For the past month, the Cherokee Nation has been serving seniors lunch in its north Tulsa community center. Regulars at the center say the nation’s elder nutrition program gives them one less thing to worry about while helping them connect with their neighbors.
Leonard Million stops by the center, which opened its doors in February, for lunch Monday through Friday.
“I’m retired,” he said. “I can do my yard work or work on my car, work in the house, whatever. And it takes time to stop what you’re doing, go do your meal, then take time to clean it up and everything.”
Million, a Cherokee citizen, said the lunches give him a chance to reconnect with Scott Lieb, a fellow Cherokee and lifelong friend.
This is the Cherokee Nation’s 17th elder nutrition site across its 14-county reservation area. Cooks have served 700-plus meals since launching, said Canaan Duncan, Cherokee Nation’s deputy secretary of state.
Any tribal citizen who is 50 and older and their spouse can eat for free. Tribal citizens aged 19-49 and anyone under 50 can get a plate for $8.
“The hospitality is great here,” Million said. “And these women in the kitchen, they do a real good job.”
One of those women is Odessa Burkhalter.
Burkhalter has waited tables, hauled trucks and driven taxis. But one thing that’s remained constant in her world is bringing people together over food.
It started decades ago when, as a little girl, she watched her mother set up “pressure cookers of beans and greens and all kinds of meat cooked” at their home on East Latimer Street.
“And she fed everybody in the neighborhood,” Burkhalter said.
Now, she cooks for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, she runs the kitchen and service line at the community center.
“I keep moving,” she said. “I don’t sit still.”
Grassroots organizing by members of the North Tulsa Cherokee Community Organization helped bring the program to life, Duncan said.
“North Tulsa is a part of the Cherokee Nation reservation. It always has been,” he said. “But honestly it hasn’t been treated like it has been. There’s not been an investment here historically. And though this administration isn’t necessarily at fault for that absence, we do have a responsibility to make that right.”
Many Cherokees in the area haven’t shared that sense of community, he continued.
“They haven’t had that connection to their tribe,” Duncan said. “And this is a small way to make a big connection.”
Cherokee language and history classes are also taught at the center. Lieb and Million have their own ideas for how they’d like to see the center evolve.
Lieb wants to see activities — like arts and crafts – or outdoor games, like volleyball and cornhole. Both men said recreational games would facilitate deeper connections among people who might not otherwise talk to each other.
“It would bring people together, the people involved in the community,” Million said. “It ain’t all about coming here to get a free meal. Come here to enjoy the company of other people, learn to love one another and build some unity in the neighborhood.”
