Cherokee Nation plans $18M treatment center

OKLAHOMA CITY – As a child welfare specialist for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma more than a decade ago, Juli Skinner saw firsthand the impact of the opioid crisis on Cherokee families.

Parents who began using the powerful painkillers after a surgery or injury became hooked and were losing custody of their children, babies were being born addicted and young people who ended up in foster care were aging out of the system and becoming addicted themselves, resulting in a generational impact.

“We didn’t know what hit us. We were just floundering,” recalled Skinner, now the director of behavioral health for the Cherokee Nation, which is headquartered in Tahlequah in northeast Oklahoma.

Now, the nation’s largest Native American tribe, with more than 440,000 enrolled citizens, plans to use a portion of its $98 million in opioid settlement funds to construct a 50bed, 17,000-square-foot treatment facility in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where the tribe is headquartered. The facility, which tribal officials announced on Monday, will be completely operated by the tribe and provide no-cost treatment for Cherokee Nation citizens struggling with substance abuse.

The $18 million treatment center is part of $73 million the tribe plans to spend building facilities across its reservation to address behavioral health needs, including drug treatment and prevention. Another $5 million will go into a tribal endowment to help pay for Cherokees going to college and grad school to become therapists and medical professionals to staff the facilities.

“These will truly be drug treatment centers developed by Cherokees, for Cherokees,” said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin. “It’s not a federal government-imposed facility.

“The symbolism is also important, which is we are paying for this over the next five years and making the opioid industry pay for everything. There’s a real sense of justice just making that statement.”