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When approaching the registration desk at Council Oak Comprehensive Healthcare a person is greeted by one or two staff members and a giant painting by Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Nation) titled “But You Don’t Look Indian …” Martin also created the giant tiled painting on the opposite wall depicting the Council Oak tree with a long branch extending across the lobby’s walls stretching back to the Muscogee Nation’s ancestral lands.  

Opened in 2021, Council Oak Comprehensive Healthcare, 10109 E. 79th St., started as a hospital, but it also has evolved into a Muscogee Nation art museum. While doctors use some of the best technology to treat Native patients from any tribe, the art is also meant to help heal those seeking treatment and their loved ones who accompany them.  

This isn’t the Indian Health Service environments of bland rooms with public service announcements, uncomfortable chairs and long waits as depicted in Muscogee/Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo’s “Reservation Dogs.” Council Oak is a world-class treatment center and home to the most extensive collection of Muscogee art on display in the state.  

“I’m happy we’re here to help our people who are here for medication or are sick,” says artist Yatika Fields (Muscogee, Cherokee, Osage), who has many pieces at Council Oak. “Art is powerful. Art inspires. Art is a tool that really can create healing, and create a way of new thinking, open a new door and passageway for that process of imagination and healing to begin.” 

The hospital 

Muscogee Nation officials had long been looking for a way to grow their medical presence in Tulsa, but nothing fit their needs. Then they saw on the news in late March 2021 that Cancer Treatment Centers of America Tulsa would close in June and the campus residing within the reservation would soon be for sale. 

“Within 20 minutes, we had texts going between myself, Chief (David) Hill and Shawn (Terry), who is our Secretary of Health,” says Rhonda Beaver, chief administrative officer for the Muscogee Nation Department of Health. “Within a couple of weeks, we were having dinner with the owner … He was delighted to know our mission and his mission aligned with what we were trying to do, so we came to terms on an agreement.” 

As the COVID-19 pandemic intensified, the deal was done fast in what was essentially a turnkey operation. In their monthly meeting in June 2021, Muscogee Nation National Council voted unanimously to purchase the property. The previous owner left behind everything that didn’t fit through a doorway.  

“I believe all of that more so became a sense of urgency as a result of the pandemic,” says Beaver, who worked for IHS for nearly two decades before joining her tribe’s health department. “We had a hard time placing our patients. By the time we would call around there would be no beds here in Oklahoma. So we would call other states like Louisiana, Colorado, Arkansas. And then in some instances, by the time we’d get ready to move that patient to Louisiana, we’d get a phone call back and say the bed’s gone.” 

Council Oak first opened in August 2021 with urgent care to test Oklahomans for COVID-19. Operations since have expanded with the focus solely on helping area tribal citizens with urogynecology, pulmonology, an HIV and hepatitis clinic, a diabetes clinic, a surgery center and a neurology clinic focusing on general neurology, stroke prevention, post-stroke and headache treatment. There’s also a hospice wing with a negative pressure room for those who want to be close to their loved one without sharing the same air. 

The hospital also has some of the best technology in the region for helping find a problem and then treat it. There is a 512-slice CT machine, which means “it slices you up 512 times. The more it slices you up, the easier it is for them to see and to catch something,” Beaver says. “We recently bought a DaVinci Robot for the surgery suites. That was a $2 million investment for the facility. We know new doctors are learning with this technology, so when they get here, we want to be ready for them.” 

The 20-acre campus comprises 336,385 square feet of health care facilities including inpatient and outpatient accommodations. It includes a 30,386-square-foot medical office building and about 40 hotel rooms that are being remodeled to better accommodate family members and patients with added amenities for longer stays. When completed, the rooms will be offered at a reduced price. 

“We know the needs of our people, and we want them to have a facility where they feel comfortable, where they feel like they’re at home, where they feel like they’re getting the healing that they deserve, where they’re getting culturally appropriate care, where we’re the friendliest facility around, and that they know they’re getting taken care of here,” Beaver says. “That’s ultimately our mission. We’re very pleased we can build something that mostly resembles what the Muscogee people are about.”  

From health care to art 

In September 2021, Muscogee Nation opened a 65-suite, monoclonal antibody infusion center that infused more than 5,000 Native and non-Native COVID-19 patients. It was a collaboration between IHS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Tulsa County, which allocated $500,000 to assist with infusion center costs.  

When sculptor Kenneth Johnson (Muscogee) first visited Council Oak, he stood in the courtyard with hired art curator Julie O’Keefe (Osage) as she pointed out there were no flowers or birds or anything from the natural world. As they stood there, Johnson looked up at those patients in second-floor windows looking down on a drab courtyard that had a couple of benches with shade.

“There were people sitting up there for an hour looking down with their life literally flowing in and out of them, and I pictured something that would be inspirational,” says Johnson, who resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he operates Kenneth Johnson Studio. “I saw a beautiful white ethereal egret coming out of that courtyard. It’s interacting with an 11-foot stainless steel pole that has two powder coated white steel feathers on it, and it represents feather dance. It’s a form of prayer. Since many people here are dealing with their mortality, they want to know their prayers are being heard.” 

In the center of the installation Johnson and his team are creating a 32-foot turtle rising out of the ground that is made of Georgian marble from the Muscogee ancestral homelands. Its white stone signifies healing. Johnson says the turtle is made in four quadrants, and each quadrant has a bench inscribed with a saying in the Muscogee language from four different Muscogee Nation citizens: Bobby Yargee‘s states “Have love for one another”; Johnson’s great grandmother Ida Bruner’s states “Think on the good things”; Phillip Deere’s states “Keep standing strong”; and Joy Harjo’s is from a song she wrote, “Pass this love on, It knows how to bend, it will never break.” There’s also a water fountain in the center that is meant to be touched. 

“The colors are important. The concepts are important. The language is important. It’s all incorporated into something. What we see out there now is a corporate landscape, and what Muscogee Nation has empowered is Indigenous branding on the landscape,” he says. “All these are incorporated into the concept that a hospital should be doing, which is healing, or giving you the tools to grieve or mourn, and it reminds you people have gone before you and done the same things.” 

Art for healing 

O’Keefe’s background is in consulting and dealing with artists throughout Indian Country, including extensive work with Bacone College’s collection of late Muscogee artist Acee Blue Eagle’s art, so hospital administrators contracted her to help them. 

When she first visited the facility in February 2022, O’Keefe quickly realized there was so much space to work with “they could fill this place every day with art, and it would never fill up.” 

Everyone agreed all art should come from Muscogee Nation artists. Some of the works would be acquired, whether it was one of Yatika Fields’ paintings or maybe some of his father Tom Fields’ photographs or a beaded bandolier bag created by Jay McGirt. But there would need to be new art commissioned as well to fit the needs of the hospital and its patients. 

“All of these new pieces of artwork needed to reflect healing — healing not just within the mind or the body, but also within the spirit,” O’Keefe says. “I asked the artists to really convey within their work what they viewed as healing. How they viewed their people as healing. How they viewed themselves. How they viewed their caregivers, and how this affected them. 

The commissions brought about “incredible murals and paintings and sculptures and pieces where the Muscogee (Creek) community, but also the greater Native community, can come into this facility and they can experience some of that,” O’Keefe says. 

Overall, there are hundreds of pieces by more than 30 Muscogee artists. Some of the artists, like Johnson, have created their biggest pieces to date for Council Oak.  

Fields had to double check the measurements of his studio to make sure there was enough room for the 10-foot-by-30-foot canvas, much less space for him to work on it before he embarked on his largest piece yet. The result is a massive oil painting full of bright colors depicting a ribbon dance from a green corn ceremony. 

“My work is kind of like a vessel, and an entryway into free association with those memories. So it’s not a painting of such a literal ceremony, but yet literal mark makings that bring you into it and take you further, which in reality I think a ceremony should do. It kind of opens up pathways and doors for you to feel all senses and find a place in you where you’re connected in unison with the space and atmosphere you’re in,” says Fields, who is a Tulsa Artist Fellow and works locally with Joseph Gierek Fine Art and with Garth Grennan Gallery in New York City. “I feel it’s really fitting that it’s right across from where you’re getting medications to feel better, because this is just another piece that’s going to make you feel better.” 

Immediate impacts 

Dr. Micah Wright (Choctaw) grew up with tribal/native care for his primary health source. That motivated him to become a doctor “to have the opportunity to give back to the system that provided for my family. Providing care to Native patients is a huge privilege for me.” 

He understands the importance of the Muscogee art that fills the campus. 

“In order to gain trust from my patients and their family, we aim to provide an atmosphere that promotes healing and embodies cultural awareness,” Wright says. “By creating a space that implements cultural history and artwork, patients and their family are able to feel represented.” 

Every time Beaver walks through the Council Oak hallways and offices she’s reminded of her family, friends and past events that cling to her heart.  

“When I see a picture of a ceremonial dance, it reminds me of taking my grandfather to these places. When I see Tom Fields’ black and white pictures of churches, it reminds me of Fourth Sunday (fellowship gatherings),” she says. “I get these good feelings, positive feelings. It’s not cold, it’s not sterile and it’s not uncomfortable. I think that helps in a healing process.” 

Renovations continue throughout the campus as it turns to spring. There is art in storage ready to be hung once construction is completed in those areas. Some are being loaned to museums for exhibits. Johnson and his team are nearing completion on his courtyard installation. Muscogee Nation hosts its second annual art market a few miles down the road at River Spirit Casino and Resort. 

Standing in the main hallway not far from Fields’ “The Ribbon Dance,” O’Keefe admires a giant painting by Starr Hardridge (Muscogee) titled “Breath Giver” that depicts a young Muscogee girl blowing a flower’s seeds into the air. 

“This has been a project that will go down in my own personal history as one of the most fascinating and interesting and fulfilling projects I’ve ever worked on,” she says. “You do not have to be an artist to heal from art. You can go observe it, you can change the way you feel in a moment by just taking the time for a little self-care and going to take a look at something beautiful that stops you for just a minute, takes you out of your world and then go on. But sometimes that’s just the little push that we need. And art can do all of that.”