Brent Deo, Interview

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Historic and Cultural Preservation Department Oral History Program

“A Twenty-First Century Pandemic in Indian Country: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against Covid-19”
As Remembered by: Mr. Brent Deo
Interview by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
Date: January 27, 2022
Transcription: The Audio Transcription Company
Edited by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
MIDGE DELLINGER: This is Midge Dellinger, oral historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Today is January 27, 2022. I’m at my home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, interviewing Mr. Brent Deo, Muscogee citizen and Yuchi community member, who is at his home in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. This interview is being performed remotely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I’m performing this interview on behalf of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for the oral history project titled “A Twenty-First-Century Pandemic in Indian Country: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against COVID-19.”
Mr. Deo, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to participate in this project. We’re going to start the interview with some questions about your personal life and background. I want to begin with, what is your tribal town [00:01:00] and clan?
BRENT DEO: I belong to Alabama-Quassarte, and then my clan is Beaver. DELLINGER: Say that again? Your clan is?
DEO: Beaver.
DELLINGER: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Deo, where were you born and where did you grow up?
DEO: I was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then, ended up moving out here to Sapulpa pretty recently. But I grew up and spent all my time in Tulsa.
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DELLINGER: What was life like growing up in Tulsa? Can you talk a little bit about that, where you went to school, maybe some school activities or things that you were involved in as a kid?
DEO: Let’s see. So, we lived on the west side, [00:02:00] and I went to school at Park Elementary. I grew up playing baseball and wrestling, and football. But I stopped playing football about ninth grade when I came to high school at Sapulpa. But I was still living at Tulsa at the time, when I was going to public schools. So, it would always be a bus ride home. I’m not next to any of my friends still. My friends lived in Sapulpa. So, I’d just come home and go play basketball at the park or something, or play video games.
DELLINGER: What high school did you graduate from?
DEO: Nathan Hale.
DELLINGER: Nathan Hale here in Tulsa.
DEO: Yeah. [00:03:00]
DELLINGER: Mr. Deo, will you talk a little bit about who your parents are? Just tell us a little bit about each one of them.
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DEO: My mom is Brandy Harrison and my dad is Michael Deo. My dad, he grew up in Hectorville at the Stomp Ground. He used to take us out there a lot, so that’s how I got introduced to the grounds, was going out there in the summers and dancing, and taking part of Green Corn up near the camp.
DELLINGER: Now, which ground is that?
DEO: Duck Creek.
DELLINGER: [00:04:00] So, from our previous conversation, you get your Indigenous heritage from your father’s side, correct?
DEO: Yes.
DELLINGER: And so, can you talk a little bit more about that?
DEO: His dad is Creek and his mom is Yuchi. They’re both full blood. DELLINGER: What are their names? Mr. Deo, what are their names?
DEO: Martha Sue Brown and Thomas Deo. Thomas is where I get my Creek heritage, and then Martha’s where I get the Alabama-Quassarte and Yuchi. [00:05:00] Her dad is the one that started the ground.
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DELLINGER: What’s his name?
DEO: John Brown. Now, everybody in our family’s named John Brown. (both laugh) Got so many John Browns in our family. Crazy.
DELLINGER: Now, I think you had mentioned that you have maybe one or two other tribal identities there within your heritage. Did you mention Seminole?
DEO: Yeah.
DELLINGER: Who does that come from?
DEO: I’m not exactly sure. I think it comes from Thomas’s side, Cherokee and Seminole. I think that comes from Thomas. But like I said, I’m not for sure. [00:06:00] The thing I’m more for sure about is that my grandma, she was Yuchi, and then my grandpa, he was Creek. And then, the rest, I’ve just been told that that’s part of our blood, is the Seminole, Cherokee, and Alabama-Quassarte.
DELLINGER: Now, what about your mom? Will you share a little bit about your mom and her family?
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DEO: She went to Webster, graduated from there, and then had us young. So, she started raising kids early and didn’t really have time for other things. She just worked and raised us. We made it. I don’t know.
DELLINGER: [00:07:00] Now, you have siblings. Will you talk a little bit about your siblings, share their names and tell a little bit about each one of them?
DEO: So, my youngest sibling is Kaden Harrison. He is seventeen, I think seventeen now. He’s a junior in high school. He’s a big kid. He’s six-four, three-fifty. He’s a big kid and he’s been that way since he was like twelve. So, that’s Kaden. And then, I have Micah, Micah Deo. She’s a year and a half older than me, so she’s like twenty-four, twenty-five, about to turn twenty-five. [00:08:00] She’s working at the Yuchi Language Project. She’s raising a kid in the language, just talking Yuchi to him. My older sister, Keegan Sue Ward, she passed away about probably ten years ago now, ten or eleven. She lived in North Carolina. I never got to see her much, but I got to visit her a couple times. Keegan, she’s the oldest.
DELLINGER: Is there anything else that you would like to share about your family [00:09:00] or your Indigenous heritage?
DEO: Maybe just the fact that we’re all pretty exposed to the language, which I think is a pretty cool aspect. I didn’t really have that growing up. But now, since I spent time around it, and around Maxine, and around teaching it, since I spent so much time
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teaching and learning myself, now I’m able to carry on what I know and teach others. I have a library class I teach every Monday. I teach some language. I got some committed students [00:10:00] that keep coming back and they’re doing really good. That’s how I continue to stay involved in the teaching process. But the learning process I need to hop back on, just because there’s so much work that needs to be done and it’s just overwhelming.
I spent about two years with Maxine, and I got basically two years of our meetings recorded. I got to back through all those recordings and get those ready to listen to. Because some of them, maybe there’s some big blank spots where we weren’t talking, or maybe there’s some personal stuff that she probably wouldn’t want people to hear. There’s all that [00:11:00] cleaning up I got to do on all these recordings. I haven’t even dived into that yet. I just have them.
That’s one of the things that I don’t want to do and I’m trying to solve is get things available and not have them bottled up or just put away and never to be seen again, just to be recorded once and never used. All my other recordings, I have those available to everybody. Anybody can access them and find them, just because I feel like it needs to be that way, that there shouldn’t be any hurdles to it. Because you can go and learn Spanish right now. You can go learn French immediately. But you can’t with Yuchi until I put it out there to where you can. [00:12:00] I got a YouTube page where I post videos, and Google Drive where I post our class notes and recordings, audio recordings. Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do there, is just make things available. Because when I was younger, there wasn’t anything available. You can’t just go on YouTube and type in Yuchi language or [Yuchi Language] or whatever. You can’t do that. So, I’m just trying
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to make that a possibility and am making it one. But like I said, there’s a lot of stuff that I’m not doing that needs to be done and I need to focus on more, which is cleaning up those recordings with Maxine. When it comes to that, it just seems so overwhelming. But [00:13:00] little steps. You walk a long distance.
DELLINGER: Yes. I love hearing this about your work. I was going to delve into this with you today, during this interview, because your work is so important. I understand feeling overwhelmed. I tend to feel that way sometimes, too, with my work. So, I support you with that and I understand. Let’s go back a little bit. How did you learn the language and why has learning the language been so important to you?
DEO: So, I was working in Sapulpa at this welding job, and my sister, she got a job at the Yuchi Language Project. [00:14:00] I would go over there maybe during lunch or after work and check to see if I could do anything, help out around there, or just do some of the heavy lifting, move some dirt, or whatever, move some shelves. So, I was coming around there a lot, and then they ended up offering me a job, and I agreed. I started working there around August 2019, somewhere around there, August 2019, right after the summer. I was working there all the way up until—[00:15:00] a little into the pandemic. Then, we went our separate ways. This is the funny part. I started teaching. That was the first thing I did. But I didn’t know anything, so how am I supposed to teach when I don’t know anything? So, most of the time, I was just silent, first few weeks, just watching and repeating whatever I heard or whatever. After a while, I was able to understand things and I got to work with Maxine more, mostly because no one would do it and I was the
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only one left in the room a lot of times. (laughs) There was one time to where we was locked outside. She came to do a session and we couldn’t get inside the building. [00:16:00] We sat in her car. We just sat in her car and talked Yuchi. I did little exercises with her and stuff, little language exercises.
Through perseverance and time spent, I was able to get to where I could hold a good conversation with Maxine and I could just go over there, and we could just spend afternoons talking Yuchi. Didn’t even need English. I could understand everything she was saying. So, that was really a fulfilling moment when I realized I can do this and I’m
hanging in there with it. I kept going with them. We ended up building a really good relationship. Even when I split from the Yuchi Language Project, [00:17:00] that didn’t matter because she don’t care about that. But she cares more about people and not organizations. You know what I’m saying? She’s a people person. So, we kept a really good relationship. I would go over there all the time, spend my afternoons there, spend my evenings there.
She fell a few times and she got to where she couldn’t even get out of the bed anymore. She was just bedridden the rest of her life, pretty much. [00:18:00] That was hard to watch and hard to be there and really know you can’t do nothing and it’s the end. But the thing is is she knew that her time was coming and she’s been ready. It just makes you feel a lot better. Well, if they’re ready to go, what can I do? Am I just being selfish for not wanting them to go? That’s what it boils down to. When they’re ready, I feel like it makes it a lot easier. She lived a full life, very full life. She lived ninety-six years. She had a lot of time on this earth, and I’m glad I got to spend just a little fraction of that time with her. Pretty cool.
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DELLINGER: Yes. Mr. Deo, I just want to insert this. You’re [00:19:00] talking about Mrs. Maxine Wildcat-Barnett, who I had the honor of interviewing there at the end of her life. Of course, you helped me with that interview. I know that you had a special relationship with her. I can hear that in your voice, even. Not just with your words, but in your voice. Can you share just a little bit more about Maxine and the work that she did, and really what her life and legacy mean, honestly, not only to you, but to the Yuchi community?
DEO: She was our very last one. She was the last fluent Yuchi-speaking elder. [00:20:00] Now, all we have is a bunch of—and not that there’s anything wrong with that, but a bunch of second language speakers. All of us, we weren’t raised in the language. Our babies coming up, they’re being raised in the language. But at this point, we don’t have any first language speakers, no one where we can go to and say, “Hey, how do you say this?” or “Can we just talk in Yuchi or something?” There’s nobody else. She was the last one. She grew up speaking it. She was raised speaking Yuchi. Then, she was sent off to boarding school and not allowed to talk it. She wasn’t placed around any other Yuchi, so she was never given the opportunity anyway, [00:21:00] unless she just talked to herself. She lost how to put words together and stuff, but she still knew it. But she wasn’t confident in the language anymore. She knew English. She jumped into the workforce after coming out of the school. I think around the eighties or nineties, she got around her people, around her church people. Because they always spoke at church. They always spoke at church at Pickett Chapel. I know she went there when she was young, but I don’t
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know if she went there throughout the middle of her life. But if she did, then she was definitely hearing Yuchi. Like I said, around the eighties and nineties, [00:22:00] Mose Cahwee, he was really trying to bring the Yuchi-speaking community back. He was trying to get all of his people that he knew knew Yuchi, trying to gather them up and start talking, get everybody confident in the language again. That’s when Maxine came along and she gained her tongue back through working with them. She was able to speak again. She ended up spending a lot of time working with the Yuchi Language Project, along with some other elders that were there working like Henry Washburn and Maggie Marsey, [00:23:00] Josephine Keith, Addie George, all those folks. There’s even more too. But they’ve all passed away now, and she was the last one of that group too.
So, that’s why I came in about, like I said, 2019. She’d still come around. She would tell stories to the kids or just to the staff. Then, I came along with the promise that I was going to get to work with her, and I thought that was pretty cool. I got in there and started working with her. At first, I didn’t want to talk Yuchi because I thought she only knew Yuchi. I didn’t know. But I just tried to talk [00:24:00] Yuchi and I couldn’t, so I was like, “I’m sorry but I’m new. I’m still trying to learn.” She was like, “Oh, we’re all learning. I’m still learning.” And just her saying that when she is the one, the speaker, it made me feel good. I don’t know. Her being patient with me—she was, anyway, and it just felt good. I remember that moment. So, she’s probably spent twenty years plus working with the Yuchi Language Project, telling them stories and just going over there and having conversations in the language. But myself, I took it outside the workplace, and I liked to go over to her house and spend a lot of time with her. Because it’s different [00:25:00] the way she interacts sometimes. She’ll interact different if she’s at the office
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and at home. Maybe she’s more, I don’t know, uptight or on guard when she’s out in public. But when you’re at home, you loosen up a little bit. So, that’s my experience with her.
DELLINGER: Well, thank you for sharing all that with us. So, you’re no longer with the Yuchi Language Project, but you’re doing your own thing now and have developed some teaching tools and whatnot. Will you please talk a little bit about this language work that you’re continuing to do? [00:26:00]
DEO: I put out some of the videos on YouTube of my Zoom classes and also just some little short tidbits that people can learn, like opposites, or colors, or just little short stuff, weather terms, stuff like that. I’m just trying to make a resource online available to the public, put something out that I never had access to because some of that never existed.
So, that’s what I have this YouTube page for. You can find it under zOyaha School of Language, zOyaha, Z-O-Y-A-H School of Language. [00:27:00] I put out my Zoom videos on there, the classes I teach, and just these little tutorials. Also, I made an audiobook that I put on there. So, you can go in there and read a book and learn that book. I put some stuff that you can see at the Stomp Ground there, the calls or whatever. I’m just trying to make something to where it’s like Yuchi TV. You can just go to that channel, turn it on, and it just a big playlist of Yuchi content. And you can just let that go in the background or something. I probably got like twenty minutes of material. But I want it to get where it’s like hours, like an hour [00:28:00] or something. So, there’s a lot of work to do. The little pile of videos I got there now, it feels good just to even have
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those on there and have something, a little resource, for people to go learn a little something.
DELLINGER: That all sounds so amazing. That’s a lot of work. That really is a lot of work, what you’re trying to do by yourself. But I know that the Yuchi people are going to be so appreciative of it, and I’m sure they are appreciative of it, what you’ve already accomplished at this point. I want to go back to something. So, you’ve already shared with us that you are a ceremonial ground member at Duck Creek. Can you talk a little bit about what are some of your responsibilities there as a ceremonial ground member? [00:29:00]
DEO: For the past five or six years, I’ve been Pole Boy, where you take care of the fire and just do all of the heavy lifting around there, pretty much, get told what to do. That’s a cool position for me because I like to help out. I like to feel involved. But I think last year was my last year doing that. So, I’ll have to give that up to somebody. But other than that, I’m a speaker. I’m the speaker of the ground. So, I’ll give out the calls before we start dancing. And then, sometimes, they’ll ask me to talk before we dismiss the next morning. That’s [00:30:00] my duties around there, other than helping around the camp too, wherever they need my help.
DELLINGER: As a speaker there at your ceremonial ground, that bears a lot of responsibility. What does that mean to you to have that responsibility?
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DEO: It’s an honor because there’s been other people in this spot that I admire, other people that I listen to on tape to try to sound like. So, it’s an honor just to even be held responsible for basically the language, basically how it’s heard by others. I’m responsible for that. [00:31:00] It’s a big job. It’s an honorable job, in my opinion. There’s only so many people that can do, and that feels cool. Anybody can get up and learn now, but it’s just taking the time and effort. It’s a big honor, and I’m appreciative that I get to be in this spot and talk the Yuchi language and spread what I know. That’s an aspect, too, because there’s people [00:32:00] that go there that are learning, and then I can talk and set an example of how I would say something. Then, they can be like, “Okay, I know what he was trying to say. That’s how you could say that.” So, at the same time, I’m talking, and not a lot of people can understand what I’m saying. At the same time, there’s people listening and trying to understand what I’m trying to mean by what I say. So, that’s pretty cool too. It’s responsibility not only to the people that don’t know Yuchi and are hearing it for the first time, but for those who are learning it and trying to figure out how they would say something. It’s like a dual responsibility. I feel like it keeps me on my toes instead of just me just going out there [00:33:00] and counting the numbers or whatever, or just saying whatever. I feel more held responsible to sound good and right. That’s my job out there.
DELLINGER: All right. Mr. Deo, how do you enjoy your free time?
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DEO: I like to go out at night and tell some jokes. I hit up the open mics around town, so trying to be funny. I’m not in a band or anything, so I’m not going to the open mics to jam out or anything. Trying to catch a laugh and throw some jokes.
DELLINGER: How long have you been doing that?
DEO: Probably about [00:34:00] two and a half years. We just went to Oklahoma City last night.
DELLINGER: Oh.
DEO: The Bricktown Comedy Club.
DELLINGER: Okay. Did you have a good crowd?
DEO: Yeah, it was pretty good crowd. Very loud. It was a good amount of people.
DELLINGER: So, have you always been a jokester? Is this what you’ve been known for your whole life as a kid growing up?
DEO: Yeah, I think so. I’ve always tried to make people laugh. I’ve never been able to be serious. It’s hard for me to be serious. So, I like to take the edge off a lot. I like to just stay in that serious mindset, but rather, I like to [00:35:00] have fun. I like to have a good
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time. I never have to be a bad time. So, I feel like that’s part of it, where I’m just trying to have fun all the time. Sometimes, I say stuff, and people will laugh and be like, “Man, that’s dumb. Why would you say that?” (laughs) And I was like, well, why not just take that to stage if they’re laughing? They think it’s dumb but they’re laughing, so maybe there’s something there. And when I’m on stage, they’ll know it’s a joke. (both laugh) People don’t get the cues in person a lot of times.
DELLINGER: Well, I think this is such an interesting part of who you are, along with all these other more serious things that you are doing. Definitely, [00:36:00] as humans, we need laughter, right? Laughter is important and it’s healing. And so, I appreciate that that’s your mindset and a part of your character and you’re out there trying to provide that for people out in our communities. Well, I’ll tell you what I’d like to do now. Let’s go ahead and transition into some questions that pertain more to the COVID-19 pandemic and your experiences of the pandemic. Unfortunately, as we sit here today, we are two years now into this COVID-19 pandemic, starting our third year. We’re taking your memory now back to 2020. When in 2020 did you first hear about the coronavirus called COVID-19, [00:37:00] and do you remember how you first heard about it?
DEO: It was in February 2020 when I heard about it. Then, March, I think we was virtual in March. I’m pretty sure that was right before the summer, so maybe April is when we went virtual. That’s when I remember really hearing about it was February.
DELLINGER: How did you learn about COVID-19 and the pandemic?
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DEO: I’m pretty sure the news, TV.
DELLINGER: At that time, when you first heard about the pandemic, what were your thoughts about the virus and about the pandemic? [00:38:00] Were you concerned about it or not? Did you worry that it was going to come into Oklahoma and Yuchi country? What were your thoughts about it?
DEO: I think I had first thoughts like it’s a sickness, and we’re all going to get it is how I felt. Just kind of like this is going to be the flu. But I don’t know. Everything has changed so much. It’s hard to even know what I thought back then.
DELLINGER: Right. Do you remember what were some of the initial conversations that you had with your family and your friends about the virus?
DEO: I guess basically just [00:39:00] trying to figure out who had it, and if they did have it, how bad it was, asking what it was like. But in the beginning, everybody I talked to, it seemed like it wasn’t that bad. But it just depends on who it gets ahold of.
DELLINGER: Was there anything in particular either you saw in the news or you heard, or maybe if a family member or friend was experiencing, or even yourself, that made you realize the severity of the virus?
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DEO: I think the lockdowns kind of forced you to believe it’s pretty bad. [00:40:00] The whole world being made to stay home, so it must be bad then, especially if people were willing to lose out on money.
DELLINGER: So, there was a point early on in 2020 where we all started sharing these words, “lockdown” and “shelter in place.” These were the safety measures that were enacted by local and state governments. When you first heard those words and know that these things were happening, how did that make you feel?
DEO: Maybe not too bad at first because you hear it’s going to be two weeks or something. So, you’re like, all right, that’s cool. Take a two-week summer break. But things just kept piling on, kept going. [00:41:00] It’s crazy.
DELLINGER: What was the experience of sheltering in place like for you and your household?
DEO: I feel like it didn’t hurt me too much because I’m a homebody. If I’m not out on stage or working or something, then usually, I’d rather just be home anyway. So, it wasn’t that bad on me having to stay inside because I could stay inside.
DELLINGER: During that period, when people were sheltering in place, do you have a large family? How did you remain connected to family and even friends who were outside of your home? [00:42:00]
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DEO: Facebook or some of my family, I’m usually not scared to see them, so I’ll go see them in person or whatever. Friends, Facebook, or Snapchat, or anything like that.
DELLINGER: Throughout this entire pandemic, what has been your plan of action to stay safe from the virus, both at home and when you leave the house? What are your safety measures?
DEO: Just make sure nobody’s breathing on me and carry a mask. Just distance from people.
DELLINGER: In the early stages of the pandemic, and you have touched on this a little bit already, but how did it impact your work as a Yuchi language instructor? [00:43:00]
DEO: Well, it took us virtually. So, there’s no more person-to-person teaching. And that’s rough for someone like me, where I like to be in person. A lot of language work is that in-person work. The long-distance stuff, the virtual stuff is meant for self-studying. But when we’re in a big class and stuff, it’s so much better and streamlined if I can get in front of people and teach them, and not just online. I can cope. I can make it work. But I feel like it only works [00:44:00] to a certain point, and it makes it hard to keep going with expanding stuff. I can still put something in front of their face and explain what it means. That’s basically what I’m doing.
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DELLINGER: Has the pandemic made you lose students? Was there a period of time when these folks who were your students, where they lost interest or they were so distracted by the pandemic that they weren’t doing the work?
DEO: So, my experience, I started this library class after the pandemic started. So, I haven’t been really able to tell with that [00:45:00] because I’ve had the same group throughout the whole time I’ve been doing the online classes. But at the Yuchi Language Project, they’ve lost all their kids. I think a lot of people just was using it for a daycare or whatever. If they don’t have anywhere to send their kid, or afterschool care, they’re not going to spend too much time involved in the online stuff. They don’t have a bunch. They mostly teach their own kids at the YLP now. They’re making them and teaching them. You have to make them.
DELLINGER: Yeah. So, shifting gears here just a little bit, I want to ask you, what is your knowledge and understanding about the COVID-19 virus, including, if you can, how it’s [00:46:00] contracted and its effect on the human body if someone does contract the virus?
DEO: I think everybody reacts different. It’s all about your current state, whether you’re healthy or you’re unhealthy, you got a preexisting condition or you’re just healthy as a horse. The healthy people seem to get over it pretty easy and go back to doing them a little bit later, but unhealthy people, it takes a bigger toll on them, elders and unhealthy people. [00:47:00] It’s airborne, so anybody can get it anywhere, basically. And the new
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variants are more and more transmissible. So, it’s just easier and easier to get it. If you thought it was easy to get it before, just wait until now. It’s even worse. And a lot of people say staying in place isn’t for them because it lets the virus kind of house in here. But if you go out and get vitamin D from the sun or whatever, it’s supposed to kill it. I don’t know. If you’re not healthy or anything, at least you can supplement with some vitamins or something, vitamin D [00:48:00] and other essential vitamins. That’s bound to help.
DELLINGER: Have you or any family or friends gotten sick with COVID?
DEO: I’m pretty sure I had it last week, the Omicron. I didn’t get tested, though, because I didn’t feel like going out the house. So, I didn’t even get tested. But yeah, I think I had it. I had a headache and my whole body was achy. But I’ve been taking vitamins and trying to get on a healthy track. Just after that morning, after [00:49:00] the morning of really feeling it, that was it. It was all over. I took some Tylenol and my headache went away, start from there yesterday.
DELLINGER: From your knowledge, how do you think Yuchi communities have been enduring, I’m gonna say surviving, the pandemic? Have Yuchi communities experienced a lot of loss of life from the pandemic?
DEO: We have lost some people. You could say COVID was part of it, and you could also say they had pretty severe comorbidities. They was on their way out anyway.
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[00:50:00] But definitely, it didn’t help. I think it did progress some of our people’s illnesses that they already had. So, we definitely lost some people, our mothers and our fathers. It’s sad. But we got here through perseverance. Our people, we’ve lost very important people in the past, too. Not in the recent past, but we kept going. We found a way, made it work. I suppose that’s what we have to do now is keep going and make it work. [00:51:00]
DELLINGER: From both a health and an economic perspective, how do you think that, and especially—you can think back to the beginning of the pandemic and even that first year—how do you think that the state of Oklahoma and even the federal government, if you have any thoughts about that—how do you think they have performed with this
pandemic in taking care of American citizens and Oklahoma citizens throughout this pandemic?
DEO: I feel like they can only do so much. There’s a bunch of politics involved, so it’s hard to get anything done around there, I’m sure, [00:52:00] and especially when you’re trying to—I don’t know—help an entire population all at once. I don’t know. I don’t know what could’ve been done better and I don’t know what could’ve been done worse. But I feel like they’re doing something. There’s people doing their job. But like I said, it's hard to—I bet it’s hard to get anything done around there. You got so many people trying to do something. I don’t know. I think they’ve done all right.
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DELLINGER: I’m going to ask you basically the same question. [00:53:00] What are your thoughts about how our Muscogee (Creek) nation leadership, and I’m going to throw in too our Muscogee (Creek) Nation Health Department—do you have any thoughts or words about how they have performed throughout this pandemic?
DEO: I feel like they’ve been running pretty smooth too. I’m sure they’ve had their hiccups, but I think we’re operating pretty well for a small nation that has to deal with a big crisis.
DELLINGER: Mr. Deo, we’re down to our last couple of questions here. So, for this next question, [00:54:00] we’re thinking about Yuchi and Muscogee, not just our people today but for future generations of Yuchi and Muscogee who may find themselves trying to survive a global health and economic crisis, such as what we’ve been going through for the last two years. What words of wisdom and support can you give to them about living with and surviving such a catastrophic event?
DEO: Just stay strong and persevere. We’re all in an unprecedented time. Coming out of this, people is going to ask what our stories are and our experiences. [00:55:00] My thing is just try to keep a full life. Don’t get down or anything. Stay up, stay happy, and buckle down, and we’ll get through this.
DELLINGER: All right. Thank you. Thank you for those words. Now, is there anything else that you would like to share about your experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic?
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DEO: No.
DELLINGER: Well, listen, mvto, thank you again so much for doing this interview with me and taking time out of your busy day. Your words, your thoughts, [00:56:00] they’re impactful. They’re meaningful. So, thank you very much.
DEO: Yeah, thank you, mvto. Thank you for having me.
END OF INTERVIEW
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