Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
The largest Indigenous nation in the country has reelected Chuck Hoskin Jr. as Principal Chief. The Cherokee Nation certified the election results on Tuesday.
“The victory for me and for Deputy Chief Bryan Warner was by a significant margin and geographically it was spread. What that tells us is we’ve got approval from the Cherokee people to keep moving in this direction,” Chuck Hoskin Jr. told ICT. “We also learned some things from the campaign. We certainly come out of the campaign mindful that there were concerns that we learned about and we have to do even better in the second term. So, I’m excited about it.”
Hoskin and Warner won with more than 60 percent of the votes. There were three other challengers, Cara Cowan Watts, an engineer and former Cherokee Tribal Council member, Wes NoFire who is a Cherokee Tribal Council member who made an unsuccessful run for Oklahoma’s 2nd congressional district last year, and David Cornsilk, a retired genealogist who worked to get Cherokee Freedmen re-enrolled.
During the race, criticisms of Hoskin’s administration ranged from wasting the American Rescue Plan money, the new health care facility being too big and too expensive, to the nation renting a casino in Tunica, Mississippi.
“Elections can be divisive and we know that’s part of democracy. In fact, it’s part of the beauty of Cherokee democracy that we voice our opinions, but the election is over,” Hoskin said. “I think what people in leadership positions need to do, win or lose, is try to come together. I think the Cherokee people want to see unity.”
Eight seats on the Cherokee Tribal Council were up for reelection as well. Daryl Legg, Dora Patzkowski, Joe Deere, Julia Coates and Kevin Easely Jr. will be tribal councilors. Coates, who lives in Los Angeles, will represent Cherokees who live off the tribe’s land base in the At-Large Tribal Council seat. The other three districts that were up for reelection will head to a run-off. The nation requires candidates to win by over 50 percent of the votes. This election cycle, eight of the 17 seats for the tribal council were up for election.
The Cherokee Nation has over 450,000 citizens but only 17,000 voted in the election, meaning just four percent of the population voted. However, Hoskin said this number is up 24 percent from the election four years ago.
“We’re moving in the right direction but I think we have to as leaders accept some responsibility that we need to engage more with our citizens,” he said. “So moving in the right direction, but let’s get more people out to vote in the future.”
Hoskin’s background
Long before becoming Principal Chief, Hoskin was a student at Vinita High School located in northeast Oklahoma. He watched his father, Chuck Hoskin Sr., become a council member for the Cherokee Nation.
Hoskin dreamed about becoming a council member after seeing his father serve their community. As he journeyed through public service this dream changed and he set his sights on leading the largest Indigenous nation in the country.
“I actually saw that serving in tribal government is a way to make a big difference,” he said. “I thought I should try to emulate what he does. I never, at that point, thought I would run for Chief, let alone be Chief, but I thought I might serve on the council.”
Hoskin graduated from the University of Oklahoma College of Law with a juris doctorate. He worked for 13 years as a labor lawyer at a federal agency defending workers’ rights. Then, he decided to make good on a teenage dream.
He ran for tribal council and won. In 2016, Hoskin became secretary of State for the Cherokee Nation. He served three years in that role before resigning to run for Principal Chief in 2019.
Working with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt
Being a tribal leader isn’t easy and there have been many times where an issue hits close to home because it does, Hoskin said. This is a unique experience that tribal leaders face compared to other elected roles where they may represent many others beyond their nation.
“This is looking back at what your ancestors lost, and you think ‘I’m in a position and I’m defending the people today.’ I’m trying to honor my ancestors. I’m trying to make sure there’s something for our descendants because this is existential,” Hoskin said. “It’s not just whether the United States succeeds and the state of Oklahoma succeeds. This is existential every single day for a tribal leader. So, it’s hard to not take it personal.”
There have been moments where Hoskin had to slow down and look at an issue through the lens of a leader, a perspective that reaches outside of his personal feelings.
“The way in which I can ground myself, part of, it’s talking to other tribal leaders who have served longer than I have,” he said.
One of those leaders is Chickasaw Gov. Bill Anoatubby, who has served his nation since 1987. Hoskin referred to Anoatubby as his mentor. (Though, Anoatubby has never officially taken on the role Hoskin said with a smile via Zoom.)
“I can think of meetings I’ve been in where I’ve been quite exercised and perhaps there was a tone that I had that was letting the personal nature of this get the best of me, and I would see him (Anoatubby) be very calm,” Hoskin said. “We had the same position. We had the same views. But his calm, cool and collected manner was probably because he was tempered by decades of having seen this sort of fight, and sometimes even worse. I think that’s where I stay a bit more grounded.”
He takes this same approach when it comes to the relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, who is a Cherokee citizen. The working relationship between the two have been strained at times.
Last year, Hoskin signed an executive order to remove all Oklahoma flags from tribal property. This came after repeated attempts by Stitt’s administration to undermine tribal sovereignty for the Indigenous nations in the state.
“It does hurt me as a Native person to see someone who’s a Cherokee citizen serve in the role of governor of the state of Oklahoma, and go on to the Supreme Court and ask the Supreme Court to obliterate the Cherokee Nation reservation just a year after it was formally recognized again by the government,” Hoskin said. “It’s difficult for me to not take it personal, when in the first few months that he served in office, he started to try to destroy our gaming compacts. Even these days, he vetoed legislation to protect the rights of students to wear regalia in high school graduations.
“Those things hit me personally and I can’t help it,” Hoskin said. “But I have to realize it’s not personal. I have to realize that the relationship between the state of Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation is bigger than Governor Kevin Stitt. And it’s bigger than me.”
Just last week, Stitt vetoed two bills that would have extended state and tribal compacts on vehicle tags and tobacco until December 2024. During a press conference, he was asked about the vetoes. His response was “I get a bad rap on some of the Indian stuff because I’m just so pro-Oklahoma, and as the governor of Oklahoma, I can’t think about what’s best for just Cherokee tribal politics, I’ve got to think about what’s best for all of Oklahoma.”
This is just the latest in a long string of attacks Stitt has made against Indigenous nations in the state.
“That’s legislation we want, he vetoed it, but I have to realize that once that issue comes and goes, there may be another issue,” Hoskin said. “There may be an infrastructure issue that we need to work with the governor on. There may be some economic development opportunities that only the Cherokee Nation and the state of Oklahoma working together can do. Say it’s attracting capital investment to northeast Oklahoma where our reservation is… I try to look for opportunities where we can find common ground. It’s really difficult.
So, in his next term Hoskin is going to continue to try to work with Stitt in areas where it is appropriate but says his administration will defend the rights of the Cherokee Nation.
“The Cherokee Nation has to stand strong against the ‘Governor Stitt’s’ of the world. You can go back through history and, ‘Governor Stitt’s,’ there’s been many of them throughout history. We’ve seen this before,” he said. “We have to stand strong. There’s a balance to be struck. I think there’s ways we can work together though.”
Looking forward
Hoskin is eager to finish the many projects he started in his first term including the completion of a $400 million, six story hospital located in the capital of the Cherokee Nation. The hospital will become the largest healthcare facility in Indian Country. The nation will also be updating a healthcare facility in Salina, Oklahoma and it will triple in size.
The nation reached a $100 million settlement from distributors for the impacts of the opioid crisis. Over the next five years, this money will go toward the creation of behavioral health and drug treatment facilities.
“We really need to do that because there’s a great deal of healing that needs to happen in that space and we’ve got the resources to do it,” he said.
Looking beyond Cherokee lands, Hoskin is keeping a close watch on any veto, law or case that would undermine tribal sovereignty.
“We’ve certainly seen it at the Cherokee Nation, whether it was attacks on the gaming compact, whether it was the fallout from the McGirt case, making sure we seize those opportunities and push back on efforts to undermine our reservation,” he said. “Those things require constant vigilance.”
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