Native American tribes are making a big economic impact in Tulsa

Written by Michelle M. Havich

Native American tribes in Oklahoma have poured more than $15.6 billion into the state, while generating billions more from companies that support the tribes’ business operations, according to the most recent Oklahoma Native Impact report (fiscal year 2019). The report illustrates how Oklahoma’s 38 federally recognized tribes have made an unprecedented impact on the Sooner State’s economy through a diverse portfolio of businesses including gaming and hospitality, manufacturing, real estate, retail and professional services, among others.

According to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Secretary of the Nation Zechariah Harjo, “The unique thing about Oklahoma is that the tribes have found themselves, and have created access to, capital that other tribes throughout the country simply don’t have access to. We’re able to have partnerships with our non-tribal counterparts in ways that just don’t happen elsewhere.”

These partnerships are highlighted in the Tulsa area, with projects from the Osage, Muscogee and Cherokee Nations benefiting the lives of both tribal and non-tribal citizens.

Working together
Harjo said the Muscogee (Creek) Nation has boosted Tulsa’s economy to the tune of approximately $500 million through its gaming and hospitality divisions and anticipates that impact will increase to several billion dollars in the coming years. The nation owns and operates 11 casino properties in the area, with its flagship casino, River Spirit, located in Tulsa. “It’s a huge economic impact area in the state, and that’s one of the top performing facilities within the state of Oklahoma and drives essentially all of the economy in southern Tulsa,” Harjo said.

The nation is also working with the cities of Tulsa and Jenks, and the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG) on a low-water dam project in South Tulsa. Announced in 2022, the dam project will create a new lake in the Arkansas River that will cover from 71^st Street to 101^st Street in the city, allowing for the development of the area with adjacent retail, residential and hospitality projects, making the riverfront an attraction like the riverfront districts in Austin or San Antonio, Texas, according to Harjo.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation plans to build in the vicinity of the dam. “We have a closer to $450-$500 million development project ending next to that $100 million dollar project, and that’s solely an initiative the nation is taking on,” Harjo said. The nation is financing the project and negotiating a tax incremental financing (TIF) district with the city of Tulsa, which would be historic as, according to Harjo, the city has never executed a TIF with any tribe.

The nation also is investing in health care and is the only tribe in Oklahoma to implement health care facilities and hospitals to serve the public. The tribe operates the Okemah Community Hospital, Okmulgee Medical Center, Council Oak Comprehensive Healthcare, and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Physical Rehabilitation Center, which are open to the public, as well as seven health clinics for tribal citizens. “We also purchased the former Cancer Treatment Centers of America Hospital in Tulsa, and now operate that,” Harjo said. “We’re still in the process of opening it up to the general public.”

“So, we’re making these large investments with the economic mind that gaming and our other successful business ventures have helped us create, that has then in turn helped establish and create a self-sustaining health system that might be one of the only models in the American health system that’s designed to maintain a net positive position without compromising the patient’s ability to pay,” Harjo explained. “We’re very proud that we invest in rural areas, especially where citizens, whether they’re tribal or not, probably don’t have the financial resources to pony up the money. But instead, the tribe, unlike its municipal partners, or the state even, does have the resources to invest in those areas and cover some of the shortfalls, while still providing top-notch health care. So, it’s something we’re very proud about.”

Cultural economy
The Cherokee Nation is the largest tribe in the United States, with more than 450,000 citizens worldwide. The Cherokee Nation Business (CNB) is the holding company for the tribe’s business enterprises, and with more than 11,000 employees is one of the largest employers in northeastern Oklahoma. The annual economic impact the tribe and its businesses have on the region is more than $3 billion.

That impact comes from a variety of businesses under CNB. “Think about it in three big buckets,” said Andy McMillan, CNB director of economic development and special projects. “There are companies within each of those, but the first would be that we do a lot of gaming and hospitality. So that encompasses casino gaming properties, hotels, some golf properties as well. For Tulsa and the Tulsa market, it’s our Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on the east side of Tulsa. That’s kind of a flagship property for us.”

The second “bucket” is Cherokee Federal, which is a large federal contractor. “We do all sorts of outsourced services for the federal government,” McMillan said. “Lots of work with the United States Department of Defense [DOD]. Lots of work with other federal agencies where we provide program management, staffing, logistics management, all kinds of sort of contract support for things that the federal government wants to do and procure, both here in the United States, and some of the contract work that we support is overseas as well, on behalf of the federal government.”

The third “bucket” covers Cherokee cultural and economic development, which provides support services for the nation, McMillan said. “We are making sure to keep Cherokee cultural tourism as a premier asset for this group. We handle a lot of communication, marketing, and things like economic development that we support the Cherokee Nation through this unit of the business.”

The Cherokee tribal capital is in Tahlequah, and nearby is Cherokee Springs Plaza. “That was a piece of property that was essentially in the city, but was underdeveloped, so we were able to acquire that as well as the golf course that abuts it, and begin the process of developing that,” McMillan said. A Ford dealership moved to the area, and the first phase was a strip center CNB put together, but the COVID hit, so space was difficult to fill. “But the nation continued to have growth and needs, so actually in that space is a gallery now that Cultural Tourism operates,” McMillan said. There is also a Cherokee National Research Center for archives and archival research.

That center attracted a TRU by Hilton Hotel. “We did a land lease with a third-party developer, and they put in the hotel that helped meet some needs there in the marketplace,” McMillan said. “And we built out a new Tahlequah casino that has a big event space, as well as a casino and restaurants and such.” The adjacent Cherokee Springs Golf Club is an 18-hole championship course.

The importance of telling Native American stories has led to the development of the Cherokee Nation Film Office, whose mission is to increase the presence of Native Americans in every level of the film and television industries, while creating economic development and jobs in the Cherokee Nation. McMillan explained how it grew out of the Nation’s own in-house production of content on OsiyoTV. “‘Osiyo’ is how you say hello in Cherokee. It grew out of a venue to tell Cherokee history, Cherokee stories, to highlight current events and talk about arts and culture. And then it became, well we’re producing this thing, what else could we do? We began looking at how the state of Oklahoma and other states and regions were embracing more localized film and TV, streaming content production.”

Currently, the film office is headquartered in Tulsa, with the 27,000-square-foot Cherokee Film Studios in nearby Owasso. It also manages a 200+ acre backlot at a former Boy Scout camp in Welling, near the Nation’s tribal headquarters.

“Everybody likes to look at Atlanta as the example,” McMillan said. “That’s a humongous city with a humongous film presence. We’re paying attention to that and looking for opportunities to both build that industry here, and then support Native storytellers, Native actors and Native representation in film and TV.”

Up in the air
Osage LLC, a tribally owned holding company of the Osage Nation, is looking to the future and up in the air with the Skyway36, an autonomous flight technology center located adjacent to its Osage Casino and Hotel, outside Tulsa. The entire drone park and technology facility includes a renovated hanger and office space, along with a 3,000-foot runway and helipad space for unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Skyway36 is the Osage Nation’s Aerospace Technology Innovation Zone and is a node on the Skyway Range (formerly the Tulsa Regional Advanced Mobility Corridor (TRAM)), a coalition project between Osage LLC, Oklahoma State University (OSU) and the Tulsa Innovation Labs. The TRAM project was the winner of a $38.2 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant from the Biden Administration in 2022.

“We have been working on establishing the corridor and establishing the entry for that corridor, with one of them being Skyway36. We’re anticipating that will be one of the major ports of entry, if you will, into the corridor,” said Russell Goff, CEO of Osage LLC. “We’ve established a location on the Osage Nation Ranch, which is a 43,000-acre cattle ranch in Osage County, our remote side, we’re calling that Skyway North. That represents two of the four nodes for the 114 nautical mile corridor that we are developing as part of that grant with OSU.”

According to Goff, they have been working infrastructure and working with OSU to submit variances for the FAA and waivers that would allow them to operate drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLoS). “That’s the whole idea, that you don’t have to be standing underneath your drone to watch where it goes,” Goff said. “And so, we’ve submitted those waivers. We’ve gotten some feedback on those, and we’re working to provide a response back to the FAA so that we’re hopeful we’ll be able to conduct some initial pilot testing around Skyway36.”

While currently focused on unmanned drones, Skyway36 is preparing for the future of UAS, and will be ready for anything that comes its way. Drone technology “will also include advanced air mobility [AAM],” said Aaron Baker, Skyway36 manager. “So, the future of the drone industry includes these air taxis or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft [eVTOLs]. We’re going to be testing operations for those kinds of aircraft as they get developed as well.”

“This is primarily going to be for drones as commercial aircraft,” Baker said. “Any mode of unmanned aircraft systems that can be used for research, commercial applications, deliveries, cargo, logistics in DOD applications, so, defense. Along with all of that would be counter drone research. So that that’s another part of it, being able to identify and eliminate unmanned aircraft that are non-cooperative.”

Skyway36 has attracted Swiss-based WindShape, which will operate a 19,000-square-foot indoor drone testing facility at the site’s anchoring industrial park.

Baker added: “Anybody who builds a drone can come to their facility, they can simulate all kinds of wind phenomena, snow, cold, heat, precipitation. They can test propulsion systems. All they do is going to be contained indoors.”

They plan on the WindShape facility being operational this spring.

This type of development requires strong relationships with local municipalities.

“The support that we have and the political climate in the state of Oklahoma are one of the reasons why WindShape chose to come to Oklahoma over New York, citing the aerospace industry, and the political climate here that’s being created by the support of the governor and other enterprises,” Goff said. “The business community is very welcoming and supportive of bringing these aerospace innovations and local businesses to Oklahoma.

Goff could not estimate how many jobs these facilities would bring to the region but said it would depend on how all this activity develops in the next few years. For now, attracting new businesses to the state will depend on how the Skyway36 project unfolds.

“They want to understand what’s happening at Skyway36, what our assets are here at Skyway36 and, and how we can play into some of the things that those entities are planning to do with their UAS and AAM programs. They don’t have the same environment that we have. We have an urban environment with Tulsa being just five miles to the south of us, and then we have a very rural, unpopulated area to the north of us that we can operate on. So, if you’re looking at testing interference in your UAS/AAM in an urban environment and testing in a rural environment, this is the place to come.”