Muscogee (Creek) Nation Principal Chief David Hill delivers the State of the Nation Address at the Muscogee Nation Capitol on January 27, 2024.
“Thank you all attending today’s address and also attending the Council’s first session. I appreciate each and every one of you. You know, when the United States government removed our people from the homelands and forced us to come to this place, we were given one blanket per family and left to survive in the foreign land. Since then, our people have fought to preserve our culture, retain our government, and rebuild our nation.
It hasn’t been easy. Many have sacrificed so much for our right to exist. It’s my great honor to stand before you today and once again affirm that not only are we still here, but the state of our Nation is strong and getting stronger every day.
This past year we’ve faced challenges, celebrated victories, marked historic occasions, and learned from our experiences. A common theme through it all is that we’ve done this together. I want to thank each and every one of you.
People’s support and unifying spirit have been a constant source of strength in all our decisions. Thank you again for the belief and trust you placedin the Second Chief and I and the support you have shown to our families. For our National Council, it’s been a privilege to have this opportunity to join your first General Session of the new year to deliver this address. My commitment to providing this legislative body with everything it needs from the Executive Branch for a fully functional and thriving government remains the same.
Your job as legislators couldn’t be any more important as we continue in this new era of tribal sovereignty and jurisdictional responsibility. We are blessed to lead in a time of tremendous opportunity to do great things together.
The Supreme Court has affirmed our reservation, our promise of a home that is truly ours. To fully honor this promise, we must continue building up our government, refining our laws and implementing new frameworks, enabling ournation to exercise our national sovereignty fully. I pledge to you a spirit of solidarity in our efforts. Though we would check and balance one another, I draw comfort in knowing that we all have a singular goal of enriching the lives of the Muscogee citizens. I know together we can accomplish this goal.
I’m proud of the work we’ve done together to grow and expand through the first four years of our administration, and we are just getting started.
In 2023, we worked to preserve the sacred, and defend our culture in Oklahoma and our ancestral homelands. We held a ceremony to raise a flag of the Muscogee Nation at the city hall in Macon. Now and forever, the Muscogee Seal flies proudly over Georgia. We visited Alabama to commemorate and remember the 209th Battle of Horseshoe Bend and began the process to erect a monument for over 800 Muscogee lives lost there. This memorial will forever honor the lives and sacrifices of all people at that somber place.
We renewed our legal battles to hold a certain so-called tribe accountable for the desecration of Hickory Ground.
The atrocities committed in this sacred place cannot stand. I continue this fight for justice. We honor our ancestors from long ago, but also our elders of today. In May, we introduced a new program under the Social Services Department, the Tribal Grave House Assistance Program. This program began on October 1st, and we’ll provide up to $500 for Muscogee families for the purchase of supplies to construct a grave house for their loved ones. We must continue pushing ideas and programs that are Muscogee, and preserve and advance in our ways.
Thank you, Second Speaker Osborn for sponsoring and promoting this bill. Defending our culture also means educating and creating opportunities for the next generation of Muscogee citizens. Last September, we celebrated enrolling 100,000 Muscogee citizens. We are growing and getting stronger every day, despite attempt after attempt throughout history to wipe us out. I borrow a line I like to repeat: “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.”
Our children must have adequate facilities and they deserve nothing but the best.
Last year we broke ground on a new child care center in Wetumpka. We also celebrated the largest graduating class in the history of the College of Muscogee Nation, an example of the vast growth of our college and our commitment to higher education. We are equally committed to trade school and have created partnerships with Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology and have graduated tribal citizens from lineman, fiber optic, and natural gas pipeline technician programs.
Our next generation will be strong, but it’s up to this current generation to protect their inheritance by defending, exercising, and celebrating our sovereignty. We once again marked our national holiday of sovereignty day in July, with a special “On the Far End,” play presented at River Spirit by Mary Kathryn Nagle.
The well-attended event was another meaningful opportunity for our people to celebrate and be proud of this day. It was once noted to me that July 9th was our 4th. But I want to thank all the veterans, even those that came before us.
Those here and in our original Homeland. Thank you for your fight. In May, tribal leaders united calling for an override of anti-sovereignty vetoes from the Governor and we saw those vetoes defeated. We pledged to continue to use our strength to rise against similar threats in the future. We continue to be viewed as the leaders in Indian country on matters that deal with tribal sovereignty. We applaud the denials of the certification of the city of Tulsa versus Cooper case, which yet presented another challenge to the jurisdiction authority of the Muscogee Nation. Here the courts reaffirmed that the state and the city lacked jurisdiction over tribal citizens on the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation. Let me be clear, we will never cease in our efforts to fight and stand against such challenges. The Supreme Court has spoken, this reservation is ours. Along the rise we fully embrace the responsibilities of sovereignty. Public safety has always been our highest priority. In the days and months after the McGirt decision, the leaders across the state faced a choice to work for or against us. Sadly, some chose division and fear. Muscogee Nation chose collaboration and we are grateful for the many partners that have joined us.
Our justice system has added significant capacity even as we continue our commitment to aggressively seek ways to help our judges, our prosecutors, and our police. In the coming year we will increase access to our court system through expansion in our northern region at the Jenks Riverwalk, our southern region in Holdenville, and our eastern region in Muscogee. Our Attorney General’s office will continue to expand its capacity. This office will always provide vital educational and training opportunities for our partners.
Next month, Attorney General Weisner will host the first “Justice on the Reservation” conference. This workshop will bring together law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, child advocates, medical and mental health providers, and child abuse allied partners.
Nationally-recognized subject matter experts will share discipline-specific best practice recommendations, investigative strategies, prosecution legal updates, and multi-disciplinary team practice to reduce secondary trauma. Events like this provide opportunities to improve collaboration among federal, state, and tribal agencies. We’ve already heard from several of our partners who are eager to attend and continue our successful collaborative approach to maintaining an increase in public safety on the reservation. In 2023, we welcomed a site visit to tribal headquarters from the United States Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women. OVW came to the reservation as we hosted the 18th annual Government to Government Tribal Consultation at the River Spirit Casino Resort. The OVW leadership group visited the Executive Branch and met with the Attorney General’s office in our Muscogee (Creek) Nation Center for Victim Services. Myself, Attorney General Wisner and Chief of Staff Fife gave critical testimony to the Department of Justice related to the court and public safety, giving direct information to the DOJ and how it can improve the relationship between the nation, the DOJ and the state. This collaboration with OVW is vital as this Nation continues to exercise the authority created by reauthorization of VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) to protect our citizens. I hope that Governor Stitt will take notice that none of these advances in public safety requires a task force, it is just what working together should look like.
Beyond public safety, our administration took significant steps in 2023 to create new economic opportunities for our Nation and our people.
We started our year by signing an MOU with the City of Tulsa and the City of Jenks for the South Tulsa Dam Project, which has been in the works for years. Our National Council, in diligence in vetting this deal, enabled us to make it happen and open up all kinds of new economic opportunities throughout the expansion along the river. In June, we hosted representatives from the Oklahoma Municipal League and Oklahoma broadband office at the Executive Office to discuss ways to partner to increase access to broadband and high-speed connectivity across the reservation. We’re excited to share that since then, we have made advancements in the Secretary of the Nation’s Office with a strategic plan and coverage mapping on all of our rural areas. Increasing access in these areas will help in many ways, including more significant economic opportunities, increasing community engagement, and more efficient access to modern health care. The Nation was honored to host the National Tribal Self-Governance Conference at RiverSpirit Casino over the summer.
The first time a tribal nation in Oklahoma has hosted. We had an excellent opportunity to visit federal partners and agencies to discuss what we need here on our reservation and how to work with them to achieve our goals. We hosted IHS Director Roslyn Tso at our Kowetv facility to discuss our joint ventures in the ongoing success and needs of the Muscogee Nation Department of Health. Dr. Tso was blown away by the automated pharmacy refill and distribution center. Through such economic development and strategic partnership, we can make life better for our citizens. In November, we opened up our fourth remote tag office in Muscogee, continuing our promise to expand services to take it to the citizens. In the last two years, we opened up ribal tags to all citizens in Oklahoma, generating over $2 million in revenue and reaching over 180,000 transactions.
I’m going to owe it to our Tax Commissioner Mary Mashunkashey and her team for another job well done. Thank you Mary. In March, the National Council unanimously passed a tribal resolution matching tribal funds with state, IHS, and local county resources, totaling over $20 million to fund 16 projects in 10 communities across the reservation fully. Various projects include wastewater treatment plants and repairs, public pump station replacements, Beggs Lake Dam repair, and numerous primary water line replacement and repairs.
This incredible commitment to infrastructure on the reservation demonstrates that we’re here for our communities and neighbors.
As part of the Inter-Tribal Energy Management Council 2023 Summit at River Spirit, we got the privilege to honor and host FEMA Administrator DeAnn Criswell. The first site visit of the administrator to our tribal nation. We’re still the only Nation to receive a Federal Disaster Declaration authorizing local communities to receive assistance through the tribe. We also have the number one Tribal Disaster Mitigation plan in the country. And we are the authors of the Tribal Joint Field Operation Playbook, which has been distributed nationwide to all 579 Tribal Nations.
Our work in emergency management and with FEMA is paying off, especially during winter events and emergencies. This tribe is recouping monies that are there and far too long weren’t utilized. As we look ahead to the coming future, to the coming year, we will continue to face numerous threats from the state of Oklahoma. We have all taken an oath as elected officials of this nation. We will honor that oath. We didn’t swear to bend to public pressure or outside interests. We swore to uphold and defend the Constitution of Muscogee (Creek) Nation and that is what we’ll do. Part of the responsibility with the affirmed Reservation is to explore every avenue and opportunities to enrich the lives of our citizens through the powers of the sovereign.
For instance, our Oil and Gas Department was revived last year. We are amending codes to be more efficient, effective, and protective of our natural resources. For too long, precious resources that have been stripped out of the stolen land underneath us have been used to enrich the lives and generation of others. It’s time to reclaim a promise for the benefit of those that it was promised to. We realize that natural resources also reach a personal level for many citizens and we will protect you as well. I’m excited about several other projects that are deep into the planning process. These include grocery stores, laundry service and aero-space manufacturing. We plan to expand our agribusiness to include a tribal co-op. In other areas we have serious conversations with some of our most reputable creative minds to expand our interest in film and television production and capitalize on the current demand for authentic, Native storytellers. We are well on our way to increasing our creative economy here on the reservation.
I welcome the National Council to work with my administration to meet both the challenges and opportunities before us. I know that if we are working together, there is nothing we can overcome. With many dark periods behind us, our future is bright. May God bless you and our great Muscogee Nation.”