Randall R. Morton, a native Tulsan,  is the founder of Houston’s Progressive Forum and the Oilfield Breakfast Forum. Randall Morton International was a marketing firm serving oil equipment companies in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. He is a member of a working group at Rice University’s Baker Institute Center for Energy Studies. This letter was first published in the Houston Chronicle.

Last spring, an email arrived with the power of a comet jolted from its ancient orbit. It bore a faded newspaper clipping from 1920s Tulsa — a half-page pictorial of a driveway murder scene of my father’s parents, noting the spot where he watched it as a teenager.

Under the headline “felled by bullets,” I finally learned the facts of my grandparents’ murder. On my computer screen, the past unsealed itself — an era when whites, impelled by a culture of killing, slew Osage Indians with impunity. A next-door neighbor, a lone white man, had waited on the steps for my father’s parents’ black car. Knowing that a white man wouldn’t be prosecuted, he shot them over a petty dispute involving the use of a garage.

My response to the clipping surprised me; I wasn’t distressed. Instead, I found myself coming to a quiet, profound closure. Like the wonder of an unhurried moonrise, my new insights revealed the source of trauma inflicted on me and my family by a wounded, authoritarian father. With the fresh confidence of solid facts, I was astonished to realize I was healing over 100 years of intergenerational trauma.

In an amazing coincidence, I received this email as I followed the making of the movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon. Directed by the renowned Martin Scorsese, it’s based on David Grann’s nonfiction book by the same name. It tells the relatively unknown history of 1920s Oklahoma, when, in the words of one FBI agent, “hundreds and hundreds” of Osages were murdered for their oil money.  

I’m an enrolled member of the Osage Tribe, which, according to Grann, “laid claim to much of the central part of the country, a territory that stretched from what is now Missouri and Kansas to Oklahoma, and still farther west, all the way to the Rockies.”  After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Grann writes, President Thomas Jefferson “informed his secretary of the navy that the Osage were a great nation and that ‘We must stand well because in their quarter, we are miserably weak.’”  The tribe was traumatically reduced by forced migrations to their final reservation in 1872, in what is now Osage County, slightly larger than Delaware. At the time, an Indian Affairs agent called the land “utterly unfit for cultivation.”

But in 1906, the Osages outmaneuvered the U.S. government, which was eager to open a new state of Oklahoma the next year. Chief James Bigheart, who spoke seven languages, negotiated the first subsurface mineral trust, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society, which tribal members owned in equal shares. Previously, the U.S. had forced tribes to split their communities and allotments, making it easier for white colonists to buy and seize their properties. 

The Osages established oil royalties, called headrights, among 2,229 people, and in the oil rush of 1920s Oklahoma, the Osages prospered. Their income in 1923 alone was $400 million in today’s money, according to Grann. For a time, the Osages became the wealthiest group of people in the world per capita. Their newfound wealth, however, sparked jealousy and greed among the surrounding whites. Headrights could only be inherited within families. To work around these restrictions and access Osage money, local whites married into Osage families — leading to an era called the “Osage Reign of Terror,” the focus of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The movie looks like a masterpiece. A $200 million production and a 3.5-hour cinematic experience, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and the lovely Lily Gladstone of the Blackfeet Tribe. The premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this past May received a nine-minute standing ovation, launching major Oscar buzz.

I watched the movie production unfold online with scenes in Pawhuska, the Osage Nation capital. The Osage were regal in colored ribbon shirts and proud eagle feathers. Hundreds participated in the movie, and the tribe has universally praised it. I was moved when Scorsese told the Osage News how, in community with the tribe, over Indian dinners listening to stories of tribal elders, he’d altered the Grann plot. 

No longer would the movie focus on the white FBI agent saving the day; it became a story of love struggling against insidious power. Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) and Mollie Kile, an Osage woman (Gladstone), fall genuinely in love — as he joins the execution schemes and she wanes from poison, misdiagnosed as the “peculiar wasting illness.” This epic Osage tragedy, soon to dominate the zeitgeist, calls out the forces of racism, greed and the feverish, irrational human drive for power.

All of which we see in Texas today. In 2021 our power-hungry legislators and governor led the charge to protect whitewashed history by outlawing the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The 1619 Project,” a reframing of Black history, from being taught in public schools. The prohibition of diverse historical perspectives is a tragedy that could deprive millions of the opportunity for healing and personal growth.  

In my hometown of Tulsa, they didn’t teach us about the Osage Reign of Terror. Nor did they teach the infamous Tulsa race massacre of 1921, when mobbing whites burned over 1,000 homes in the residential district called Black Wall Street, destroying lives for generations. 

Some ask, why dig up the unhappy past? For me, uncovering my origin stories, the tragedies and successes, has been a source of excitement, growth and strength. Our Texas authoritarians know this. That’s why they’re banning our beautiful histories.

We learn our beauty when we learn our history. This spring, I also discovered that my slain Osage grandmother, Mary Lane, was a pianist who loved opera. She and her husband, a dashing piano player at the Pawhuska silent movies, opened The Ryder Music Company, a store on East Main Street. Ryder is my middle name. 

My father, the late Randall R. Morton Sr., half Osage, used his headright to get an education from the University of Oklahoma and Georgetown Law School. A decorated airman in WWII, he finished his short life at 45 as an independent investment banker. I remember him in a dark suit with a handmade red tie, gentle with fine threading. He had style, a generous smile and an easy waltz. He was overwhelmed by alcohol and the chain of trauma he didn’t have the tools to heal, tools I’ve been fortunate to have in my own journey of self-discovery and healing. 

The Osage tribe has grown to over 21,000 members throughout the United States, with its own constitution and government. I inherited a 30% headright, amounting to a few hundred dollars a quarter. Along with tribal scholarships, it helped with college tuition for my two children. Both my adult children are enrolled tribal members and proud of their heritage. My daughter learns an Osage word every day.

The Flower Moon is an ageless native symbol of abundance. It’s the full moon in May when the American prairies, covered with new flowers, sing with the effervescence of blooming moonlight,  displacing the fear of darkness. As the Osage story grows in prominence, I expect the hopeful symbol of the Flower Moon will grow as well. May it remind all peoples of our abundant human capacity to heal, and to renew our efforts to take back the earth from the forces of greed and racism in the anniversaries of the Flower Moon to come.

The post ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ and my 100 years of healing appeared first on The Frontier.

When Quitney Armstead learned she was pregnant while locked up in a rural Alabama jail, she made a promise — to God and herself — to stay clean. 

She had struggled with addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder for nearly a decade, since serving in the Iraq War. But when she found out she was pregnant with her third child, in October 2018, she resolved: “I want to be a mama to my kids again.” 

Armstead says she did stay clean before delivering a baby girl in January 2019. Records show that hospital staff performed initial drug tests, and Armstead was negative.

Armstead didn’t know that Decatur Morgan Hospital also sent her newborn’s meconium — the baby’s first bowel movement — to the Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic for more advanced testing. Those test results showed traces of methamphetamine — drugs Armstead says she took before she knew she was pregnant. Because meconium remains in the fetus throughout pregnancy, it can show residue of substances from many months before that are no longer in the mother’s system.

Child welfare workers barred Armstead from seeing her daughter, Aziyah, while they investigated, and Armstead’s mother stepped in to care for the newborn. 

The hospital shared the meconium test results with local police, who then combed through months of medical records for Armstead and her baby to build a criminal case. Prosecutors alleged that the drugs she had taken much earlier in the pregnancy could have put the fetus at risk. Nearly a year after she’d delivered a healthy baby, Armstead was arrested and charged with chemical endangerment of a child.

She is one of hundreds of women prosecuted on similar charges in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Law enforcement and prosecutors in those states have expanded their use of child abuse and neglect laws in recent years to police the conduct of pregnant women under the concept of “fetal personhood,” a tenet promoted by many anti-abortion groups that a fetus should be treated legally the same as a child. 

These laws have been used to prosecute women who lose their pregnancies. But prosecutors are also targeting people who give birth and used drugs during their pregnancy. This tactic represents a significant shift toward criminalizing mothers: In most states, if a pregnant woman is suspected of using drugs, the case could be referred to a child welfare agency, but not police or prosecutors. 

Medical privacy laws have offered little protection. In many cases, health care providers granted law enforcement access to patients’ information, sometimes without a warrant. These women were prosecuted for child endangerment or neglect even when they delivered healthy babies, an investigation by The Marshall Project, AL.com, The Frontier, The Post & Courier and Mississippi Today found. 

In these cases, whether a woman goes to prison often depends on where she lives, what hospital she goes to and how much money she has, our review of records found. Most women charged plead guilty and are separated from their children for months, years — or forever. The evidence and procedures are rarely challenged in court.  

Prosecutors who pursue these criminal cases say they’re protecting babies from potential harm and trying to get the mothers help in some cases. 

But medical experts warn that prosecuting pregnant people who seek health care could cause them to avoid going to a doctor or hospital altogether, which is dangerous for the mother and the developing fetus. Proper prenatal care and drug treatment should be the goal, they argue — not punishment. 

Dr. Tony Scialli, an obstetrician/gynecologist who specializes in reproductive and developmental toxicology, said the prosecutions are an abuse of drug screenings and tests designed to assess the medical needs of the mother and infant. He said that drug use doesn’t necessarily harm a fetus. “Exposure does not equal toxicity,” Scialli said. 

But prosecutors in these states aren’t required to prove harm to the fetus or newborn — simply exposure at some point during the pregnancy.

Legal experts say that under this expanded use of child welfare laws, prosecutors could also pursue criminal charges for a pregnant person who drinks wine or uses recreational marijuana — even where it’s legal. Police could also comb through medical records to investigate whether a life-saving abortion was medically necessary or to allege that a miscarriage was actually the result of a self-managed abortion. 

Because of concerns about people being criminally punished for seeking reproductive healthcare after last year’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is working to strengthen privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. 

Scialli said the prosecutions ignore the effects of separating a newborn from a mother, which research has shown harms the child. Several studies have shown that even when newborns exhibit signs of drug withdrawal at birth, keeping them in hospital rooms with their mothers improves their health outcomes. 

Just because a person struggles with addiction doesn’t necessarily mean she is an unfit mother, Scialli said. “Even women who are using illicit drugs, they’re usually highly motivated to take care of their children. Unless the mother is being neglectful, separating the baby and mother is not healthy for either of them.”

Armstead grew up Quitney Butler in Town Creek, about two hours northwest of Birmingham. She watched as her town lost its Dairy Queen, grocery store, and eventually even the high school she graduated from in 2006. 

She was deployed to Iraq in 2009, the same year her school closed. By then, she was 21 with one young daughter, Eva, with her boyfriend, Derry Armstead. 

In Iraq, she drove trucks and made sure fellow soldiers got their mail. She was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, in a stretch of desert east of Baghdad that was often the target of attacks. 

Armstead came back from war in 2010 “a completely different person,” said her mother, Teresa Tippett. She was argumentative and temperamental. 

Her family members “all said I changed when I went over there,” Armstead recalled. “I was like, ‘Mama, we were getting bombed all day, every day.’”

Armstead came home looking for an escape. She found drugs and trouble.

After her boyfriend returned from his deployment to Afghanistan, they married in 2012 and had a second daughter, Shelby. But their relationship became tumultuous, records show. 

Both were arrested after a 2014 fight where he claimed she damaged his property, and she claimed he struck her on the leg, court records show. The following year, police records allege her husband drove his pickup past railroad barricades and into the side of a moving train, with his wife in the passenger seat. 

Because of the couple’s fighting and arrests, her mother had custody of both Eva and Shelby. Quitney Armstead picked up two drug possession charges, and a misdemeanor charge for throwing a brick at the car her husband was in. Their divorce was granted in 2018, court records show. 

In October 2018, she ended up back in jail after she was arrested on a drug possession charge during a police raid of a relative’s house, according to court records. 

That’s when she found out she was pregnant with Aziyah, and promised herself she would get clean. 

Not long before Armstead’s legal troubles began, some prosecutors in Alabama started to use a chemical endangerment statute — originally designed to protect children from chemical exposures in home meth labs — to punish women whose drug use potentially exposed their fetuses in the womb. 

Prosecutions vary widely from county to county. In some areas, district attorneys choose not to pursue these charges, while one county has charged hundreds of women. In 2016, lawmakers carved out an exemption for exposure to prescription drugs, which can also be harmful to a fetus.

Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson said he does not discuss details and facts about pending cases.

“However, I will tell you that my position of being willing to allow mothers charged with chemical endangerment into diversion programs has not changed. I am willing to do that and, if at all possible, I favor that approach in resolving these type cases,” he wrote in an email. “I think that Ms. Armstead needs treatment for drug dependency and am in favor of her getting it.” 

Some Alabama women we interviewed avoided a felony conviction and prison time by participating in pre-trial intervention programs run by prosecutors, which offer some treatment options. In some counties, the cost is $700 just to apply. Participants must keep making payments to remain enrolled. If they can’t afford to keep up, they face an automatic guilty plea.

In his email, Anderson said poverty does not prevent a person from entering diversion programs in his county.

In several Alabama cases, including Armstead’s, the mother and her newborn initially tested negative for drugs — but the hospital sent the baby’s meconium to a lab for more extensive testing.

Armstead said she never granted permission specifically for the test and had no idea her newborn’s meconium was being sent to the Mayo Clinic. A spokesperson for Decatur Morgan Hospital, where Armstead gave birth, wrote in an email statement that the hospital drug tests “all mothers who are admitted to our hospital for labor and delivery. Our hospital follows Alabama law regarding any required reporting of test results to state authorities.”

A federal law requires each state to have a policy on how to report and examine cases of drug-exposed newborns — but the federal statute doesn’t require states to conduct criminal investigations. About half the states stipulate that healthcare providers report to child welfare agencies when a newborn or mother tests positive for drugs, but only a handful pursue criminal prosecutions of the mothers.

Some prosecutors in Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma have determined that under those states’ laws and court rulings establishing fetal personhood, child welfare statutes can apply to a fetus. Mississippi doesn’t have a fetal personhood law, but that hasn’t stopped prosecutors in at least two counties from filing criminal charges against women who tested positive for drugs while pregnant.

In northeast Mississippi’s Monroe County, Sheriff’s Investigator Spencer Woods said he spearheaded the effort to begin prosecuting women under the concept of fetal personhood in 2019. Before that, Woods said, when the sheriff’s office received a referral from Child Protection Services about a newborn testing positive for drugs, officers wouldn’t investigate. 

“It wouldn’t be handled because it did not fall under the statute. It still does not fall under the statute,” he said. “Because the state of Mississippi does not look at a child as being a child until it draws its first breath. Well, when that child tests positive when it’s born, the abuse has already happened, and it didn’t happen to a ‘child.’ So it was a crack in the system the way I looked at it. And that’s where we’re kind of playing.”

There are several ways law enforcement can learn of alleged drug use. Sometimes, child welfare workers inform police. Occasionally, women themselves admit drug use to an investigator; other times doctors, nurses or hospital staff pass test results to law enforcement or grant officers access to medical records without a warrant.

The cases demonstrate how existing privacy laws don’t protect women’s medical records from scrutiny by law enforcement, said Ji Seon Song, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how law enforcement infringe on patients’ privacy. 

Child abuse allegations shouldn’t be a “carte blanche to access someone’s private health information, but that’s how it’s being used,” Song said. “When the loyalty to the patient completely disappears, that’s an institutional problem the hospitals need to deal with.”

Because this surveillance system could also be used to police women who seek abortions, federal authorities have proposed a privacy rule addition for HIPAA. Among other changes, it would prohibit disclosure of private health information for criminal, civil or administrative investigations against people seeking lawful reproductive health care. The agency sought public comment on the proposed rule through June 16, and is expected to complete the changes in coming months. 

Medical groups supporting the changes argue that using private health information to punish people criminally harms the physician-patient relationship and results in substandard care. But several state attorneys general — including the AGs for Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina — wrote a statement opposing the change. 

As proposed, the HIPAA changes could require law enforcement to provide documentation, such as a search warrant or subpoena, when seeking records related to someone’s reproductive healthcare — and medical providers could still refuse, said Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s very much real that your information is being used inappropriately sometimes; and then that information is then being used to seek out criminal, civil and administrative prosecution of people,” Fontes Rainer said. “We’re in this new era — of unfortunately targeting populations for the kinds of health care they seek.”    

In some cases, women were arrested and prosecuted after being honest with their doctors about their struggles with substance abuse. At one South Carolina hospital, a new mother admitted to occasional drug use while pregnant, only to have hospital staff call police who arrested her after a nurse handed over her medical records.

A few women have even been prosecuted after seeking treatment. 

In 2018, Kearline Bishop was pregnant and struggling with meth addiction. She said she checked herself into a rehab program in northeast Oklahoma because she knew she needed help.

When Bishop appeared to have contractions, the rehab transferred her to a local hospital. A doctor at Hillcrest Hospital Claremore determined that she wasn’t yet in labor, and that despite her past drug use, her fetus was healthy. 

Then two men Bishop didn’t know walked in. They were police detectives in plain clothes, who demanded a hospital worker draw her blood for testing, according to court records. It turned out that an off-duty police officer working security at the hospital had called his police department supervisor because he’d heard that a pregnant woman admitted to drug use. 

The detectives didn’t have a search warrant, so they handed Bishop a “Consent to Search” property form with blank spaces on it. The officers crossed out the line where they would normally list the property to be searched and instead simply wrote “Blood Draw.” Police testified later in court that they didn’t advise Bishop she could talk to a lawyer first.

Bishop had told the cops she “was in a dark place, and needed help,” according to an affidavit. 

The blood tests showed traces of drugs in her system. Officers handcuffed Bishop and took her  from the hospital to jail. She stayed there until right before she delivered her baby, when she was allowed to go to a treatment house for pregnant women for a few days. When Bishop’s daughter was born, she was healthy. But child welfare workers took her from Bishop the next day.

The District Attorney in Rogers County, northeast of Tulsa, charged Bishop with child neglect. After an initial hearing, a county judge dismissed the charge, ruling the state couldn’t apply its child welfare codes to a fetus. 

But the district attorney appealed. Then a 2020 decision in a separate case by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the state’s child neglect law could be applied to fetuses — even ones that didn’t display harm from drug use. The court later ruled that the prosecutor could continue the case against Bishop. 

District Attorney Matt Ballard celebrated on Twitter: “My office scored a big victory today fighting for unborn children. I’m proud of all the work that went into this. #ProtectingUnbornChildren” 

Through a spokeswoman, Ballard declined an interview request. 

Bishop ultimately opted for a blind plea — a form of guilty plea that leaves the sentence entirely up to a judge — in January 2022. She was sentenced to three years in prison, plus five years of probation. A court terminated her parental rights to her youngest daughter. 

Bishop did so well in prison that a judge reviewed her case and agreed to her release this past March, after just one year. Her daughter is now a healthy 4-year-old, adopted by a family member. Bishop has no contact with her youngest but saves up the money she makes working to buy clothes to send to her daughter.  

Part of Bishop’s motivation to secure an early release, she said, was to prove that the prosecutors and judge who sent her to prison were wrong about her. She said that they never gave her a chance to show she’d be a caring mother. 

“They looked at me like I wasn’t even human,” she said.  

The cloud of cigarette smoke in Kevin Teague’s Decatur law office is almost as thick as his north Alabama accent. Teague is Armstead’s court-appointed lawyer. He defends a number of women in Morgan County charged with chemical endangerment of a child. 

Many of his clients — like most of the women charged in Alabama and other states — reach plea deals, rarely challenging the cases against them. Teague said he had intended to help Armstead plead guilty too, but something about her case gnawed at him. 

“She’s just had a hell of a life. I mean, she fought for her country,” he said. “I truly believe she has some serious PTSD.” 

Her country — and the state of Alabama — owed her something better, he said. It seems unfair that poor people who can’t afford pre-trial diversion programs get felony convictions and prison time, while people who could afford thousands of dollars in fees can get different outcomes, Teague said. 

Armstead missed an October 2022 court hearing — she said she didn’t receive a notice or have transportation. The absence landed her back in jail in December, and, lacking the money for bail, she’s remained behind bars since. 

Meanwhile, Teague heard about a chemical endangerment case similar to Armstead’s in which the defendant challenged the evidence and the charges were dismissed: Dianne De La Rosa.

Eight months after De La Rosa’s daughter was born in 2018 in Huntsville, she and her family woke to a knock at the door at 2 a.m. The police had a warrant for her arrest for chemical endangerment. A meconium test allegedly showed traces of marijuana from earlier in the pregnancy.  

De La Rosa did something that many women in Morgan County couldn’t afford. She scraped together thousands of dollars to hire her own attorney — John Brinkley.

Brinkley is a father of nine, with another on the way. He had waited in many delivery rooms over the years, and he remembered a key detail: The hospital doesn’t preserve everything it collects when a baby is born.  

So Brinkley and his law partner Justin Nance did something unusual: They asked to conduct their own independent drug tests of the meconium in De La Rosa’s case. Defendants in Alabama have the right to request independent testing of evidence. But since so many women plead guilty, it rarely happens.

“It’s unclear the criteria they have for when they do these tests,” Nance said. “They claim they’re doing them on everybody, but I don’t think that is true.”

Prosecutors admitted that the evidence wasn’t preserved, and the charges against De La Rosa were dismissed. That took nearly three years. 

Many women charged with chemical endangerment in Alabama can’t afford their own lawyer to fight a criminal case for years, Brinkley said. “They pick on these less fortunate women, and then they just railroad them.”

After hearing about De La Rosa’s case, Teague filed a motion in late March to have the meconium evidence in Armstead’s case independently tested. Prosecutors never responded in a written filing, nor they did not turn over the sample within 14 days, as the court had ordered, Teague said. Armstead’s trial was set for August.

When Teague told Armstead about filing that motion — in hopes of getting her case dismissed — she broke down sobbing. 

Teague reminded her it would be a long road, and she would need to work on her sobriety and fulfill the requirements for a veterans’ court program she was offered for a synthetic marijuana  possession charge in a nearby county. But it was a glimmer of hope she could hold on to.  

“I am not the mistakes I’ve made,” Armstead said. “My kids were my world.”

Her incarceration has isolated her from family. Her jail doesn’t allow in-person visits from anyone but her lawyer, and she barely has the funds to make phone calls.

Her daughter Aziyah is 4 years old now. She and her older sisters only see Armstead on occasional video calls from the county jail, when the family can afford to put money in her jail account. 

Armstead recalled that during a recent video chat, Aziyah asked her: “Mommy, can you just sneak out of jail for one night?” 

She explained to Aziyah that if she did, she would be there even longer. 

“It tore me up,” Armstead said.  

Last week, Teague visited her at the jail with news: Morgan County was now offering her a better plea deal. If she successfully completes veterans’ court in nearby Lauderdale County, both her drug possession charge and chemical endangerment charge will be dismissed, he told her. There would be no conviction for either felony, as long as she didn’t screw up. 

Armstead knew this meant the state probably didn’t have the meconium evidence. But taking the plea deal meant getting out of jail sooner and hugging her girls. Maybe she would be home in time for back-to-school. 

She couldn’t afford to say no. 

Additional reporting contributed by Amy Yurkanin, AL.com; Brianna Bailey, The Frontier; Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today; and Jocelyn Grzeszczak, The Post and Courier.

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The post How four states – including Oklahoma – use fetal personhood to punish pregnant women appeared first on The Frontier.

 At night, the shed’s two screen doors are wired shut. Inside, is a bed piled with clothes and two car batteries, which provide enough power to run a small light and a fan the size of a palm. Showers are taken outside with five-gallon jugs of water behind a folding exercise mat that is propped on its side. And an ice chest serves as a refrigerator.

 “This is home,” said Sullivan, a 34-year-old Louisiana native whose navy-blue shirt reads “FIGHT LIKE A GIRL.”

“You’d be surprised what you can cook with a lighter,” said Sullivan, holding up a cigarette lighter and a can of cheese. “I’ve even made nachos in here, believe it or not. The tin keeps the cheese warm.”

Sullivan is among those who move in the shadows, sleeping in abandoned houses and under a canopy of trees by the railroad tracks and even in storage units. Social workers, church leaders, and volunteers say rural western Oklahoma’s ghost population of homeless are largely ignored save for a spirited few who battle daily to provide help.

There’s scant resources and no state funding. Along the Interstate-40 corridor, there is only one overnight shelter for men between Amarillo and Oklahoma City. In Elk City – a town of 11,570 residents – a nonprofit opened the community’s first day shelter recently to combat homelessness. But local leaders are reluctant to help finance an overnight shelter for fear it will attract transients.

Nationally, rural homelessness increased by nearly 6% between 2020 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Yet for those in the trenches of this struggle in Clinton and other rural communities in the state’s region, the acknowledgement of a notable homeless population is their greatest challenge.

“A lot of people in this community would be shocked if they knew how many homeless were living on the streets,” said Eli Colston, a benevolence team leader at TheEdge Church in Clinton. “There’s definitely a stigma to homelessness out here. A lot of people don’t even want to admit it’s a problem in their community. But they’re here, living under bridges and in abandoned houses and crowding into motel rooms.

“I know because I once lived on the streets … right here in Clinton.”

Colston, 34, wandered Clinton’s streets for more than two years while battling substance use.

“I saw a lot of people on the streets here,” Colston recalled. “It was not uncommon to stay in a one-bed hotel room with 35, 45 people crammed into the same room. I also lived under bridges, and once found an abandoned home between Clinton and Arapaho with the lights on and filled with a bunch of junk. I stayed there for two weeks. But I always kept moving. I never stayed in a place long enough to be noticed.”

He wears a tattoo memorializing the day he broke the chain of addiction – December 24, 2017. Five months later and still sober, he was arrested for outstanding warrants in nearby Washita County.

“It was time for me to pay the piper,” admits Colston, who said he eventually “found God ” during an eight-month stint in prison at William S. Key Correctional Center in Fort Supply.

Today, Colston helps others at this part-time job with the church, which has filled the breach left by no city or state funding. His team provides emergency assistance in a variety of ways, from utilities and clothing to food and shelter. Last year, the church provided help of some kind to 90 of 104 applicants. He estimates “at least 30%” of those he meets are homeless.  The church also provides financial support to Clinton’s Mission House, the only overnight men’s shelter along I-40 in rural Western Oklahoma.  

The shelter operates out of a century-old, two-story house covered in peeling blue paint that served as the living quarters for local nurses years ago. Mission House serves as many as 31 homeless people a day. Clients can stay for up to 90 days. Director Twyla Williams helps connect people with resources to lift them off the streets, combatting issues that range from unemployment to mental health needs. Clients must pass a drug test to be granted a bed, disqualifying some. 

Mission House serves an average of 2,200 meals a week for anyone in the community who is hungry out of an adjoining kitchen. Many of the 1,950 people the nonprofit served last year also have children. 

Mission House has an annual budget of $42,000, none of which includes city, state, or federal money. And the need is growing. TheEdge Church congregation has agreed to donate 20% of its tithings each month to the Mission House so it can eventually build a newer, larger shelter. 

Local advocates say Clinton’s homeless population is likely undercounted and there’s not enough resources to address the problem. 

“Our homeless population would definitely shock the average person living here,” said Williams, who conservatively estimated Clinton could have as many as 200 homeless people in a town of 8,380 residents.

Colston suspects that estimate is low.

“Easily, we could have as many as 200 homeless here in Clinton,” he said. “Remember, there are a lot of homeless folks that we never even come in contact with for one reason or another. But trust me, they’re out there. I’ve seen them.”

But Clinton Mayor David Berrong is skeptical. In fact, he doesn’t recall the issue of homelessness ever being addressed by the city council dating back to his first election to office in November 2016. He’s now serving his fourth term.

And there are presently no plans for the city to jump into the homeless issue.

“I think it might be more of a transient problem,” Berrong said. “But if there is a homeless problem here, I think it’s something we would address in a compassionate way as a community because it’s the right thing to do.” 

Exact numbers have always been elusive with the homeless population, and even more so in rural regions. HUD requires communities receiving federal grants to conduct an annual point-in-time count each January of the homeless population. The count includes those who live in emergency shelters, as well as on the streets. Those numbers are merely a snapshot in time, but critical in applications for federal dollars.

In January, a count in the 19-county area that includes Clinton, much of northwestern Oklahoma and the panhandle showed a homeless population of 216 people — 86 living on the streets. 

But the numbers don’t include people who are sleeping on couches, living in motels or cramped trailers with other families as homeless. 

Weather can also play a role in the numbers. If the count happens on a cold night, more people will go to shelters.

Combating the stigma of a hidden problem 

For 14 years, trips to the bus station to pick up another homeless person from some smaller town were commonplace for Lawton Housing Authority executive director Jervis Jackson.  During that period, his agency led the Southwest Oklahoma Continuum of Care in a mission to end homelessness before handing over leadership to another nonprofit in 2021.

“A lot of rural communities outside of Lawton never wanted to admit they had a homeless problem,” Jackson said. “One town in Stephens County would pick up someone who was homeless and give them a meal. They might even put them up in a hotel for a night. But the next morning, they would put them on a bus and ship them to Lawton.

“The feeling was always the same: ‘We don’t have a homeless problem. We have a transient problem.’ That attitude prevails throughout those rural communities.”

This year’s county identified 409 total homeless people – 316 of whom were unsheltered, for the 16-county region that includes Lawton – Oklahoma’s sixth largest city with a population of 91,542 people.

Jackson estimates that about 85% of the homeless population counted in those numbers is in Lawton. It becomes harder to get an accurate count of homeless people in rural areas, he said. 

Liberty McArthur, executive director of the Western Oklahoma Family Care Center, said she’s had to spend time raising awareness about the hidden problem of homelessness in her community. She started the organization in  2018 to fight homelessness in Elk City, 28 miles west of Clinton on Interstate-40.

“I’d go around town to try and raise money,” McArthur recalled. “Some people would say, ‘Oh Liberty, why are you doing that? We don’t have a homeless problem.’ Some people are just so far removed from that world, and well, you don’t know what you don’t know.

In January, the Western Oklahoma Family Care Center opened a day shelter where the homeless population can rest, shower, eat, and pick up hygiene supplies. The shelter is in the old National Guard Armory and is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The non-profit also oversees a food pantry, as well as a medical and dental clinic.

“We’re trying to get an overnight shelter, but so far, the city council doesn’t want one,” McArthur said. “They think an overnight shelter would be a magnet for transients and then crime would rise. But I don’t think an overnight shelter would be a beacon for homelessness. I do think it would help those who are already homeless in our community.”

The face of homelessness in Clinton is as varied and complex as one might find anywhere in the nation. Mental illness, substance use, past criminal records, and those without the safety net of a family are all part of the equation. Although it isn’t as obvious as a group of roadside tents amid a cluster of trees in Oklahoma City or Tulsa.

Mission House is at the epicenter of the problem. 

Sullivan said she journeyed to Oklahoma with her partner of 12 years to be close to her two children, who live with their stepmother in neighboring Weatherford. Both she and her partner were strung out on heroin and being evicted from their rental home when her partner “took off.”

 For a while, Sullivan worked in the deli of a local grocery store, only to lose her job over her alcoholism – an issue she admits she still battles along with her drug addiction.

 “I want to get clean,” Sullivan said. “I don’t wanna live this way. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’m afraid of moving too far away from my kids.”

 Sullivan sometimes walks into town to eat a meal at the Mission House, where Williams welcomes everyone with a hot plate of food and a smile.

“If it were just up to me, I’d let everyone who needed help live here,” Williams said. “Why should people care? Well, number one, it’s the Christian thing to do. But what if this was your daughter? Or what if this man was your brother? Sometimes, people don’t care until it touches their lives directly.

“I just love people. And I love what I do.”

Cesar Jimenez said he was traveling from Las Vegas with “two friends” in search of work when they abandoned him at a Motel 6 in Clinton.

 “I was scared,” said Jimenez, 42. “I had no money. I have no family. I was standing in the pouring rain outside a Dollar General when a local man asked if I had a place to stay.”

The man introduced Jimenez to Colston, who brought him to the Mission House.

“I truly believe I would have died if I had been left on the streets. This place saved my life.”

Williams is now trying to help Jimenez find employment.

Stephanie Freeberg, meanwhile, has been one the shelter’s great success stories since her arrival in March. Her life spiraled into homelessness after 18 years in the United States Air Force, where she said she was honorably discharged after a medical mix-up. Her prompt exit from the military left her two years shy of qualifying for a pension.

 “Instead, I ended up with nothing,” said Freeberg, now 46. “People said, ‘Why don’t you sue?’ I’m like, ‘Sue the government? Really?’ 

Freeburg ended up staying with friends in Sayre. Then she landed a job in Elk City working with medical records, where she worked for three years.

 “But I made some bad decisions. I quit my job to go to school, only to learn I couldn’t get any financial help from my military service. I should have never quit my job without first having something firm in place. That’s when my life spiraled out of control.”

Depression set in, and with seemingly nowhere to turn, Freeberg descended into the darkest period of her life. In 2016, she ended up living in an abandoned building in downtown Burns Flat, a town of 1,955 people in Washita County. At night, she slept on a mattress under a pile of blankets. Her only companions for six years were seven cats.

“The police chief said I could either go to jail or the Mission House,” Freeberg said. “I really had no choice. I was just forced to gather my things and leave. The worst part was leaving my cats – my babies.”

Williams and her volunteer staff instantly recognized Freeberg as a perfect fit for Clinton’s Wear It Again thrift store, which helps finance the Mission House through its sales. Freeberg has already been promoted to store manager. As an employee, she also receives a weekly stipend and her own room at the shelter.

 “I’m a very private person,” Freeberg said. “So, this is hard to talk about. I don’t blame anyone for what happened. I take full accountability for my bad decisions. Depression played a part, of course. I felt like a complete failure. And when you get so far down, that hole gets pretty deep.

Freeburg said help from Mission House has given her hope again.  

“People look at you a certain way when you are homeless,” Freeberg said. “A lot of people choose to close their eyes. But for every person who closes their eyes, there are others who are there to help.”

Ron J. Jackson, Jr. is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist who has been writing professionally for 38 years. For more on his work, go to www.ronjjacksonjr.com

The post In rural Oklahoma, homelessness remains a hidden problem appeared first on The Frontier.

The Tulsa County District Attorney’s office charged four people in connection with Blalock’s death. Jaydon Harring and and Tonnako Miller, both teenagers at the time of Blalock’s killing, pled guilty to murder and were sentenced to life in prison.  

But Harring and Miller both challenged their convictions in 2021 and 2022  arguing that the state didn’t have the power to prosecute them, because Blalock was a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and they were non-Native. The 2020 McGirt U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that nearly half of Oklahoma, including Tulsa, was tribal land, wiping out the state’s ability to prosecute many crimes.

For Blalock’s family, it was another delay in justice. 

“We have not been able to rest for five years,” said son Sherman Blalock.

Even before the McGirt ruling complicated jurisdiction surrounding his mother’s case, Sherman said he was frustrated with Oklahoma’s criminal justice system. 

But Harring and Miller will remain in state custody after the Supreme Court handed down the Castro-Huerta ruling in June, giving the state concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute non-Natives when they commit crimes against Native people on reservation land.  

After the new ruling, local district attorneys are preparing to pick up cases they say weren’t being charged by federal authorities. 

Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, who has been a vocal critic of the McGirt ruling, pointed to Blalock’s case. The state court, however, never ruled on Harring’s motion to dismiss and in fact, delayed the hearing until after the Castro-Huerta decision was handed down in June by the US Supreme Court. Miller’s motion to dismiss was denied in September of 2021 after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that McGirt does not apply retroactively.

But, it’s unclear how many cases Tulsa County will claw back after the ruling. 

“I’m going to want to make sure that people are being held accountable for their wrongful conduct,” said Kunzweiler. 

There’s scant data on how many cases Oklahoma prosecutors will take over from federal authorities after the Castro-Huerta ruling. Kunzweiler acknowledged he didn’t know the number of cases his office is prepared to prosecute. An April article published in the Atlantic by KOSU and co-authored by Rebecca Nagle showed that less than a thousand cases have been affected by the McGirt ruling since it was decided in July of 2020.

Kunzweiler has claimed that federal authorities dropped the ball on some criminal cases after the McGirt ruling and that many crimes were going un-prosecuted. According to a study Kunzweiler’s office commissioned, federal prosecutors were prosecuting less than a third of  criminal cases after the McGirt ruling. 

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma in Tulsa disputes numbers from the study as does Cherokee Nation’s Attorney General Sara Hill. Federal prosecutors say no case has gone un-prosecuted and tribal courts have picked up cases not handled by U.S. Attorneys. 

After the McGirt ruling, Oklahoma’s Five Tribes ramped up their criminal justice systems — spending millions of dollars to hire more prosecutors, judges and tribal police. The need for more federal funding for tribal law enforcement hasn’t gone away with the Castro-Huerta ruling. 

“Nothing about this says that the tribe can’t prosecute Indians or that the reservations have been diminished in any way,” said Cherokee Nation attorney General Sara Hill. “The work at our prosecutor’s office will look exactly the same tomorrow as it looked yesterday. There’s really no difference in the work that we do.“

Those additional resources will be key when the newly reauthorized Violence Against Women Act takes effect in October. The federal law gives tribes more authority over non-Natives on tribal land for crimes like sexual assault, child abuse, stalking and sex trafficking in addition to domestic violence crimes..

Federal authorities will begin referring cases to tribes for prosecution under the new Violence Against Women provisions later this year. 

Kunzweiler welcomes more help prosecuting domestic violence cases. 

“If I have an added resource now where the tribal authorities will pick those cases up and aggressively prosecute them, and we could jointly handle those cases, great,” Kunzweiler said. “That’s the kind of relationship I’d love to be able to have.”

A few weeks after the ruling in Castro-Huerta, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor issued a directive to prosecutors and law enforcement on the changing criminal justice landscape in Oklahoma saying that, “law enforcement officers should give their respective district attorneys the option to prosecute any non-Indian criminal defendants first, before any such case is referred to the federal government for prosecution.”

Now that the state has concurrent jurisdiction over felony crimes committed by non-Natives, the question remains whether that jurisdiction will increase safety on the six reservations in Oklahoma.

Hill says her office will keep moving forward.

“No decision will grind the tribes into dust,” she said. 

The post After the Castro-Huerta ruling, Oklahoma’s criminal justice system endures another shift appeared first on The Frontier.

With a nationwide shortage of the monkeypox vaccine JYNNEOS, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has divided up available doses for states and a few large cities. Most states have asked for their entire allotment, but Oklahoma had ordered just 24% of the vaccine the federal government has offered as of noon Wednesday. That amounts to 736 doses — enough for roughly 1800 people if the state follows new guidelines to stretch supply. 

No jurisdiction has asked for a smaller share of its vaccines, and only one other state has ordered less than 98% of their allotment. 

Oklahoma has confirmed 12 cases of monkeypox as of Wednesday afternoon, a tiny fraction of the nation’s more than 10,000, but more are probably on the way. 

“We have not seen the big rise in cases in Oklahoma yet, although I think all of us are holding our breath,” said Dr. Dale Bratzler, interim dean of the University of Oklahoma’s Hudson College of Public Health. “Take COVID, or any other infectious disease. We often see big outbreaks on the coasts that slowly work their way into the heartland,” he said. 

The actual number of infections in the state is almost certainly higher, as some cases can go undetected, said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy for the health care policy group Kaiser Family Foundation.

“There are lots of reasons why there are undiagnosed and unreported cases of monkeypox,” Michaud said. “If you’re just going on the reported numbers, you are underestimating the true size of the outbreak.” 

Current state rules limit eligibility to people who have had prolonged, skin-to-skin contact with someone confirmed to have monkeypox, or similar contact at an event or venue where the virus was present. 

But federal guidelines also recommend vaccination for anyone who has had sex with multiple partners in the last two weeks in an area where monkeypox is circulating. 

The idea is to vaccinate people at high risk of exposure in order to prevent transmission public health would otherwise miss, according to Michaud. Several of Oklahoma’s neighbors, including Missouri, Colorado and much of Texas, have already begun vaccinating people with multiple partners. 

Speed matters. Within four days of exposure – the sooner, the better – JYNNEOS has a good chance of preventing infection. For ten days after that, it can still reduce how long someone is contagious.

State Epidemiologist Jolianne Stone hopes Oklahoma can eventually expand access to the monkeypox vaccine, but there’s a lack of storage capacity outside OSDH. 

 “Hardly any facilities throughout the state even have capacity to store this vaccination,” Stone said, “whether it’s county health departments, or even community partners.” 

JYNNEOS has to be kept around zero degrees Fahrenheit, and can last up to eight weeks in a refrigerator, according to the CDC.

“We’re constantly having conversations with our community partners, internal conversations and external conversations, to help us determine how much of our allocation we should request right now, knowing that this allocation has to provide second doses,” Stone said.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health is using case data to project demand a week or two in advance. If the situation changes suddenly, it can get more vaccines from the national stockpile in about two days.

A CDC spokesperson confirmed there are currently no additional criteria keeping Oklahoma from ordering nearly 2500 more doses of JYNNEOS. Oklahoma can get the rest of its allotted vaccines early if it shows federal officials it gave its doses to eligible populations.

The post Oklahoma has asked for smaller share of monkeypox shots than any other state    appeared first on The Frontier.

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Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s decision not to renew hunting and fishing compacts with the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations for 2022 could mean a potential loss of millions of dollars in future federal funding for the state’s wildlife department.

The Cherokee Nation claims federal funding has been boosted by $32 million and $6 million, respectively, over the life of the two compacts.

The more hunting and fishing licenses the state issues, the better it is positioned among other states to take a larger piece of an annual federal funding pie. With fewer licenses being purchased by tribal members, due to the lack of compacts, the funding picture could weaken for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.

While the Cherokee Nation points to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates, the state Wildlife Department is more cautious and states its budget comes with contingencies for funding that have always fluctuated.

“There will be a fiscal impact, what exactly that will be is very hard to say,” said Micah Holmes, assistant chief of communication and education for the state department. “Each individual who has a hunting or fishing license is ‘certified’ with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a part of our federal grant funding formula, but that funding fluctuates year-to-year.”

It’s important to note that Oklahoma’s state budget, which involves state taxpayer money, will not miss a dime. The Wildlife Department, however, is a self-sustaining agency funded independently and primarily through hunting and fishing license sales and related federal funding.

Those federal programs historically boost department funding by well over $20 million a year.

The federal Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937 and the Sportfish Restoration Act of 1950 level 10 percent and 11 percent excise taxes on nationwide firearms and ammunition, archery, and fishing tackle sales, and a 3 percent tax on boats and marine equipment and fuel sales. That money is then distributed annually among fish and wildlife agencies for the 50 states and five commonwealths.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issues those apportionments based on a formula that includes factors like the geographical size, population, and the proportion of licenses sold in the state relative to nationwide license sales.

That last requirement is where having that set pool of certified tribal compact licenses comes into play. And that is where the funding picture gets a little complicated.

“It is very hard to determine a total dollar value impact of the tribal licenses. That said, there has been an increase in the number of individuals we certify since the inception of the tribal licenses, which has likely led to an increase in federal funding,” Holmes said.

Cherokee Nation Secretary of Natural Resources Chad Harsha agreed there are many federal funding variables, but said he believes a bigger hit is inevitable due to the lack of compacts.

Conversations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service back up the tribe’s claims that the Cherokee compact will have been worth more than $32 million to the state over its six years and the Choctaw compact $6 million over its five years, he said.

“Even conservatively thinking, it’s reasonable to conclude that the full impact will cause financial damage to the Wildlife Department,” he said.

After the compact expires on Dec. 31, tribal citizens can hunt and fish without a state-issued license on Reservation lands, which cover large portions of the state. However, they will need a state license if they want to hunt or fish elsewhere, Holmes said.

Cherokee Nation citizens did not pay for their individual compact licenses and they could have one whether or not they hunted or fished. It’s certain that not nearly as many tribal citizens will purchase state licenses in the future, Harsha said.

Holmes said, on average, Choctaw tribal members purchased $282,237 in licenses pre-compact. Choctaw compact license revenue, including a $200,000 flat contribution, averaged $33,390 a year. Cherokee citizens purchased $518,811 worth of licenses, on average, pre-compact, and the Nation paid $425,835 under the contract.

Where those hundreds of thousands translate into millions is through the federal tax apportionments, and that is where the picture becomes murkier.

Harsha said his office communicated with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials to better gauge compact license impacts.

He said it is important to note U.S. Fish and Wildlife historical numbers actually run two years behind, so the historical funding formula noted for 2021 actually reflects numbers and revenue generated in 2019.

Indeed, compact licenses show up in the USFWS Historical License Data Index two years after the compacts were signed. Between 2010 and 2017, the state collected apportionments based on an average of roughly 420,000 hunting licenses and 690,000 fishing licenses. But in 2018 the total number of Oklahoma hunting licenses jumped by 98,574, to 529,651 total, and fishing licenses climbed by 94,462, to 794,368 total.

Using the federal apportionment for 2021 as an example, Harsha credited each hunting license sold for contributing $33.08 of the total $16.96 million in Wildlife Restoration funding. Likewise, each fishing license accounted for $12.13 of the $8.6 million in Sportfish Restoration dollars. That comes to $45.21 in federal funding generated by each state license issued, he said.

So, he reasoned, the 121,000 Cherokee Nation compact licenses issued in 2021 netted more than $5.47 million for the Wildlife Department.

Include the $242,000 paid upfront at two dollars apiece for the licenses and the total is over $5.6 million, just for Cherokee compact. That represents nearly 18 percent of the total $25.56 million in federal apportionments to Oklahoma in 2021.

With the Wildlife Department yet to see compact dollars from 2020 and 2021, and increased license sales and outdoors participation due to COVID-19, as well as a spike in firearms and ammunition sales, boosted nationwide by the pandemic and Democrats winning the White House and control of Congress, that impact likely will climb for the residual two years of compact funding, Harsha said.

What the funding picture will look like in 2024, however, is anyone’s guess.

Kelly Bostian is an independent journalist writing for The Conservation Coalition of Oklahoma Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to education and outreach on conservation issues facing Oklahomans. Learn more at oklahomaconservation.org.

The post Voices: Tribal compact cancellations could hit Wildlife Department funding appeared first on The Frontier.

“Imagine all the things you need to live,” FitzGerald said. “Just to sleep, you need an apartment, a bed, a mattress … Where are all those things going to come from?”

About 1,800 Afghan refugees are headed to Oklahoma. The group is mostly comprised of people who worked in some capacity for the U.S. government over the course of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, as well as their families. The state will receive the third-highest number of Afghan refugees in the nation, behind California and Texas, according to data compiled by Axios. 

About 800 refugees will settle in Oklahoma City and outlying areas, and another 1,000 will go to the Tulsa area and Stillwater, according to Catholic Charities, which is contracting with the U.S. State Department for the resettlement in Oklahoma. Catholic Charities is the only refugee resettlement agency in Oklahoma. 

The U.S. government is providing a lump sum of about $1,000 per refugee to Catholic Charities. Refugees will receive a one-time payment of $1,225 and most of that money will go to cover housing costs. The rest of the money needed for the five-year resettlement process will come from Catholic Charities’ budget, according to Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma CEO Kevin Sartorius.

Under federal law, refugees are entitled to hold jobs after they enter the United States, but there’s often a wait until the government can process the work permits. It could take up to two months before many of the refugees can legally work. Catholic Charities will help the refugees find jobs once they receive their permits.  

It may be more of a challenge for refugees to find jobs in a smaller city such as Stillwater, which has a population of about 50,000 people, FitzGerald said. 

Initial plans called for Stillwater to host about 25 families instead of 40. But the availability of housing in Stillwater enabled Catholic Charities to increase the city’s allotment to 40 out of the estimated 200 families coming to the Tulsa area. The resettlement will be the largest in the city’s history.

After a hurried evacuation from Afghanistan, most of the refugees will arrive in the United States with nothing but the clothes they are wearing and whatever they can carry, which means that Catholic Charities needs to find housing, clothing, furniture, food, and transportation before they arrive.

The first priority for resettlement is finding long-term housing for the refugees. But with a housing market under the strain of a lengthy pandemic in many areas around Oklahoma, even that basic need has proven difficult to fulfill. 

“As we started to investigate both Oklahoma City and Tulsa, we found that there’s a pretty severe shortage of long-term housing,” Sartorius said. 

FitzGerald has so far been able to secure about 40 apartments in Stillwater, allowing him to shift his focus to acquiring other necessities for the incoming refugees. Oklahoma State University has agreed to lease 25 apartments for reduced rent, and several private landlords have agreed to work with the refugees. The refugees will arrive with no Social Security numbers or credit history, which can be a significant barrier to renting. 

FitzGerald is a retired U.S. Army colonel who previously managed networks of translators for the military. He has worked for Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma for two years, and the Afghan resettlement effort is by far the largest project he’s undertaken.

FitzGerald admits the amount of work required during the early stages of resettlement can be overwhelming, but he believes it will be worth it in the end. 

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“To be able to help this many people and make such a difference in so many people’s lives, it’s truly incredible,” he said.

Resettlement efforts have caused some controversy in Oklahoma. 

While Gov. Kevin Stitt has expressed support for Afghan resettlement in Oklahoma, state GOP Chairman John Bennett has criticized the process, releasing a video to voice concerns that there is no way to “properly” vet the refugees. But all refugees undergo a seven-step screening process that includes a background check and biometric checks, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce said the city is ready to welcome its new Afghan residents.

“We have a strong international community and a local culture that values and supports people and families, no matter where they call home,” Joyce said. “I think Stillwater would be an ideal destination, in that it combines a smaller, slower-paced environment that also incorporates familiar faces, international markets, and welcoming neighbors.”

The first Afghans arrived in Oklahoma City and in Tulsa last week. Refugees will begin to arrive in Stillwater from military bases across the United States in early November.

“The resettlement will begin with one or two families, and once we feel like we’ve gotten the process down, the rest will slowly start trickling in.” FitzGerald said.

FitzGerald is the only Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma employee working on the resettlement on the ground in Stillwater, but he has managed to build a network of more than 100 people to assist the refugees, including student translators from OSU, drivers, and volunteers from almost every church in the city. 

“Virtually everyone I’ve talked to has said ‘what can I do, how can I help,'” Sartorius said. “Catholic Charities is kind of the coordinating agency, the glue that holds it all together, but we’re by no means lifting this all by ourselves.”

Catholic Charities is also partnering with other nonprofit organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations Oklahoma, The Spero Project, and local Catholic churches such as the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Stillwater. The organizations will help with funding, soliciting donations, and finding volunteers to assist the resettlement effort.

Very Rev. Brian O’Brien of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, who has been helping gather donations for the refugees, said he and the church will welcome Afghan families to Stillwater.

“Depending on the political situation in Afghanistan, some might return, some might move to big cities like New York, but most will give back to the community for years to come,” O’Brien said.

FitzGerald has special plans for when he welcomes each Afghan family to Stillwater. A rice cooker, basic furnishings, a variety of spices, hot tea, and a hot meal will await them at their new apartments.

“What says love more than a hot-cooked meal?” FitzGerald said.

The post An Oklahoma city prepares for an unprecedented influx of refugees appeared first on The Frontier.

Many of us have heard about Julius Jones, a black man who has been on Oklahoma’s death row for over twenty years. It’s time for us as citizens to give heartfelt and critical thought to Mr. Jones and what his case represents, because there is evidence that supports his innocence.

In 1999, Mr. Jones was arrested for the murder of Mr. Paul Howell, a prominent white businessman in Edmond. The media, driven by District Attorney Bob “Cowboy” Macy, immediately suggested drug-related violence perpetrated by Black men as the motivation. A juror on Mr. Jones’ case allegedly referred to him with a racial slur and said they might as well take him behind the courthouse and shoot him. Additionally, 11 of the 12 jurors in his trial were white. 

None of these things necessarily shift the scales of justice when taken in isolation. Together, however, they suggest a toxic environment where a Black man was presumed guilty, at least in part, because of the color of his skin. 

That environment is not contained to Mr. Jones’ case. It is a pervasive problem within our justice system, and directly contributes to statistical anomalies that cannot be explained unless one takes race and racism into account. Consider the fact that three times as many Black men and women who are charged with felonies are sentenced to prison than their white counterparts; additionally, Black men charged with murder are three times more likely to get the death penalty if their alleged victims are white. 

Furthermore, Oklahoma’s track record on capital murder cases for people of any race is troubling. Ten Oklahomans – five white and five Black – have been released from death row, either because of prosecutorial misconduct or evidence of actual innocence. Race aside, most people would say the state should never execute a potentially innocent person. Unfortunately, our track-record indicates that we have come very close. 

In Mr. Jones’ case, one could ignore these arguments about systemic racial bias and still be alarmed by this simple truth: there is another man walking free who has confessed to Mr. Howell’s murder.  Three individuals – none incentivized by money or deals – have reported that Mr. Jones’ co-defendant confessed numerous times to the murder of Mr. Paul Howell. He bragged about it, even.  If that doesn’t matter, what does?

Mr. Jones has a commutation hearing on September 13, and Oklahoma’s values around race, justice and truth are standing trial.

Oklahomans believe in the “Oklahoma Standard” for compassion and empathy. Commuting the sentence of an innocent man who has already spent two decades in prison is our chance to show that we are striving to live by that standard. We need to pay close attention to a system that would insist on executing a man in spite of the information we have now. 

The death of Mr. Howell was an absolute tragedy.  Executing an innocent man will not bring Mr. Howell back to his family, but commuting an innocent man will bring Julius Jones closer to his. After 20 years in prison it is time to right this wrong.  Life matters, and race does too. It’s time to welcome Julius home.

George Young is a Democratic State Senator from Oklahoma City. Kris Steele is the former Republican Speaker of the House and is a criminal justice reform advocate.

The post Voices: Oklahoma’s values around race, justice and truth are standing trial appeared first on The Frontier.

Allison Griffin remembers her 28-year old son on the day he died. He was worried and upset—a departure from his usual good nature. 

Julian Rose had been struggling to get his driver’s license back after it had been suspended. He hadn’t seen his 5-year old son Julius for nearly a year and was upset after a relative had recently died of a drug overdose in Oklahoma City. 

Julian’s stepdad was urging him to get his life back together so he could see his son and get on his feet again.

Allison remembered her last exchange with Julian as she grabbed her keys and purse to head to work that Tuesday morning. He gave her a little kiss on the forehead. 

“He said, ‘I love you mom,'” Allison recalled. “That was the last thing he ever said to me.”

Julian died that evening, after Glenpool police shot him while responding to a 911 call at his grandmother’s house. 

It would be almost five months before federal officials told Julian’s family the details about what happened the night he died.

Law enforcement initially did not release any information about the shooting due to the nature of jurisdictional responsibility in cases like Julian’s and lack of agency coordination between Muscogee Nation’s Lighthorse Police, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Glenpool Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s office, which ultimately cleared the officers who shot and killed Julian. Glenpool officials have waited months to release even the most basic public records about the shooting, including a recording of the 911 call or a police report. 

Shot By Shot: The Frontier tracks Oklahoma police shootings in 2021 

Julian’s death also represents a pattern in Oklahoma. While police shootings in the state dropped in 2020, shootings involving Indigenous people represented a higher percentage in previous years, according to The Frontier, which tracks shootings in the state. 

Julian was the sixth Indigenous person shot during an encounter with law enforcement in Oklahoma in 2020, all of which were fatal. Indigenous people in Oklahoma represented more than 20 percent of all fatal police shootings in the state last year, according to Frontier records. 

In the three years The Frontier has been collecting data on police shootings across Oklahoma, Indigenous people have represented 10.2 percent of all police shootings and 13.7 percent of fatal police shootings. 

Glenpool Police and Muscogee Nation Lighthorse Police have what’s known as a cross-deputization agreement. The agreement allows both agencies to make arrests within the reservation and respond to emergencies. Cross-deputization agreements have existed in Oklahoma for decades, but have taken on new importance since the recent Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v Oklahoma. 

Alex Pearl is a Chickasaw citizen and a law professor at Oklahoma University who specializes in Indian law. He says these agreements are there to solve problems of uncertainty as to which law enforcement agency can respond to calls or enforce the law when citizens are in crisis.

“If there’s a cross deputization agreement in place, such that the state or the county law enforcement officer is covered and is acting under tribal authority, they’re in essence a tribal police officer,” said Pearl about agreements between state and tribal authorities.

The US Supreme Court’s ruling has changed who can prosecute crimes, which is why the investigation into the officer involved shooting of Julian falls to federal authorities. 

A non-Indian who commits crimes against non-Indians falls under state jurisdiction.

A family’s worst nightmare, followed by unanswered questions 

Around 7:45 p.m. on Dec.15, Julian’s aunt Martha Tilley placed a 911 call from Julian’s grandmother’s house. Julian had been in a fight with his aunt’s boyfriend Chester Jones and Jones was unconscious.  According to the meeting between the family and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, officers at the scene told Julian not to, “step up on me.” Fourteen minutes after the call, Julian was pronounced dead after Glenpool police shot him multiple times.  According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tulsa, which investigated the shooting, 12 shell casings were found near Julian’s body. 

Martha Tilley didn’t witness the shooting, but said she heard shots and a scream. 

Soon after Allison arrived on the scene, she saw her son laying in the middle of the street. 

His lifeless body lay exposed to the snow and cold as police canvassed the area and told neighbors to get back inside their homes.

“I just screamed, ‘you killed my baby,’” she said through tears remembering when she and her younger son Oscar Rose Jr. arrived in Glenpool at her mother’s house.

“They were telling me to calm down,” she said. But she couldn’t. 

Glenpool police wouldn’t tell Julian’s family about what happened leading up to the shooting. They said that since Julian was a citizen of the Muscogee Nation, the FBI was handling the case.

Pearl says that the lack of communication that happens between federal authorities and the Rose family is nothing new. Oftentimes, he says there is a vacuum where communication with families slips through the cracks as cases churn through a federal process that is backed up and lacking resources. 

Sometimes that communication is dependent on the specific people who work at federal agencies and their priorities, Pearl says. 

“When you have turnover in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, somebody that was the head U.S. attorney, they say my priorities are X, Y and Z. If Indian country is not one of those priorities, then all of the work of the prior US attorney is sort of lost,” said Pearl.

Julian and his family are Muscogee Nation citizens. According to the Supreme Court ruling, any alleged felony committed against an Indigenous person committed by a non-Indian on the Muscogee Nation reservation falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government. 

Julian’s sister, Autumn Rose, said she received one voice message from the FBI on Jan. 6, from agent Josh Martin, who told her that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had cleared the officers of the shooting. But Martin didn’t tell her why or what happened during his encounter with Glenpool police, she said. 

She said she and her family are still in shock and remain angry and upset that it took federal agencies so long to tell her and her family what happened to her brother.

After last summer’s racial reckoning and protests around police shootings and the death of George Floyd  in Minneapolis, Autumn Rose, who is mixed race-Muscogee and Black, recalled going to a protest at OU Medical school where she is studying in the pharmacy schoolIt was called White Coats for Black lives. 

“We kneeled for eight minutes and 46 seconds,” she said. 

“And then to be there in December and think about how this happened to my family too,” said Autumn. 

The family had to wait until April 30 to meet with federal officials at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tulsa, where they learned that, according to police, firefighters and emergency medical workers on the scene, Julian stabbed one of the officers in the shoulder with a butcher knife he pulled from his pocket. Police tased Julian twice and then shot him multiple times in the legs and the chest after one officer said he lunged at them with the knife. 

Allison says officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office gave differing accounts of how far Julian was from the officers when he lunged and was shot. According to one account, Julian was six feet from the officers, while a firefighter on the scene said Julian was 15 to 20 feet away. Another person said Julian was 25 feet away. The Glenpool Police Department does not equip its officers with body cameras, so investigators had to rely on accounts from police and emergency responders of what happened. Glenpool officials declined an interview request and did not respond to written questions about the shooting. 

It wasn’t until May 6, almost five months after the shooting, that Glenpool police finally released a statement about the night Julian died. 

The statement said only that the U.S. Attorney’s Office decided not to pursue criminal charges against the officers after reviewing evidence in the case and that the shooting fell under federal jurisdiction because Julian was a tribal citizen and the incident happened on Muscogee Nation land. 

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma has informed the family and their attorney of this decision,” the statement said. 

Allison and Oscar Jr. say they are frustrated that The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not wait to review Julian’s medical examiner’s report before making a decision on the case. The report, which is still not complete, would contain more information about how Julian died and his injuries. 

In early April, Autumn launched an online petition demanding that all the records pertaining to her brother’s case be released. 

“The City of Glenpool and their police department are responsible for the death of a citizen and father who grew up in Glenpool and graduated from Glenpool High School,” read the petition, which has gathered more than 600 signatures.

“Help us demand the accountability of Glenpool’s police department; beginning with a strong and clear call for the release of all records, reports and recordings about and related to the night … when Julian Rose was killed by Glenpool police officers.”

Trent Shores was the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma when Julian’s case landed at that office. He decided not to pursue charges against the officers involved in Julian’s death. Allen Litchfield from the U.S. Attorney’s for the Northern District of Oklahoma told the Rose family that because Julian had assaulted someone and had a knife, they felt he was a threat to the community, therefore the officer’s actions were justified.

KOSU and The Frontier filed a records request for the 911 call and the police report in early April with the Glenpool Police Department but were told that since the case is under federal jurisdiction, all records requests come under the Freedom of Information Act, which can make the process to obtain documents longer and more complicated..

That’s troubling for KatieBeth Gardner, who eventually worked with KOSU and The Frontier to obtain records in this case. Gardner works for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and helps media organizations obtain important information for their reporting.

She sent a letter to the Glenpool city attorney’s office reminding them of their duty under Oklahoma’s Open Records Act. Gardner said that it is the responsibility of the municipal agency that shoots a person to turn over records — even if another agency is investigating. 

“So it’s especially concerning to me to see a law enforcement authority come in and claim exclusive jurisdiction over a case where we have a citizen who has been killed allegedly at the hands of the police,” said Gardner. “And, we’re not being given any answers about how or why that happened. And it’s very important for authorities to be transparent about what happened and how somebody came to be killed at the hands allegedly of the government.“

Gardner also said it’s important that reporters rely on independent documents and accounts other than statements law enforcement puts out. She pointed to the example of the official statement the Minneapolis Police Department put out after the death of George Floyd.

“The official statement of that governing body was that Mr. Floyd suffered from a medical incident,” said Gardner of the initial press release.  

“And that’s not what the jury found. The jury found that in that case, there was a murder that took place. And so I think it’s so important to think critically about these official statements.”

The Glenpool Police Department has since complied with the records request and said they are in the process of sending all the material to KOSU and The Frontier.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office also acknowledged that their office needs a better and more transparent process of informing families like the Roses when an officer shoots and kills a citizen. Shores said that questions KOSU, The Frontier and the family asked highlighted that need for more structure and process.

Family grieves as it still looks for answers 

Allison said she doesn’t understand what drove her son to assault Chester and stab an officer. She says it was unlike her son, who was outgoing and played football at Haskell University, loved animals and the outdoors. 

“Julian wasn’t perfect,” said Allison about her son. “He had his flaws. Like I said, the system isn’t perfect and the people that shot him aren’t perfect either.”

Julian was not typically a violent or aggressive person, family members told KOSU and The Frontier. 

“All he wanted to do was help people,” Allison remembers of her son. Autumn said he started getting more interested in Muscogee Nation traditions because he wanted to learn more about his heritage.

“He was a kind, loving father, and that is what we want his son to know,” said Autumn.

The family is still angry and feels there is more to the story about what happened to Julian that night.

“We want to see the police report,” said Allison. “We want to hear the 911 call. We want to hear what happened. Not just from what the officers said.”

Allison, Autumn, Oscar Jr. and Oscar Rose Sr.  said their house feels quiet without Julian. 

Oscar Jr. recalled staying up late, watching videos on YouTube or shows on the family’s television when their mother would come out and ask them to quiet down.

“We would just be talking, having a good time and we’d get so loud she thought we were fighting,” laughed Oscar Jr.

“He’d give you the shirt off his back,” said Allison. She recalled a time when she and other family members were on a cookout and Julian was grilling steaks.

“He was giving away the steaks,” she laughed. A man who was experiencing homelessness walked by. Julian gave away part of the family dinner because the man looked hungry. 

The Rose family says they are still waiting for Julian’s medical examiner’s report, the police report and they want to hear from more neighbors about what happened that night. 

Allison says one question keeps her up at night: 

“How does a domestic call go from somebody walking down the street to being shot?”

The post When police shoot tribal citizens on Muscogee Nation land, families ask ‘who’s held accountable?’ appeared first on The Frontier.

What are often thought to be symptoms that present in combat veterans and survivors of terrorist attacks are now increasing among medical professionals.

For over a year now, many Oklahoma healthcare professionals have been faced with daily trauma. Research suggests that infectious disease outbreaks are associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms in medical professionals.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 outbreak, many frontline medical workers across the state have been exposed to an increase in traumatic events, such as patient deaths and vicarious traumatization, due to the surges in hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients over the last year.

Few could have predicted the novel coronavirus and the pain it would inflict on Oklahoma. However, it is not difficult to foresee that a precedent of making cuts to vital infrastructure in the state would lead to a lack access to medical care for many rural Oklahomans and a predisposition to develop symptoms of burnout and trauma in frontline medical professionals. 

Last summer, Oklahoma was the 37^th state to approve the Medicaid expansion, ten years after the Affordable Care Act was put into effect. For a state with the second highest uninsured rate in the country, the approval of Medicaid expansion may mean that hospitals remain open and more Oklahomans stay alive.

However, in that decade that Oklahoma failed to expand Medicaid, at least eight rural Oklahoma hospitals were forced to close their doors. Along with reducing rural Oklahomans’ already limited medical resources, it also put more strain on our state’s medical workers. 

As COVID-19 cases rose, eventually so did hospitalization rates. Fewer rural hospitals meant that Oklahomans from across the state had to be served by urban facilities. Entire cities’ worth of hospitals began to run out of beds. Yet the numbers of COVID-19 cases kept growing; along with the stress on some of the most important Oklahomans.

On top of experiencing symptoms of trauma, Oklahoma medical professionals are also susceptible to burnout. Research suggests that sustained stress at work can lead to symptoms of burnout. In physicians, the emotional exhaustion associated with burnout can lead to substance abuse and depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation. Research suggests that reducing stress can aid in reducing burnout symptoms. Yet our state’s leadership prioritized “personal responsibility” over preventing psychological stress in our frontline workers. 

It’s not a mystery why Oklahoma healthcare providers experienced so much psychological distress; their hospitals were at capacity, they didn’t have the necessary personal protective equipment to safely perform their job, and no statewide mask mandate was in place to slow the spread of cases. Our state has been managed like a failing business rather than a governing body.

Former Oklahoma Commissioner of Health Gary Cox, who was appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt, claims he was striving for frugality when he requested a $4.5 million cut in County Health Department budgets less than four months before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Oklahoma. Then the same day of the first COVID-19 related death in Oklahoma, Governor Stitt abruptly removed then-State Epidemiologist Laurence Burnsed from office. 

What followed was the creation and implementation of Governor Stitt’s Open Up and Recover Safely (OURS) Plan, which appeared to prioritize the economy over the safety of Oklahomans. Despite cases increasing exponentially through the end of 2020, Governor Stitt never rolled back restrictions set in the OURS Plan or implemented a statewide mask mandate.

On top of likely contributing to the growth of COVID-19 in Oklahoma by refusing to set a mask mandate, Governor Stitt also put strain on healthcare providers by pressuring medical professionals and hospitals to refrain from speaking out about dwindling hospital capacity. 

A nurse who works primarily with COVID-19 patients in metro hospital spoke anonymously about her own struggle with stress, trauma symptoms, and frustration over Governor Stitt’s leadership, saying, 

“Many of us feel exhausted from the roller coaster that this past year has been. It has been physically and more importantly emotionally challenging. I have never experienced so much grief and death as when COVID was at its peak. It was hard making phone calls to families to tell them that their loved one was not improving or even worse that they needed to be intubated. COVID brought me and my coworkers a lot closer to each other and to the physicians.

Our teamwork was stronger than ever. But now we just feel fatigued. I don’t know if I can pinpoint any emotions. Sometimes I still tear up when I think about the people we lost that we fought so hard to save. I don’t even know I’m doing it, until I’m already tearful and I feel a wrenching in my gut. 

The biggest frustration I felt was when Governor Stitt publicly announced that we had plenty of beds for the people of our state. Where were these beds? My unit was always full and overflowing into other units in the hospital. My hospital was so full that we were having to use ER beds and PACU beds for ICU and acute care patients. We were in crisis mode.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been taxing for healthcare providers nationwide. However, a lack of investment in medical infrastructure combined with poor leadership at the state level have left hundreds of Oklahoma medical professionals at risk for emotional distress, burnout, and trauma.

This problem won’t be solved by our governor holding misleading press conferences and preaching “personal responsibility” without taking it himself. It will only be solved by continuing to support the Medicaid expansion and voting an actual leader into the Office of the Governor next November. 

The post Voices: Pandemic trauma takes its toll on medical professionals appeared first on The Frontier.