SHORT: Our story begins in Tahlequah,
where the Cherokee Nation has a new story to tell.
It is a story of taking
historically significant property
and redeveloping that property
to ensure it's environmentally safe
and meets the current needs of the community.
After the removal, the Cherokee Nation
knew it had to establish an educational system.
They did that by establishing the male and female seminary.
The male seminary is located here,
on this spot, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma,
the heart of the Cherokee Nation.
In 1910, the male seminary was destroyed by fire.
SMITH: We have this great legacy.
We face adversity, survive, adapt, prosper, and excel.
And the Trail of Tears was a phenomenal,
overwhelming adversity.
So after we faced that, we knew we survived,
and then we had to learn how to adapt
to a plan of excelling and prospering after that.
So several of the first acts that the Cherokee Nation
committed to after the Trail of Tears
was to reunify ourselves in an active union,
followed by our constitution.
So we looked at the scope of government.
We looked at our new circumstances
in Indian territory.
We set out to create a constitutional
and governmental plan to rebuild ourselves.
Cherokees have always had two great passions,
and those are actually memorialized
in the Treaty of New Echota,
and that's self-governance and education.
And those were evidenced very clearly
after the Trail of Tears.
Our first building we built
was our Supreme Court building in 1844,
which was our commitment to and our memorial to self-governance.
The second buildings we built were male and female seminaries,
institutions of higher education.
We understood that we could not survive,
go on to prosper and excel,
without knowing the world about us
and all the skills and tools and trades
that those around us had.
SHORT: After the collapse of the seminaries,
the property was used as farmland until 1961.
In 1961, this property was developed
into Markoma Bible Academy, a Christian high school.
In 2005, the academy closed, and the property was for sale.
This gave the Cherokee Nation an opportunity
to reclaim and redevelop this historical property.
ENLOW: Well, when Markoma closed,
it was a private Christian school
that was established on the male seminary site,
where the Cherokees built the first
higher-learning institution west of the Mississippi.
So when Markoma campus closed,
the property was unused for several years,
and the Cherokee Nation was approached
to acquire that piece of property.
Well, when Cherokee Nation purchased the property,
there was about 119 acres,
and on that property, there were eight structures,
which included two dormitory facilities, a library,
a gymnasium, and two houses,
and the chapel was part of the campus, as well.
The property was considered as a Brownfields project
because once we got in there
and we evaluated the historic usage of the campus --
It was built in the '60s.
Most of the facilities that were there on the campus
were built in the '60s.
And so we went in with the help
of our environmental-services group,
went in and evaluated things
that were inside each of the facilities.
And we had everything from mold to asbestos.
And so we realized that we were gonna have to remediate
and rehabilitate the structures.
SHORT: Through the EPA's Brownfields 128(a)
tribal-response grant program,
the Inter-Tribal Environmental Council and the Cherokee Nation
completed an environmental site assessment of the property.
In the Brownfields program, it's dealing with properties
that are hampered by contaminations,
different types of contamination,
that hinder the redevelopment process.
So this program played really well into what
the tribe was wanting to do out at the Markoma Bible Academy,
which was -- that was the name at the time.
So we deployed our people, which we have about 44 people
working an environmental group right now.
And I borrowed people from other programs
within the environmental group,
and we did lead-based paint, asbestos assessments,
and any other thing
that we felt like we needed to look at out there.
We determined that there wasn't anything
other than lead-based paint and asbestos
that we were gonna run into.
What we did run into
was some chemicals that were used in the high school.
I guess since they closed down,
they just stored those chemicals,
and a lot of them started to crystallize.
And when those chemicals do get to that stage,
then they may be a problem.
So the Brownfields program came in
and helped with the disposal of those hazardous chemicals.
The Cherokee Nation took this property
and made the focus on health, using the old dorms as offices,
building a 25,000-square-foot recreation center
and an elder-care facility.
SMITH: Well, the successes are just beginning.
One of the first things we did
was renovate the gym into a fitness center.
There's probably been nothing like it in the Tahlequah area.
I'm in Walmart and at Reser's and the gas stations,
and folks come up and say,
"You don't realize how much we appreciate the Markoma gym."
We, of course, call it the Male Seminary Recreational Center.
But it gives a chance to people
to not only make the effort to exercise,
but to join a community of people who think healthy.
And that's a seed, and it's gonna grow.
The rest of the property
will grow into programs and facilities
that are focused on youth and elderly,
driving us to happy and healthy people.
Well, the Markoma property was an opportunity
to recover a phenomenally significant historic site --
the male seminary.
So when we reacquired it, we zoned it.
And we believed after lots of study
that it should be zoned for youth and elderly,
and so the Markoma property developed into a fitness center
for the young and old.
But in the future, it'll be dedicated to that.
So on one end of the property we have the young folks,
or younger folks, with their fitness center.
And, actually, on the other end of the property,
we have our PACE program,
the Program for All-Inclusive Care for Elderly,
so those in their last days can enjoy a rich and full life.
KELLY: Our fitness center is open seven days a week,
and we offer a variety of programs.
Of course, we have a lot of cardio equipment.
We offer weight training.
We have two different weight-training facilities.
One is free weights, and one is machines.
We also offer a number of recreational league activities,
such as soccer, basketball, volleyball,
and they even offer stickball, cardiac dance.
And, actually, this program has grown a lot faster
than we anticipated.
We have 7,600 members now.
And, in fact, in March,
there were over 13,000 visits to the health center.
The PACE program opened in December of 2007,
and it was designed to provide a service
to keep people from long-term-care situations
or at nursing homes,
so they provide adult daycare services.
They have around 52 clients
that they're open Monday through Friday
to provide services that they need.
They have a full-time physician
providing medical care and physician services.
They also offer occupational and physical therapy,
and they have activities for them.
Their facility is around 13,000 square feet,
and they have around 27 staff.
Of yet undeveloped, but early in the planning stages,
we'd love to rebuild our male seminary,
because it's such a great symbol, a memorial
to our passion to education.
And we've recovered the original plans,
and hopefully someday in the future,
we can rebuild that building
to use it again for developing our people
toward that happy and healthy class
and became a historic monument
that will inspire us every time we drive or walk by
that it's not once there was a great Cherokee nation,
but there still is,
and we're still striving to achieve that ultimate greatness,
being a people that are happy and healthy.