Watch Now: Cherokee Chief Chuck Hoskin touts rural broadband in teleconference with President Joe Biden

Rural northeastern Oklahoma would likely see a significant boost in broadband connectivity as a result of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed Tuesday morning by the U.S. Senate, Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said Wednesday afternoon during a virtual conference with President Joe Biden.

Hoskin said the Cherokee Nation is applying for a federal connectivity grant through a program that would be expanded under the bill that passed the Senate but still must get through a fractured House.

The grant would directly benefit Cherokee citizens in northeastern Oklahoma, but the entire region stands to benefit from the upgraded infrastructure, Hoskin said.

“For us, broadband is a high priority,” he said during his roughly six-minute presentation.

“No Cherokee kid should be going to school without high-speed internet. No elder ought to lack access to the kind of telemedicine that we’re making available to our people. The entrepreneurs that we know are out there in some of our little communities and our bigger communities should not miss opportunities to develop because they live in an area that can’t connect with the rest of the world.”

Hoskin said cultural as well as economic interests drive the need for tribal connectivity.

“If a lot of these small communities in rural areas wither on the vine because they don’t have broadband and a chance to succeed in the new economy, that means Cherokee life ways and culture and our language wither on the vine, and we can’t let that happen.”

Hoskin said the bill includes $11 billion for tribal governments. He said afterward that he thinks most of that will go into existing programs for such things as water and sewer, roads and public transportation.

In his presentation, Hoskin talked about a small community whose tribal elders were unable to use telemedicine during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the tribe learned of the problem, it was able to establish a satellite connection, he said.

“They said they’d only seen something like that on TV,” Hoskin said. “They never thought they would do it. … Those are fluent Cherokee speakers. If we don’t succeed right now in connecting the elders to kids, connecting schools, connecting health care, we will lose something that’s irreplaceable.”

The teleconference involved Biden, seated at a table in the White House, with Hoskin; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Fresno, California, Mayor Jerry Dyer; Jackson, Mississipi, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba; and Fulton County, Georgia, Commissioner Liz Hausmann on video monitors.

Both of Oklahoma’s U.S. senators, James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, voted against the infrastructure bill, and just about anything perceived as Democratic can be politically toxic in Oklahoma, but Hoskin said he had no qualms about appearing on the conference with Biden.

“It is a pretty strong bipartisan coalition that’s supporting this bill,” Hoskin said. “There may be some particular concerns the senators from Oklahoma have that I would be glad to visit with them on. … My job is to advocate for the interests of the Cherokee Nation, and it’s an inescapable conclusion that this bill is in the interests of the Cherokee Nation.”