t say failing that definition strips someone’s UKB membership for every other purpose of tribal government.

We don’t have the enrollment ordinance or the individual enrollment records that would settle whether Cornsilk and others like him remain UKB members under the roll the council actually uses. Whether the exclusion order violated Article XI remains an open legal question.

Holland told the Tahlequah Daily Press impeachment carries removal, banishment, and disqualification from running for years or for life, and said people can “be banished from UKB property, typically.” UKB law treats banishment and exclusion as two different things: banishment hits a person’s membership rights, exclusion bars someone from UKB jurisdiction and its enterprises. Her phrase isn’t the legal definition of either one without another UKB source backing it up.

What the record shows: the council took up Gourd’s impeachment, split 5-5, watched Chief Wacoche break the tie to dismiss the articles and accept her resignation, and cleared the room of people it called nonmembers, some of them dual-enrolled. What the record doesn’t show: which two-thirds threshold governs when a seat sits empty, whether clearing that room squares with Article XI, and whether UKB law says anything about an officer voting on a colleague’s impeachment while facing articles of his own.

The documents that would close those gaps exist somewhere on UKB letterhead. They just haven’t been produced.

INOLA, Okla. — Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked a federal judge Tuesday to stop construction of a proposed aluminum smelter near Inola, a small town in Rogers County about 25 miles east of Tulsa. A smelter is an industrial plant that melts raw material — in this case, aluminum ore — at extremely high temperatures to turn it into usable metal, a process that burns large amounts of energy and can release pollutants into the air.

Drummond’s motion, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, states the proposed facility would sit on 633 acres along the Verdigris River. That’s more than double what Drummond’s original petition said in June, when he filed suit in Rogers County District Court and described the same project as covering about 350 acres. The new filing doesn’t explain the 283-acre gap between the two numbers.

Drummond first sued in Rogers County District Court in June to try to block the project. Attorneys for Century Aluminum Co. moved the case to federal court in July, and Drummond’s Tuesday motion asks the federal judge to send it back to Rogers County, where it started.

The proposed plant, called Oklahoma Primary Aluminum, is a joint venture between Emirates Global Aluminium, a state-owned aluminum producer controlled by the government of the United Arab Emirates, and Century Aluminum Co., a publicly traded American company based in Chicago — with EGA holding 60% of the venture and Century Aluminum holding the remaining 40%, according to Drummond’s filing.

Drummond’s filing states that Century Aluminum’s largest shareholder is Glencore, a global commodities trading company that is also Century’s biggest customer. According to Drummond, Century told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — the federal agency that regulates publicly traded companies — that non-U.S. affiliates of Glencore had entered into agricultural-product sales contracts involving entities wholly or majority owned by the government of Iran. That’s Drummond’s characterization of the disclosure; the underlying SEC filing was not independently reviewed for this report.

Drummond’s motion includes a sworn statement from Ranajit Sahu, an environmental engineer. Sahu states the smelter’s air-quality permit application projects annual emissions of 87,182 tons of carbon monoxide, 731 tons of particulate matter and 425 tons of total fluoride compounds, and that actual emissions would likely run higher than those projections. Sahu also states that if the facility is built as proposed, it would emit more fluoride than any of the seven primary aluminum plants tracked in the most recent National Emissions Inventory — and, by his own comparison, more than any industrial facility of any kind in the country. Sahu draws that comparison himself, and it hasn’t been independently verified for this report.

Fluoride emissions can settle on hay and other crops grown nearby. Cattle that eat contaminated hay over time can develop fluorosis, a condition that damages their teeth and can make it harder for them to graze. Inola holds an annual hay festival and calls itself the Hay Capital of the World.

The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, the state agency that reviews industrial air-quality permits, has not approved the smelter’s construction permit. According to Drummond’s release announcing the motion, DEQ has paused its review, citing findings that the company’s own emissions calculations exceed the fluoride limits listed in its permit application.

Drummond’s filing states the project includes a federal award worth up to $500 million and about $255 million in state performance-based incentives.

Inola’s temporary ban on new construction approvals at the site is set to expire Aug. 28.

A feather touched the ground at Bell Saturday night, and the dancing stopped.

That’s not custom. That’s a first response nine generations deep. Elders and veterans moved in to gather it, and the crowd went quiet in the particular way a community goes quiet when it already knows what to do. Dr. Kelly Forbes, the Democratic nominee for Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor, stood at the edge of it, watching, not talking. He’d spent that same day finalizing campaign logistics. He came anyway, without a podium, without a press line.

Bell sits in the far southern tip of Adair County, close enough to Arkansas to touch it. If you’re looking for the farthest a place in Oklahoma can get from Oklahoma City and still be Oklahoma, Bell is a good candidate. Most people in this state couldn’t point to it on a map. That’s where the 39th Annual Bell Powwow happened Friday night.

Bell has done this before. In the late 1970s, roughly 200 families here had no running water. Wilma Mankiller made it her first project with the Cherokee Nation — residents built a 16-mile waterline themselves, over 14 months, with the tribe supplying equipment. The Cherokee Nation later named a water-infrastructure law after Mankiller and Charlie Soap. A movie got made about it. Bell already fought this fight once.

The Census shows what happened after. 602 people in 2000. 535 in 2010. 191 in 2020 — a two-thirds collapse in twenty years, and not because the map shrank. The boundary stayed the same size the whole time. Of the people still counted there, 74.3% are American Indian or Alaska Native, well above the county’s 42.5%. Bell is more Cherokee than Adair County itself, and it’s been getting smaller for two decades while staying exactly that.

The county numbers explain the rest. Per capita income is $23,710, while median household income is $48,041. The poverty rate is 22.4%, and just 12.3% of adults 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Only 71.1% of households have a broadband subscription, and 55.1% of people 16 and older are in the civilian labor force. (U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2020-2024 5-year estimates.)

Forbes says the Lieutenant Governor holds a seat on the Oklahoma Broadband Governing Board, and he wants that seat to keep asking whether broadband money is actually reaching the places a map says it reaches. Bell had no cell service Friday night. Vendors ran cash-only.

One Facebook follower who grew up near Bell commented after the powwow, describing generations of family who stayed on that ground since Cherokee removal. She named what she said Forbes drove past on his way in — homes without running water, substance abuse, domestic violence, missing and murdered Indigenous people, unemployment, suicide. Bell has heard the first one before.

Nobody in Bell asked Forbes to fix anything Friday night. They watched him watch them. Trace and Leah Whitley worked behind the scenes to make sure Forbes knew the powwow was happening at all. Hannah Cole, running for Oklahoma House District 86, showed up again, the way she’s made a habit of doing and communities like Bell are noticing.Others took a year and a primary runoff to find their way to Adair County. They probably still haven’t heard of Bell. In a community that built its own waterline because nobody else would, that distinction is the whole story.

Troy Littledeer is an award-winning journalist, photographer and researcher from Adair County, Oklahoma. A member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, Littledeer grew up at Candy Mink Springs, a rural community neighboring Bell, in Adair County, Oklahoma. He has spent more than two decades covering the people, sports, and communities of northeastern Oklahoma.

His work now focuses on tribal sovereignty, government accountability, education and the everyday realities of rural and Indigenous communities. His reporting and photography have appeared in tribal, Oklahoma and national publications. He is a lifetime member of the Indigenous Journalists Association and a 2025 recipient of the Tim Giago Free Press Award.

Littledeer writes commentary through Kituwah Punk.

The 1950 Constitution of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma asks three things of a Member who wants a Council seat. Be 21. Live in the district. Be a Member. That’s the whole list, and it hasn’t been amended.

The 2025 UKB Election Ordinance, Resolution 25-UKB-132, adds six more.

Filing opens Aug. 3 and closes Aug. 14. Only Council seats are on this year’s ballot, two-year terms. Chief, Assistant Chief, Secretary and Treasurer run four-year terms and aren’t up this cycle.

Section 501 requires two years living in the district before filing — longer than the Constitution’s residency language. Five years of exclusive Band membership. No prior service as an elected official of another federally recognized tribe. A valid driver’s license. A high school diploma or equivalent. A criminal background check, with a felony conviction inside the last 10 years enough to keep a candidate off the ballot. None of it is in the Constitution.

The Constitution gives the Council power to hold elections “under rules and regulations to be prescribed by the Council.” The 1950 Corporate Charter gives the Band power to “regulate the manner of holding Band elections.” Neither document says whether that authority covers adding new qualifications for candidates, or just covers running the vote itself.

Article XII lays out how the Constitution actually gets changed: a Council majority vote or a petition signed by 30 percent of eligible voters, then approval from the Secretary of the Interior, then a Membership vote with at least 30 percent turnout.

Section 501 didn’t go through Article XII. Nobody’s produced a document saying why.

A candidate disqualified after the background check has 10 business days to appeal in writing.

Meeting the Constitution’s three qualifications gets a candidate nothing under the current ordinance. Section 501 has to clear too, or the Election Board keeps the name off the ballot.

SOURCES

United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Constitution and Bylaws (1950), Articles V, VI, VII, XII, XL.

United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Corporate Charter (1950).

2025 UKB Election Ordinance, Resolution 25-UKB-132, Sections 501-502.

By .

“We, as Council, have failed you.”

Not “they.” Not the Treasurer. Not one office. He said “we,” because he was standing in the wreckage same as they were, and he wasn’t going to pretend it belonged to somebody else.

That’s what accountability sounds like.

This Band wasn’t built by people who agreed on everything. It was built around kitchen tables, in churches, at stomp grounds, by people who believed what belonged to all of us mattered more than what belonged to any one of us. Thirty-two furloughed employees were counting on that when they showed up to work every day, expecting a government that kept its books straight.

It didn’t.

Twenty-nine million, eight hundred thousand dollars sits unreconciled. Sixteen million, six hundred thousand is the number the Band is chasing just to get back to zero. Comptroller Meosha Rambo took roughly 10,000 unposted accounting entries and got them down to about 1,100.

According to a source granted anonymity, weekly transfers of $60,000 to $100,000 moved out of restricted grant accounts and into the General Fund to cover payroll, at times covering $120,000 to $150,000 of a $250,000 payroll. A second source, also anonymous, described open legal invoices as high as $800,000, with additional spending going toward travel, and named the General Fund as where that money came from. No ledger or invoice has been produced to confirm the second account.

Treasurer Sonja Gourd faces five articles of impeachment over it, with a hearing set for Aug. 14. At the June 6 Council meeting, Chief Jeff Wacoche told her the problems had been going on for six years. He asked how long the Band had gone without drawing down money it was owed.

He’s held the answer to that question the entire time he’s been asking it.

By-Laws Article I, Section 1 makes the chief the chairman of the Council. He presides at every meeting. He holds general supervision of the Council’s affairs. Article III, Section 2 lets him call a special meeting whenever he decides to, no vote, no permission, no waiting on anybody. Four years as assistant chief, then chief since Jan. 4, 2025. The same six years he named at that table are the six years he had the gavel in his hand.

He didn’t need a camera to ask a single one of these questions. He waited for one anyway.

A Member’s own representative tried to ask questions in that same meeting. The chairman didn’t answer him either. Adair raised Members’ concerns about travel spending — who approves it, what it costs, where the reports are. Wacoche cut him off. Told him “we get your point.” Sent him to Facebook posts and email summaries instead of a number.

Band travel runs on Band money. A Member who can’t get a straight answer can’t see where that money went. For a household deciding between the light bill and the gas tank, that’s not a small question.

Four properties purchased during Wacoche’s tenure carry a similar gap. County deed records list only nominal consideration; the purchase amounts come from the documentary stamp tax paid on each recorded deed. On three of the four, Wacoche personally signed a sworn affidavit stating he was authorized to bind the Band to the deal. Tribal law requires Corporate Board approval for any single expenditure over $10,000 from the fund used. Wacoche sits on that board himself, as a nonvoting member by virtue of holding the chief’s office. No Corporate Board resolution and no Council resolution approving price or terms has been produced for any of the four.

Five weeks after the June 6 meeting, Wacoche and Adair were face to face again, this time outside a meeting of the furloughed employees Adair had just apologized to. According to Adair’s sworn petition and three witnesses, Wacoche confronted him, directed profanity at him, and challenged him outside before Lighthorse officers stepped in. Adair filed for a protective order that day. A judge denied the motion to dismiss it and took the matter under advisement. Whether the court grants that order is the court’s to decide.

Inside the Council, the story’s already being denied. Not by name. Not on record. Just denied.

But Members don’t need a judge to see the pattern. The man asking why nobody answered for six years is the same man who wouldn’t answer a district representative’s questions in the same room, who spent Band money without the sign-off his own tribal law requires, and who showed up in another representative’s face weeks later instead of answering for any of it.

That’s leadership avoiding accountability while it points at everybody else.

Our grandparents didn’t build this Band so one office could hold all the power and none of the answers. They built a government where the chairman’s job was to make sure the questions got asked and the answers got given, not to decide which ones he felt like hearing.

The filing period is open now, through Aug. 14. If this Council isn’t going to hold its own leadership to the standard it demands of everyone else, Members have the power to build a new one. Run, or vote for someone who will.

Troy Littledeer is a Member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and a 2025 Indigenous Journalists Association Tim Giago Free Press Award recipient. He has covered tribal governance, sovereignty, and regional affairs in Adair County and across Indian Country for more than two decades.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council approved five resolutions during its Aug. 1 regular monthly meeting, four of which were not listed as agenda items on the meeting’s printed agenda, according to the agenda document and an audio recording of the proceedings.

Chief Jeff Wacoche called the meeting to order at 10 a.m. at the Wellness Center at UKB headquarters in Tahlequah.

The printed agenda listed two items under New Business: authorizing the Department of Indian Child Welfare to apply for a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant, and authorizing the addition of signatories to the UKB Tax Commission’s bank account. The agenda’s executive session entry did not name any items.

The council voted 9-1 with no abstentions to amend and approve the Tax Commission signatory resolution. The measure adds Joyce Hawk, listed as Tax Commission chairwoman, and Charles Deason, listed as vice chairman, as authorized signatories on the commission’s Business, Finance and Regulatory Committee bank account. The motion was made by Treasurer Sonja Gourd and seconded by Goingsnake District Representative Willie Christie.

Following executive session, the council took up four additional measures not named on the printed agenda. Each passed 8-1 with one abstention:

The council appropriated $45,000 from a corporate board lease payments account, established under Resolution 26-UKB-58, to the Department of Human Services. The resolution allocates $5,000 to each of the tribe’s nine district representatives for discretionary district use, provided expenditures comply with tribal law and Department of Human Services procedures. The motion was made by Illinois District Representative Janelle Adair.

The council authorized creation of UKB Fedcom LLC as a tribally chartered entity under Section 3U of the UKB Federal Corporate Charter and directed the chief to file articles of organization.

The council voted to request that the UKB Gaming Commission convene. The resolution names Jamie Hummingbird, Tracey Burris and Jared Swimmer as current commissioners.

The council voted to move its September regular meeting from the first weekend of the month to Sept. 12, citing the Labor Day holiday and Keetoowah ceremonial observances.

Gourd abstained on all four votes, stating on the record each time that the item was not on the original agenda.

Resolution numbers for the four executive session items were not stated during the meeting and have not been independently obtained.

The council did not publicly address or condemn allegations that Wacoche threatened a council member during a July 13 confrontation — the subject of a pending protective order petition in Cherokee County District Court — during the portions of the meeting captured in the materials reviewed for this report.

The council also announced an Aug. 14 special meeting for an impeachment hearing.

STILWELL, Okla. — N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas wants Oklahoma’s open U.S. Senate seat. In a clip from an interview conducted by YouTuber and podcast host Mr. Beat for his series Project No Cap, she talks like someone running for the state Capitol instead.

“Our literacy, right? We are 50th in education right now,” she said. She’s not wrong about the number. WalletHub’s 2025 education ranking put Oklahoma dead last among the 50 states, ahead of only New Mexico.

She’s talking about the wrong building.

K-12 curriculum, teacher pay, literacy standards — that’s the Oklahoma Capitol’s job. A U.S. senator votes on Title I funding and IDEA reauthorization. A senator doesn’t set Oklahoma’s reading benchmarks. That work happens at 23rd and Lincoln, not in Washington.

Same problem shows up when she goes after legislators for “worrying about saving child marriage” instead of bigger priorities. There’s a real story buried in that line. Senate Bill 504 banned marriage under 18 in Oklahoma with no exceptions. It became law May 13, 2026, without Gov. Kevin Stitt’s signature. It passed the Senate unanimously and barely survived the House, 51-36, with every no vote coming from a Republican. Thomas is criticizing a state marriage statute debated and passed by state lawmakers. That’s a legitimate target. It’s just not a target a U.S. senator has any authority over.

Two places in the clip she does sound like she’s running for the right office. Childcare is one. She said she struggled in her career without childcare while her husband deployed. Congress funds the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Congress funds military family childcare programs. That’s federal money, federal authority, federal reform if she wins.

Rural hospitals are the other. She raised a friend’s father who died after a rural hospital closure left no facility nearby. Congress sets Medicare reimbursement rates. Congress funds Critical Access Hospital programs and USDA rural health grants. Closures also come from state Medicaid policy, workforce shortages and hospital management decisions that no senator controls. She names the wound. She doesn’t name the federal fix.

One gap in this clip alone: Mr. Beat’s caption on the post says Thomas has added “Uncapping the House” to her platform — the push to lift the 1929 cap on the number of U.S. House seats. That is a federal, congressional-authority issue a senator can act on directly. It does not appear in the portion of the interview reviewed here. A fuller picture of her platform would need to include what she says about it.

None of this means the state-level issues don’t matter. A family deciding between the light bill and the prescription doesn’t care which building holds the authority. But a Senate campaign has to explain what bills she’d sponsor, what committee she’d seek, what federal reimbursement formula she’d change. Naming the wound gets a candidate on stage. Naming the federal lever gets a candidate elected to pull it.

Thomas faces Jim Priest in the Aug. 25 Democratic runoff. The winner faces U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern in November for the seat Markwayne Mullin left when he took over the Department of Homeland Security in March.

SOURCES Mr. Beat (iammrbeat), Project No Cap interview clip, Threads, posted approximately 20 hours before review WalletHub, “States with the Best and Worst School Systems,” 2025 report Oklahoma Senate, press release on Senate Bill 504, May 14, 2026 Oklahoma Voice, “Child marriage ban narrowly advanced by Oklahoma Legislature,” May 7, 2026 KFOR, “Dozens of OK lawmakers vote against child marriage ban,” May 18, 2026 NonDoc, “U.S. Senate runoff: Democrats N’kiyla Jasmine Thomas, Jim Priest clash over electability, identity,” July 2026 Oklahoma Voice, “Democrat Jasmine Thomas hopes lived experience will propel her to Oklahoma Senate seat,” July 31, 2026

STILWELL, Okla. — My son Toby is 10 years old. He raises chickens with our uncle, sells eggs, and lives with the same worries as most kids in Adair County: slow internet, a school that could use more money, and a long drive if anybody gets hurt.

So when Hannah Cole, the Democratic candidate for Oklahoma House District 86, agreed to sit down with him, Toby didn’t ask about polling numbers. He asked about creeks.

Cole, lives in Rose in neighboring Cherokee County. She’s running against incumbent Rep. David Hardin, R-Stilwell, for the District 86 seat. Toby wanted to know if she understood what it’s like out here, where the hospital closed and the roads are long. This is that interview.

TOBY: Rocky Mountain School and other schools [in Adair County] don’t have as much money as schools in bigger towns. Is that something you can help with if you’re elected?

COLE: I am very glad you asked me that, because I am a firm believer that a child’s access to quality education shouldn’t be dependent upon their zip code. I went to rural schools as a kid, and I want to see our rural schools funded, and that’s something as a legislator I can address. A big job that legislators have is allocating and appropriating money, and making sure that it’s going to public services, such as schools, and making sure that we’re staffing them and funding them, and making sure our kids are set up to succeed. And I want you to succeed.

TOBY: My family raises chickens and sells eggs. If a big poultry company comes and pollutes the creek, does that affect small setups like mine, or just big poultry farms?

COLE: Unfortunately, Toby, when waterways are polluted, it affects everybody. It’ll affect big farms, small farms, people who live in the country and live on well water. It affects everybody. And so we need to be holding the folks that are polluting our waterways accountable. But I also want to say it’s not the poultry farmers that are doing it. They’re not out there putting fertilizer into our creeks and streams. They are selling it or giving it to companies that then take it and spread it. And they’re supposed to be having guidelines and rules that they’re following to make sure that it doesn’t get into our waterways. Unfortunately, no one has been able to hold them accountable. The enforcement mechanism is not there. We have the laws, but no way to enforce it. So that is something when I get into office that I really want to tackle — making sure that the guidelines we have in place for our waterways, to keep them clean and protected, are enforced against those who take advantage of the system.

TOBY: Some kids’ parents have to drive really far for a doctor. Is that something you can help with if you’re elected?

COLE: It is sad that people have to drive so far just to get health care. And it’s a really common thing in rural areas, especially in Adair County. They’re having to drive 45 minutes for an hour to the nearest primary care doctor, or an emergency room. Stilwell’s hospital closed down, and those folks still needed care. They still needed to see their doctor. It’s just they now have a barrier placed in front of them that makes it even harder. So yeah, that is something I can do at a legislative level — make sure that we’re putting the investments into rural Oklahoma.

TOBY: Do people who make laws for Adair County actually know what it’s like to live here, or do a lot of them come from places that are easier?

COLE: I think they have their own version of what it’s like to live in Adair County, their own experiences. And we all have different experiences. Unfortunately, I believe that some of the people who represent us don’t quite understand some of the struggles that everyday working-class folks face, because they’ve come from privilege. They’ve come from money. They’ve never had to wonder about light bills being paid, food on the table, gas in the car so that they can get to work. I don’t believe that they’ve actually experienced these struggles. And the reason I say that is because the laws and policies they’ve brought forth have only put up barriers for folks who are already struggling, because they themselves have never struggled. They don’t understand it. And that’s why we need people in office who represent everyone.

TOBY: If my family can’t get good internet out here, is that something you can fix?

COLE: That’s a great question. Broadband in rural areas is a hard thing to access. I, too, live very rurally, and so I know the struggle. The lieutenant governor of Oklahoma has the role over broadband access, and I, as a legislator, can work with him and help him develop plans to try to get rural access to broadband in areas just like you and me. So yes, I can do that.

TOBY: What’s one thing you can do for a kid like me in the next two years?

COLE: So what can I do over the next two years of the legislature to help you and kids like you? First off, we’ve got to invest in education. We’ve got to invest in our kids and set them up to succeed, and I plan to do that. Another thing to help you is make sure that you can access health care in a timely manner — making sure that you stay well, making sure that you’re healthy, so you can go to school and learn and enjoy everything that a kid should be enjoying. And third, one way I can help you is protecting our natural resources. I live on the creek out here, and it’s beautiful, and I want to preserve it, take care of it, and leave it in better condition than I found it, for the next generation to be able to enjoy the bounty that comes from the wonderful natural resources our state has to offer, especially in District 86.

TOBY: Thank you for answering my questions today. Why did you want to do this interview?

COLE: The reason I wanted to do this interview is because I myself am a kid from Cherokee County, rural area just like you, and it inspires me to see young folks asking questions and holding people in leadership accountable. We need people just like you to be aware and knowledgeable of everything that’s going on, because it does affect you. And it makes me really, really proud to see folks around the state getting involved — the kids included. So keep it up.

You can see a video of this conversation on TikTok by clicking here.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — Members who want to run for a Council seat this year will have to meet rules that are not written in the Band’s 1950 Constitution, according to a comparison of the Constitution and the election ordinance.

Council candidates file this August. The filing period opens Aug. 3 and closes Aug. 14, under the 2025 UKB Election Ordinance, Resolution 25-UKB-132.

Council seats and the offices of Chief, Assistant Chief, Secretary and Treasurer are elected on different schedules. Council members serve two-year terms. The four officers serve four-year terms. Only Council seats are up this year.

The Constitution lists three qualifications for Council candidates: be at least 21 years old, live in the district the candidate wants to represent, and be a member of the Band. It lists no others.

The ordinance adds:

Section 501 of the 2025 Election Ordinance requires several qualifications not listed in the Constitution. Candidates must have lived in the district for two years before filing. They must have been an exclusive member of the Band for five years. They cannot have served as an elected official of another federally recognized tribe. They must have a valid driver’s license and a high school diploma or equivalent.

The ordinance also requires candidates to submit to a criminal background check by the Election Board. A felony conviction within the previous 10 years disqualifies a candidate under the ordinance.

So where does the Council’s power to make these rules come from? Two documents give the Council authority over elections. The Constitution says the Council can hold elections “under rules and regulations to be prescribed by the Council.” The Corporate Charter, from 1950, says the Band can “regulate the manner of holding Band elections.” Neither document says in plain words whether that power lets the Council add new qualifications, or only lets the Council manage how the vote is run.

The Constitution does have a process for changing its own provisions. It is called an amendment. Under Article XII, an amendment can be proposed by a majority vote of the Council or by a petition signed by 30 percent of eligible voters. It then needs approval from the Secretary of the Interior and a vote of the membership, with at least 30 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.

No ruling from the UKB Tribal Court answering this question turned up in the documents reviewed for this report. Whether the Council can add those qualifications without changing the Constitution is a question the Tribal Court has not yet decided.

A candidate who is turned down after the background check can appeal in writing within 10 business days of getting the disqualification notice.

For someone thinking about running for Council, meeting the Constitution’s three qualifications is not enough under the current ordinance. A candidate also has to clear the additional requirements in Section 501, including the driver’s license, the diploma, and the background check, or the Election Board can keep that candidate off the ballot.

SOURCES

United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Constitution and Bylaws (1950), Articles V, VI, VII, XII, XL.

United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Corporate Charter (1950).

2025 UKB Election Ordinance, Resolution 25-UKB-132, Sections 501-502.

Mike Satawake’s had a guitar in his hands since the age of five. Now nearing 50 year old he’s been called, “One of the best guitar players in the Tri-State area.”

He’s well known in the Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Norman live music scenes. Born in Lawton, he grew up in Earlsboro and Seminole before moving to OKC as an adult. Satawake is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. He grew up in a household full of music from the radio, records and tapes. His parents and older siblings preferred listening to music over watching television. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and blues guitarists ruled.

“Music was just a part of my life,” Satawake said. “There were plenty of times we didn’t have the TV on because the record player or radio was. When I was a kid I thought everybody did that, which isn’t true. We’d go to the Old Paris Flea Market and my dad would buy blues tapes, specifically Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and listen to that stuff all the time. It was great living in a musical household and became the inspiration for me wanting to do what those guys on the records were doing to the best of my ability.”

Satawake began honing that ability initially with an acoustic guitar but went electric while still in first grade.

“My parents scraped up some money and bought me an electric guitar which I still have,” he said. “With a little bitty amp I made a ruckus with that for six or seven years. Then I got a little nicer one in my teenage years before mom said, that’s it I’m not buying any more guitars, if you want any more you’re getting them on your own.”

Satawake said he is dedicated to playing the guitar and said there is always more to learn from other players and from listening to other music. Satawake is a solid vocalist as well. It came about as a matter of necessity.

“I didn’t really have any desire to do any lead singing,” he said. “I started playing a Thursday night jam 11 years ago at Katts Cove in the city. The very first time I got to the gig, I thought the other guitar player Jim was the singer. But he thought the same about me. It was oh no, what are we going to do, we can’t sing enough songs to get through the night. But somehow we did, sharing vocals around with no one person singing the whole night. If someone else wants to sing, I let them have at it. I’ll stand back here and play guitar which is more in my comfort zone anyway.”

Successful collaboration with other musicians has been a critical component of Satawake’s considerable capabilities. It’s been an ongoing education that he relishes.

ROGERS, Ark. — I’d never heard a Turnpike Troubadours song before July of 2025.

I told almost no one. My wife knew. Ken Pomeroy knew. Chris Augerhole knew. My baby brother, Travis Sawney, knew. That was the list, and it held for a year. There didn’t seem to be a reason to bring it up. A concert review is supposed to be about the band, not about me.

Some songs haunt you. Not because anything supernatural happens — because they refuse to leave the room where you first heard them. That’s what happened to me in a hundred-seat theater in downtown Okemah, Oklahoma, during the town’s annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, watching Evan Felker and Hayes Carll trade verses with one voice and one guitar. I thought I’d left it there. A year later it found me again in Rogers.

Turnpike’s catalog runs on the same handful of names and places, over and over: Lorrie, the Bird Hunters, Cherokee County. Fans know them before the first chord, the way people know the start of a story they’ve heard since they were kids. Lance Roark opened the show — the same Lance who once played a solo set at a dinner for me, guitar and nothing else. Watching him reminded me of the room where I’d first heard these songs. Waylon Wyatt, 19, followed him, and neither one needed an introduction to most of that crowd. The man in the box — Chris Augerhole — found a spot off stage right before the opener even finished tuning. The opposite side, the band’s wives took their usual stances. Around here, that’s normal. People in Tahlequah have watched RC Edwards eat lunch or make a stop on the square. Before the first chord, somebody in that crowd had shared a meal with this band, gone to school with them, or bumped into them downtown on some ordinary Saturday, and that’s the thing about a band like this: half the amphitheater already had a claim on them before the house lights went down.

“The Bird Hunters” opened the set and named Cherokee County outright, and 20,000 people sang the county’s name back before the first chorus finished. “Gin, Smoke, Lies” and “Kansas City Southern” followed before the crowd had settled into its seats. By the time “Good Lord Lorrie” came around, I understood I hadn’t been haunted by a song. I’d been haunted by a room full of people who had been carrying that same story long before I picked it up, and the harmony on that chorus came from half the amphitheater, not just the stage.

A fan near me wore a Sequoyah Indians T-shirt. A carload of friends from Stilwell, Oklahoma, sang like they’d just been handed a half day off with pay after a week working the river. Plenty of people around me had made the drive from northeast Arkansas or down from Tahlequah. Nobody around me was watching strangers. The people I knew in that crowd didn’t call it admiration. Around here, they just say it’s our band.

The tour moves on. Indianapolis is next, and I won’t be there. But I’ve watched this band’s rise over the last few years, from small clubs to sold-out amphitheaters. Is it country? Red dirt? Southern rock? None of those labels quite fit. Around here, it’s home.

I’ve called this a haunting for a year, though that was never quite the right word. It wasn’t a ghost. It was inheritance. Twenty thousand people in Rogers had been singing those same words long before I ever heard them.

That’s what changed between Okemah and Rogers.

Not the songs.

Me.

Author: Troy Littledeer is an award-winning Indigenous journalist, photographer and member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. He has spent more than two decades covering tribal governments, Indigenous communities, education, sports and rural Oklahoma. His reporting has appeared in the Cherokee Phoenix, Osage News, NDNSports.com and other publications.

Littledeer received the 2025 Tim Giago Free Press Award from the Indigenous Journalists Association for his work defending press freedom in tribal media. His journalism focuses on government accountability, tribal sovereignty and the people whose lives are shaped by public policy. He is the founder and publisher of Kituwah Press.

He and his wife have two sons. Away from the newsroom, Littledeer is an avid fan of science fiction, Marvel, sports, the WNBA and women’s basketball. He enjoys exploring the stories where culture, community and competition intersect.

STILWELL, Okla. — The questions in Stilwell Friday were not abstract. They came from a workforce development officer who had just learned his agency nearly lost federal funding. They came from a resident asking about a hospital closure in their own county. They came from a room asking a candidate for governor to be specific.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Cyndi Munson took each one in turn at the Stilwell Community Building, addressing education funding, hospital finances, water quality and the state’s relationship with tribal nations. Munson, the Oklahoma House minority leader from Oklahoma City, will face the winner of the Aug. 25 Republican runoff between Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former state Sen. Mike Mazzei in the November general election.

An attendee raised the closure of Stilwell Memorial Hospital last year. Munson answered by pointing to Stillwater Medical Center as a comparable case of the financial pressure facing rural hospitals statewide, citing projected losses tied to federal Medicaid cuts and the facility’s role providing obstetric, primary and specialty care. She named a second facility, an Integris hospital near Northwest Expressway in Oklahoma City, which she said has already reduced childcare services this year for the same reason.

An attendee told Munson that state Rep. David Hardin had voted for legislation tying a teacher pay increase to an expansion of the state’s private school voucher program. Munson said she supports repealing the state’s private school tax credit program and redirecting that funding toward public school budgets and teacher pay. She said a legislative interim study on the use of standardized testing, including the ACT, as a measure of student performance was approved this year, led by state Rep. Dick Lowe.

On Medicaid, Munson said she opposed a Republican-backed effort this year to move Medicaid expansion out of the Oklahoma Constitution and into state statute, a change that would give the Legislature more room to alter eligibility requirements. The measure did not advance. Munson said she would continue to oppose similar efforts as governor.

On water quality, Munson said loose state environmental regulations have drawn data center and industrial development to Oklahoma, pointing to a proposed aluminum smelter project and longstanding concerns about the poultry industry’s effect on state waterways.

On tribal relations, Munson said she is scheduled to visit the Choctaw Nation on Aug. 7 to observe its court system and discuss law enforcement cooperation between tribal and local agencies. She said she has a working relationship with Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. and served one term in the Legislature alongside his father, former state Sen. Chuck Hoskin Sr.

A Green Country Workforce Development representative told Munson that a U.S. Department of Labor decision earlier this year nearly dissolved the regional board that administers federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funding locally. Munson said she had not been aware of the matter, said she would look into it, and thanked the attendee for raising it.

Chris Augerhole calls it his little board box, and once it’s up on stage right at the Walmart AMP, low enough to stay out of the lights, nobody out on the lawn will ever know it’s there. “I’ll be hiding,” he says. That’s the job, in his own words. Hiding, for two and a half hours, with a screen full of lyrics in case Evan Felker needs them.

His day starts at 9 a.m., when the trucks back into the loading dock. Twenty thousand people will fill Walmart AMP in Rogers, Arkansas, and never see any of it. The cable runs. The lines tested twice. The hours of nothing that come after.

Augerhole is a Cherokee Nation Citizen, born and raised in Cherokee County, Oklahoma. By his own count, he’s been doing some version of this for twenty years, the exact lifespan of Turnpike Troubadours.

In the dead stretch between soundcheck and showtime, when younger crew members go looking for water or kill time on their phones, Augerhole mostly sleeps. “It’s not like the ‘80s,” he says. “It’s not Almost Famous.”

Twenty years ago none of this existed yet. Augerhole was just a guy riding around to bars in Texas with Felker and bassist R.C. Edwards, before Turnpike Troubadours was a name that meant anything. Nobody offered him work. He was already there.

The work, when it came, didn’t pay well. Jason Boland and the Stragglers hauled Turnpike around as an opener in those years. Augerhole tagged along, selling shirts out of the back of whatever room would take them. “Didn’t make any money,” he says. No bitterness in it, just the record of how it was.

Goodbye Normal Street broke in 2012, an album named for the Tahlequah street where Felker and Edwards lived while a lot of those songs got written, and the rooms started growing. By the time the self-titled record landed in 2015 and the venues had turned into arenas, somebody on the crew handed Augerhole a business card that stuck: Tele Tech. The title means exactly what it sounds like. He sits behind the board box with a screen, ready to feed Felker a verse the instant a setlist goes sideways.

His father, Herman, is a familiar figure in area basketball, a longtime official who spent years working high school games and just as many doubting where his son’s road was headed. That changed the night Turnpike sold out Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. Afterward, his father found him and said, simply, that he understood now. It was the first time his mother had ever seen the band play. Augerhole didn’t get his father’s intensity. “I got my mom’s side, I guess, on that,” he says.

In May 2019, the band went quiet, indefinite hiatus, no promises attached. Augerhole picked up road work with another touring outfit tied to Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers, but he never once treated it as a way out. When Felker went through his own stretch of recovery, Augerhole didn’t wait around wondering. “There’s Evan,” he says. “I’ve known him long enough. He just can’t help himself. He’s going to be a writer.”

They came back in 2021, bigger than they’d left, and the job came back bigger with it, London, Ireland and Jamaica, all the way to a Saturday night in Rogers. A few months back in Minneapolis, Felker decided mid-set he wanted to play Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It’s a song built entirely out of verses, no chorus to fall back on, one the band had never once rehearsed. Felker turned toward stage right and asked for the words. “That is a really long song, my friend,” Augerhole told him. “No verses, like, it’s just, is what it is.” Felker said he was doing it anyway. “All right,” Augerhole said. “I got you.” He pulled it up behind the box and fed him the lines as they came.

Back home, none of it follows him. Augerhole and Edwards can still be found at Del Rancho in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, eating chicken-fried steak while the lunch crowd walks past without a second glance. In Cherokee County, neither man acts like anything other than regular folk.

Augerhole knows it won’t run forever. “At some point, they’re gonna have to retire,” he says, the same as anything does. What doesn’t end, in his telling, is the rest of it, the friendships that were there before any of this was a job and that’ll still be there in Tahlequah long after the lights go down on Turnpike Troubadours for good.

The house lights will drop soon. The crowd will watch six musicians and never once look toward stage right, where a Cherokee guy from Tahlequah is already hiding behind a little board box, waiting on whatever Felker decides to play.

“I do not regret a single moment,” Augerhole says. “I stuck with this band because they’ve been good to me.”

STILWELL, Okla. — The following represents the editorial position of this outlet.

Kituwah Press endorses Democrat Hannah Cole for Oklahoma House District 86.

District 86 covers Adair County and portions of Cherokee, Mayes and Delaware counties, one of the poorest and most rural regions in the state. Stilwell Memorial Hospital closed its inpatient services in 2025, leaving county residents to travel to Tahlequah, Sallisaw or Siloam Springs for hospital care. Broadband access remains limited across large sections of the district. Nearly half the district’s population is Native American.

Cole was raised in Northeast Oklahoma on a small family farm and worked alongside her grandparents on their dairy operation. She has worked as a geriatric nurse for more than a decade. Following her father’s death in 2024, she cared for him in his final illness before returning to his land in Adair County.

Cole has stated that rural homelessness exists in District 86 and takes a different form than its urban counterpart — overcrowded households and informal arrangements among relatives rather than visible unsheltered populations. She has argued the underlying causes mirror those in urban areas, differing mainly in visibility.

Cole has said parents who choose private schools should be free to make that choice, but she does not support the state’s school voucher initiative. She has said public education funding should stay with public schools, a position she argues benefits districts like those in Adair County.

At the Adair County Democrats’ “Meet the Candidates” event July 20 at the Mid-County Community Building, Cole was asked a question during the Q&A session that she could not immediately answer. She said so directly, then returned with a substantive answer before the event concluded.

Cole campaigns under the slogan “Values Over Party.” She has said her candidacy is not built around partisan labels, and that she intends to represent every constituent in the district, regardless of how they vote. She has framed her candidacy around a single question: whether Oklahoma, ranked near the bottom nationally on multiple measures of health, education and infrastructure, deserves better outcomes for its residents.

Cole has not previously held elected office. Her record in office remains unestablished. Her background as a caregiver, both professionally and within her own family, and her direct engagement with the district’s economic conditions inform this endorsement.

Kituwah Press endorses Democrat Hannah Cole for Oklahoma House District 86.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — Six tribal employees remained without placement the week the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma’s Tribal Council voted to suspend its Treasurer without pay.

The UKB Council voted 5-2 on July 15 to suspend the Band’s treasurer, Sonja Gourd, and cut off her access to the Band’s accounting records. Four were absent from the vote: UKB Assistant Chief Jeff Wacoche, Gourd herself, UKB Sequoyah Councilor Donald Adair and UKB Cooweescoowee Councilor Cliff Wofford.

The furloughs and the suspension trace to the same source. UKB Comptroller Meosha Rambo, hired April 13, told councilors the tribe is “grant rich” and “cash poor” — money owed on paper the tribe cannot yet convert to cash. For years, Rambo said, the UKB leaned on federal COVID relief funds to help cover payroll and other costs while awaiting separate federal grant payments. That relief money was never designed to last. When it ran out, the shortfall underneath it reached tribal paychecks.

Part of that shortfall is written into a federal calculation. The Band’s indirect cost rate — which allows it to recover money spent on office costs such as accounting and staffing — expired in 2023 and was extended into 2024. Since then it has operated at a fallback rate of 15%, according to Accounting Manager Jeff Stowers. Rambo said the Band cannot recover several million dollars it has already spent until a new rate is approved.

Rambo’s office also found roughly 10,000 accounting entries from the past three years that had never been properly recorded. As of the meeting, that number stood at 1,100.

Against that backdrop, Tribal Councilor Tishaleta Smith-Guevara, UKB Delaware District, filed Articles of Impeachment against Gourd on July 15. The Articles accuse her on five counts: misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, willful neglect of duty and corruption in office, each a term defined in the Band’s Impeachment and Removal Code. These are allegations. No hearing has occurred, and Gourd has not been found responsible for any of the five counts.

A hearing on the Articles is scheduled for Aug. 14 at 10 a.m. at the UKB Wellness Center in Tahlequah. Removing Gourd from office permanently requires a two-thirds vote of the full Council.

Wacoche has served as UKB Assistant Chief for the entirety of Gourd’s tenure as Treasurer. He did not say at the meeting why no action was taken against her sooner.

Gourd has not publicly commented.

There’s a line in the Star Wars series “Andor” that stopped me cold the first time I heard it. Luthen Rael, a man who’s given up everything, tells another rebel: “I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.” He’s not talking about a battle. He’s talking about a future he already knows he won’t get to stand in.

I’ve sat with that line for weeks now. Not because it’s good writing, though it is. Because it’s true, and I’ve lived a version of it.

Here’s my version: I burn my life, but I burn it so my kids can see it.

That’s the difference. Luthen builds a sunrise he’ll never see because there’s nobody left for him to hand it to. No kids. No family waiting on the other side of the fight. Just the cause, and the cost, and the dark.

I don’t have that excuse. I’ve got two boys. Every story I chase, every record I pull, every meeting I sit through in rooms that smells like old carpet and worse coffee, I’m doing it so they inherit something better than what got handed to me.

I want my boys to grow up Keetoowah Cherokee without ever having to be taught how to perform it.

That’s not a small thing to want. Cultures get extinguished. Governments have tried it here on purpose, through policy, through boarding schools, through blood quantum rules built to shrink a people down to nothing over enough generations. That history isn’t background. It’s the reason the sentence “I want my kids to have the culture” is a fight and not a given.

I told a friend yesterday what I actually want for my boys. Not the version anybody claps for. Not the PR slogans. Not the trinkets somebody hands out at an event so a camera can catch it and call it culture. I want the culture people can’t help but live every day, because that’s who they are, not something they perform when somebody’s watching.

My dad lived it that way. So did my grandparents. Their kids, my boys’s greaat- aunt and great-uncle live that way now. They didn’t need a card to tell them who they were. They didn’t wait on a government to hand it to them or bless it first. They just lived it, every day, because there wasn’t another way to be. They only dealt with the government when they had no choice, when the paperwork or the politics forced their hand, and then they went right back to living the way they’d always lived. That’s the model. Not the card. The life underneath it.

If our culture gets extinguished, it’s gone. There’s no other country where our people are still flourishing, still speaking the language, still doing the ceremonies, waiting for us to visit or move back. We’re not immigrants. We don’t have a homeland across an ocean carrying our culture forward while we build something new here. This is the only place it exists. When it’s gone here, it’s gone everywhere. That’s the mechanism working against every family trying to raise their kids inside it right now, mine included.

We shouldn’t have to build this alone. We should be able to trust our own governments and our own tribal leaders to help us build it, not just tolerate it or trot it out for a photo. That’s the whole job of a government that claims to represent a people. Not standing in the way. Standing behind it.

That’s the sunrise under all of this. Not a headline. Not a court filing. Two boys who grow up Keetoowah Cherokee without having to be taught to perform it.

Luthen’s sunrise is fiction. Mine has a date on it.

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Troy Littledeer is a Member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and a 2025 recipient of the Indigenous Journalists Association’s Tim Giago Free Press Award. He has covered sports, entertainment, tribal and regional affairs across Indian Country for more than 20 years. He writes commentary under the byline @kituwahpunk.