Apollonia Piña, 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: Ms. Apollonia Piña
Interview by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
Date: May 25, 2021
Transcription: The Audio Transcription Company
Edited by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
MIDGE DELLINGER: [00:00:08] This is Midge Dellinger, oral historian for the Muscogee Nation. Today is May 25, 2021 and I am at my home in Tulsa, Oklahoma interviewing Muscogee citizen Miss Apollonia Piña, who is also at her home in Tulsa. This interview is being performed remotely due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. I am performing this interview on behalf of the Muscogee Nation’s 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.”
Miss Piña, thank you for being here today to do this interview. I want to start by asking you some questions that pertain to your personal life and background. So I’m going to begin by asking you what is your tribal town and clan? [00:01:00]
APOLLONIA PIÑA: Yeah, thank you for having me, Midge. My original tribal town is Thlopthlocco, but ceremonially I am a member of Tullahassee (Muskogee language) [00:01:14] grounds, and I am Itchualgi, I am Deer Clan.
DELLINGER: [00:01:20] Where were you born and where did you grow up?
PIÑA: I was born in Claremore, Oklahoma at the Claremore Indian Hospital, but I was raised in downtown Tulsa, specifically the Crosbie Heights neighborhood, but also Owen Park neighborhood too, which is right next to it, which is originally Creek allotment land. Well, I mean, most of this is.
DELLINGER: [00:01:46] Right, and so can you share a little bit about what that was like for you growing up in those neighborhoods?
PIÑA: Yeah, so those neighborhoods specifically, especially when I was younger, were definitely [00:02:00] be considered politely low socioeconomic status, but those of us that grew up there just referred to it as a hood. (laughs) Now what was great about it though was it was a nice mixture of poor Creek, and Seminole families, and Black families, and also white families, and the common denominator is that we were all living at or below the poverty line so we actually had a fairly good neighborhood network system of where yo, we’re all in this together. There was a lot of like helping out, can I borrow a cup of sugar.
We had this one neighbor who lived right next to us, she lived in the back house, she was this native woman, she had these young kids. And a way that she would hustle up making money was she would make meat pies and then she’d send her nine-year-old daughter out into the neighborhood like, “Mom’s making meat pies again, do you want cheese or no cheese? Spicy or not?” [00:03:00] And we’d all be like, “Get your money out, get it before they sell out.”
I really like that sense of growing up in a hood because that’s something you would not find in Broken Arrow or some gated community, which kill me if I ever find myself living in one of those. (laughs)
DELLINGER: [00:03:22] Right, so it sounds like everyone had the opportunity for an extended family in those neighborhoods, that sounds great.
PIÑA: My mom still lives there by the way and so we still have very strong roots. That’s where I plan on buying a house too.
DELLINGER: [00:03:39] Yeah, great. Will you share a little about your family, including your parents and grandparents? What are their names, where were they from? You said that your mom still lives in your childhood neighborhood; can you just share a little bit about your family?
PIÑA: Yeah, my mom is Yvette Wiley and she’s [00:04:00] an environmental scientist. She comes at it from an Indigenous perspective. She actually worked for Creek Nation for a number of years before she went onto the Iowa Tribe and worked for them. Before that she was like—she did modern dance and she was like an old punk rocker too in like the 1980s in Tulsa. My dad, Valentino Piña, he passed away when I was nineteen, but I was extremely close to my dad. He was a musician, he played conga drums, and he toured the world with JJ Cale and Leon Russell.
So I was really privileged in that I got to grow up surrounded by Tulsa Sound musicians and artists. He was also a painter too, so it was like this nice mixture of like the arts, [00:05:00] but also the sciences, and a lot of books in the house I grew up in, none of which were censored to me. Both of my parents were pretty politically minded too so I remember having good discussions in the kitchen, on the porch about politics.
I’ll say too as a hat tip to my parents doing the best raising me with very limited means, they split up when I was five, but my dad lived literally on the same street as me and my mom, but he just lived five blocks down on Phoenix Street, and they did a good job of co-parenting me. We would still do things as a family unit like have dinner, go camping, go to the movies, so it was still this real unified family front, and they were still each other’s best friends. I wish more
kids that [00:06:00] had parents that were separated had parents that would co-parent in such a manner because I really benefited from it.
My grandpa is Louis Wiley, but he was known as “Speedy” Wiley, and so my Wiley family, my Wiley/Watson family, we come from the Dustin, Weleetka area. We still have our family cemetery out there. My grandma is Betty Wiley and she’s originally from Alabama. They were married for quite a while until they weren’t, but they still also—okay so my grandma also lived across the street, literally across the street. I’m not kidding; we’ve got deep roots in this Crosbie Heights hood.
I grew up very Indian intergenerational household where my grandpa Speedy or Louis Wiley always lived with us from the time I was six until he passed away when I was seventeen, [00:07:00] and I was also close to my grandpa. But literally right across the street and one house down is where my grandma’s house was so she was over every single day. And it’d be like, “Louis! Do you need anything?” or maybe they’d bicker a little bit, and he’s like, “Woman!” (laughs)
Yeah, all my family was like all within either on that block or just a few blocks down like Phoenix Street. So I really like that sense of even though you’re separated you’re still together, like you get over each other’s respective egos and BS to be like we still love each other and we’re going to help each other out.
On my dad’s side though my grandparents were Mama Lupe and Papa Lino so my middle name is Guadalupe, named after my [00:08:00] grandmother Guadalupe, who I never got to meet because she literally passed away the day that I was born, three hours before I was born. She was originally from Mexico. She was from Guanajuato. Then my Grandpa Marcelino, who I
also never got to meet, he was from Zacatecas. I don’t know much about them because I never got to meet them.
One story I do know is that she was like a very outspoken Mexican woman and she would make her own beer in the garage but it was made out of fermented raisins. She did some Mexican beer raisin dance where she had the room and she would dance around the beers in the garage singing a song like that was part of the process. (laughs) I wish I could have met her.
DELLINGER: [00:08:55] Right.
PIÑA: And then on [00:09:00] my mother’s side my great—so my great grandparents were Mose Wiley and he was a pastor at Thewarle Baptist Church, which is still around, it’s right outside of Dustin. He helped start that church. He had a few different wives; I get kind of confused in the order. But his first two wives died of TB or of the flu, and so he was married a third time. It wasn’t because he was like divorcing them and getting someone younger, it was because his first two wives died unexpectedly. I know one was Bessie Wiley, yeah. I’m sorry, I can’t remember the names of the other two.
Then my family who came up on the Trail of Tears, forced removal, was [00:10:00] great-great grandparents Polly Watson and Willie Condole(??), I think I’m saying that correctly, Condole(??). I read about them because my grandpa Mose Wiley talked about them in the WPA Papers, the Indian Pioneer Papers.
DELLINGER: [00:10:28] That’s cool that that oral history is in those papers. I refer to those papers on occasion when I’m doing research. Do you know where in Alabama your Muscogee family originated from?
PIÑA: Yeah, so we were Upper Creeks, anti-assimilationists. I’m not exactly for sure. I remember looking at a map once at our original lands [00:11:00] in Alabama and I believe Thlopthlocco was like up, and I was talking to somebody at the tribe, and they were talking about which towns were Lower Creeks and which ones were Upper Creeks, but we were Upper Creeks in Thlopthlocco. I don’t know a whole lot about Thlopthlocco.
DELLINGER: [00:11:24] Miss Piña, do you have any children?
PIÑA: I do. I have a son; he just turned four in March. His name is Jose Valentino Moore y Piña. There was no way I was going through—his middle name is because in honor to my dad who I was very close to and his last name is a combination of mine and his dad’s names. There was no way I was going to go through nine months of pregnancy and I had a very difficult labor, four days of labor, [00:12:00] which I didn’t realize how unusual that was, no sleep and contractions that whole time pretty much. There was no way I was just going to go through all that like I grew this eyeball, I grew this brain and these hands, then somebody else is going to come in last minute and take his last name? No. That’s also kind of a nod to our tribe where we’re matrilocal, matrilineal, you’re going to have my last name too kiddo. (laughs)
DELLINGER: [00:12:33] Right, yeah. I want to ask you, so we’re going to go back here a little bit, where did you graduate from high school?
PIÑA: (laughs) Story there. I went to Central High School, which is actually the high school my mom graduated from I think in 1978 or something, the last year it was downtown. I believe it’s one of the first high schools of Tulsa. [00:13:00] But I got kicked out. I set the record for most days skipped in high school. But I was involved in—listen, I was still a nerd, I was a good kid, I just had some problems in high school and some difficulties. I should apologize to my mom for how difficult I was.
I was on academic team, I was in the Latin club, I was in Biology Club, I was in band, I was in orchestra, I was in jazz band, but then there was certain teachers I didn’t vibe with and I’m like, I’m not going to your class, but I’m definitely going to show up for Latin class because I like that class. I really was just like picking and choosing what classes I am going to go to. That didn’t work for very long, I got kicked out. So I started going to P12, otherwise known as Project 12, which is for all the kids that weren’t doing good in traditional high schools, that was your last resort. [00:14:00] They were like, we don’t play that game here, you can have a total of five absences throughout the whole school year or else you get kicked out.
I did a lot better there because the teachers actually gave a damn, and it was much smaller classroom sizes, and we got to call our teachers by their first names which kind of took down these walls. I was about to graduate and I would have graduated with a Booker T. high school diploma but my senior year of high school my dad became terminally ill so I had to drop out a few months before I was scheduled to graduate to take care of him. It was an honor to do so because we don’t put our loved ones in nursing homes, we’re going to take care of them, so I’m
really glad I was able to be the main caretaker for my dad as a teenager when he was sick. I eventually got my GED and went to OU. [00:15:00]
DELLINGER: [00:15:02] Let’s talk about your time at OU, your studies. What did you study when you were there?
PIÑA: My degree that I have is I have a Bachelor’s of Science in Cross Cultural Epistemologies in Science and Math. Which is to say I have a hard sciences background, like the classic sciences, microbiology, chemistry, but I research and engage in science and math through an Indigenous lens, perspective, so it decenters this idea that Europeans invented math and science, and there’s only this Western modality of thinking and engaging with it, which is not true. Honestly, a lot of the Greeks cribbed a lot of their mathematical knowledge from Middle Eastern people. It’s starting to get more recognized now thankfully.
[00:16:00] Mayans invented the concept of zero, which you know is a total game changer mathematically, and so, let’s give credit where credit is due. But I also have a minor in Native American Studies and was really involved with the Native American Studies Department at OU, and also with Native American organizations, and activism, and organizing OU too on campus. One of my fondest best memories of being at OU is I was in Council of Fire, which is a Native American debate and leadership group, and I eventually was president of that.
During that time me and some of the other members of Council of Fire, we wrote this six page Native American student [00:17:00] manifesto about things that we would like to see changed at OU. That eventually went up the chain and it got us a private meeting with then President Boren. It helped Native American Studies go from just like this program to a full-
fledged department where you can get a PhD in it now. They were able to hire more Native faculty for that program.
It did other things too like establish Native American Day or sorry, Indigenous Peoples Day and not Columbus Day at OU, which then set the precedent for it changing in Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, and other smaller towns in Oklahoma. So I’m pretty proud of that.
DELLINGER: [00:17:48] Yeah, you should be. What were those years that you were there at OU?
PIÑA: I was there from 2013 and I graduated May of 2017. Interesting point, [00:18:00] I was pregnant my last year of college there and I had planned it out, and I was like now I can go get pregnant, I guess now is as good a time as any. Then a month later I was pregnant after I decided to do that. (laughs) It helps knowing your cycle and being a science major. (laughter) It worked out for me. That last semester though when I was in my third trimester, I don’t suggest having a baby your last semester when you’re taking fifteen credit hours and you’ve got to write a capstone paper. But I had Jose literally over Spring Break.
My professors were dope. I intentionally chose female professors for my last semester and they really worked with me to being like get that paper turned in when you can. [00:19:00] I still made straight A’s that last semester and I’m really proud of the straight A’s because I was (unintelligible), writing papers, breastfeeding. (laughs) I don’t suggest it.
DELLINGER: [00:19:17] But you did it.
PIÑA: I did it. Then also it was memorable too because that winter break me and my then partner we went up to Standing Rock, so I have a good memory of being up at Standing Rock in December, and I’m like hella pregnant and big, and I was in shock because I’m like, I’m from Oklahoma, I’m Mexican, my DNA remembers the warmth of Mexico and my tribe as a Southeast Tribe, it was humid, we lived in swamps, I can’t deal with this cold. It was like negative thirty degrees at night. But I was in the midwives yurt so it was so cozy. [00:20:00] I’m still friends with a lot of those Native midwives I met there. They’re just like you’re pregnant and checking me out, and in this cozy yurt with this fire, and they’re making me raspberry tea and all these pregnancy teas. It was great.
DELLINGER: [00:20:16] That sounds like a great experience and a great story about your pregnancy. Now you told me that you have done a lot of traveling, you have not just been in Tulsa your entire life, you traveled a lot, some in the US, some overseas. I was going to ask you to talk a little bit about that.
PIÑA: Yeah, so the first time I ever lived away it was when I was twenty years old. I moved to San Francisco for a while. I kind of was just like, I’m sick of Oklahoma. I’m sick of the politics here; get me the hell out. [00:21:00] I followed my bandmates out there. There was this kind of exodus of Oklahoma punk kids going from Oklahoma to California. I called it the Punk Rock
Grapes of Wrath. (laughs)
I had a lot of fun out in San Francisco and got to meet some new people out there. But living out there it actually made me appreciate Oklahoma and the Midwest more. I have some friends out there still, but the kids that grew up out there, it made me realize they’re just kind of
fed cool hip culture with a silver spoon because they’re surrounded by it, but as Okie kids, we had to fight to be weird, and to be comfortable in our skins with not being a cheerleader, not being [00:22:00] like a jock, not wearing Abercrombie & Fitch. It’s like yeah, that’s not what we’re into, and getting called names, and getting called faggot for it. So it’s a different scene.
And plus, we were just nicer. What I mean by that is I remember being out in San Francisco and I was like trying to hold the door open for somebody so they could come through and they’re like, “No, you go. You go.” And they thought I was going to slam it on them or something. It actually made me miss the niceness of the Midwest that I took for granted and the lack of pretention here too. I wasn’t expecting that and it really made me miss home.
I’ve just done a lot of traveling all over the United States. Recently I was in Washington DC, I was in Dallas last year, I’ve been all [00:23:00] over the Pacific Northwest, been up to Pine Ridge a lot, some places, let’s see, Rosebud, Atlanta a lot. That was really interesting. That was a trip for me to be at the Etowah Mounds. I visited one of my best friends, she grew up in Atlanta, so being back in Georgia and driving through Alabama, Mississippi, I’m like this is where my people are originally from.
When I was in Atlanta I would see a lot of street signs and counties and they’re in the Muscogee language, and some of them I knew what it translated to, I’m like these people have no idea, and there’s hardly any Creeks out here now. Then being at the Etowah Mounds, and being at the top of one of those mounds, and being like these are my [00:24:00] way-way back relatives. Then being at the top of that mound and then seeing off in the distance there’s a nuclear reactor. I just thought it was so visually telling of this is where we are now, the encroachment.
But I’ve also been over to Europe a few times. The first time was a high school trip. We went to Italy and we went to France. I remember being right outside the Palace of Versailles and for the first time having this sandwich, and it really made me change—of course it was French food—really made me change how I thought about food and my relationship to it. It was a sandwich and I don’t know what it was in French, it was in the French language but it translates to “God’s feet”, [00:25:00] and it was this really fresh baguette, and it has this incredibly stinky but very delicious French cheese on it. That’s why it was called “God’s feet” because it was so delicious but it stunk to high hell.
Then I went back a few years later on my own because I had a friend Nadia Rafai(??) and she was a punk rocker too, a medical punk rocker. But she was a surgeon, she was German, and she was Middle Eastern, I can’t remember exact—but she was in Kiel, Germany at this hospital. I shadowed her at that hospital she was at, and she also arranged it to where I could ride along with the German ambulance service otherwise known as the Krankenwagen, and the paramedics it roughly translates in German [00:26:00] to “Ruttungsdienst”, so I hung out with them. I was so confused, I was jetlagged, everything is in German, all I knew was, “Sprechen Sie English?”
But they were great and it was really great seeing how freaking efficient the Germanic Franco hospital system is compared to here, the hospital system here in America, which is so dysfunctional compared to how it is in Europe. It was interesting too, you’re going to love this one. Germans are like really into Indians it turns out. They really are. Sometimes it can be quite appropriate but the German paramedics I was with were totally dope.
One of them he was like, “So you’re Native American?” I’m like, “I am,” oh god, what direction is this going? And then he just proceeded to tell me a lot [00:27:00] about what he knew about Andrew Jackson, what he knew about the United States government and what they
did to Native people. I was like really impressed. Then he apologized and he’s like, “I’m so sorry that that happened to your people.” He’s like, “I know I’m in Germany,” “I can’t understand how white Americans don’t see it. But I guess because they’re Americans and they’re ashamed or something.” So it was really interesting to hear a European perspective on it. Then he proceeded to apologize on behalf of Germans for World War II because that’s a dark stain on their history. I’m like, “You don’t have to apologize to me, but I appreciate it. Thank you. I’m glad that we’re actually able to have these earnest and difficult discussions about such a dark time in history. More Americans should take your cue.” [00:28:00]
DELLINGER: [00:28:01] Exactly, yeah. I want to ask you about the Green Corn Medics. I was going to ask you to share a little about this group that you created, and the medical service that you all provide, and some of your recent experiences with the Green Corn Medics.
PIÑA: I just want to point out too, A, what kind of Native girl am I if I’m not wearing big earrings but these I’ve got to give a shout out to one of my matriarch sisters. This is our logo; this is our symbol for Green Corn Medics. So on the outside it can be kind of the influence of our traditional Southeast shell carvings, but a contemporary take on it. Then Rod of Asclepius with the snake going up around the cross.
So yeah, Green Corn Medics, thank you for asking. It’s a group [00:29:00] I’m very, very proud of. We have some really fantastic people in there. It kind of started—I wasn’t ever setting out to start a street medic crew like this. Let me explain the name too. It’s not named after Green Corn ceremony busk, it’s named after—it’s a nod to the Green Corn Rebellion, which as you probably know, that happened in 1916, 1917 here in Southern Oklahoma where it was a coalition
of poor farmers that were Creek, that were Seminole, that were white, and that were Black. And they, especially for that period of time, were able to see beyond that and work together as a group to try to march to Washington DC to demand better wages and also to protest against white [00:30:00] rich landowners charging them exorbitant taxes and putting them in this position of indentured servitude. It was a nod to them and how a group of people from different backgrounds came together for a cause bigger themselves.
Which very much is like the crew of Green Corn Medics. We have two Air Force veterans, one of whom is Native, she’s a Native female, another is Puerto Rican and Panamanian. We have a doctor on the crew. She’s a Palestinian doctor. And we have a random white guy, we have two random white guys, they’re like down with the Brown allies though. One is just kind of a local activist guy and he kind of acts as security for us if any Boogs or Proud Boys or white supremacists are trying to mess with us. We have Devin [00:31:00] and he is a local Black activist.
Then we have this random college professor who very much knows history and was just like, how can I help. I have this great photo of that professor where he looks so different than how he would in a classroom, like we have our hats on for head protection, these helmets, and goggles for tear gas, and his backpack, and he has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he’s adjusting his medic pack. (laughs) But you know, when duty calls and Trump is coming to your home territory, you defend it by any means possible.
That’s kind of how it actually came together was for the Tulsa Race Massacre’s [00:32:00] ninety-ninth anniversary, that was last year, we’re actually approaching it here in about a week, the hundredth anniversary, there was people that marched on the highway. This was I believe May 31st. They were protesting against the killing of people, Black men and
women, that get killed disproportionately by police officers, and that could also be said for Native Americans too. I went up on the bridge too, and I stayed to the side, and I just strictly went into healthcare worker mode where I’m like I understand why they’re doing this, but I also know that there is a high potential for somebody to get hurt because there are a lot of emotions that are running high right now.
Sure enough some guy, some jerk, putting it mildly, he was in his truck [00:33:00] that had a horse trailer on it, and he ran through the crowd, and he hit a few of my friends and some other people, and it caused—because the surge of the crowd one Native American guy, he got thrown from the bridge, and now he’s permanently paralyzed because of it. That guy will never be persecuted for it, the truck driver.
I ended up treating four people on the highway that day though. Me, acting in my medic capacity, when you work in EMS and you kind of have been in ERs, and you know kind of how to talk to cops because you have to interact with them in a clinical setting rather, it kind of gives me a tool to use. There was one girl where she really needed to be seen by EMSA, [00:34:00] so
out of my scope for what I had with me. So I had to go up to this whole line of police on the highway that were in riot gear and I just had to talk to them and be like, this woman needs help and the EMSA truck is back there, I need access to it. Because they just won’t—and I understand why, but an EMSA truck is not going to go into a crowd of people to retrieve a patient. You have to take the patient and extricate them out to help. That’s standard procedure.
There was a highway patrol cop, who even though people are protesting against them, I had to work with him to get this patient treated and seen. So he helped me carry her, and he’s like, “Well, let’s get in the cop car because I need to drive you guys to the other end of the highway where the actual EMSA truck is.” [00:35:00] And I’m not going to lie, I was like, this is
a trap! He’s going to arrest us! But we got in there because she really couldn’t walk very well, and he put us in there, and he gave us some water because it was very hot, she was exhausted and dehydrated. And he did what he said, he drove us to the ambulance truck and then he opened the door for us and let us out. I was like, okay, close call; I thought this was a trap. Then I was able to pass, give report to the EMSA people who I don’t think were quite expecting another medic person to be in that crowd, so I was able to give it to them in the way you would medically and get her seen.
It was just really bizarre because then it’s just me walking back by myself with my tiny little medic pack. [00:36:00] And here’s like a line of riot cops and I’m walking behind them back to all my friends. (laughs) That part was actually livestreamed on the news and it’s just like who is this lone chick walking from behind the riot cops back into the mess. (laughs)
But it wasn’t that long after that we found out that Trump was coming to do the first big rally during the pandemic. Basically I just handpicked the people who I knew I could trust because I’ve seen them in action before, they were healthcare workers, and I knew where they were politically, their stance. I knew that they could keep their calm in a situation. Then for the people that aren’t medically trained, those are just people I could straight up trust in a crazy situation [00:37:00] that would have my back. So they were good for like—because I had a bigger medic kit at that time. I have a bag and now it’s even bigger, my kit. They were good for helping to keep an eye on us medics when we were treating somebody to make sure nobody was going to try and mess with us.
And also they had backpacks on that were just full of nothing but like protein bars and water, which ultimately when you’re doing street medic stuff, that’s like one of the main things,
you’re giving people water, because people don’t realize what their physical limits are and how they need to be hydrated. So many patients with heat exhaustion that I’ve treated.
DELLINGER: [00:37:49] This group the Green Corn Medics, so this is a pretty new group? You just started this in 2020? 2019?
PIÑA: 2020. [00:38:00] I want to point out too, I need to clarify what a street medic is and kind of the origins for anybody watching this that’s not familiar. Street medics have a long history and street medics started in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement. It was nurses, it was doctors, and other healthcare workers that would come and assist Martin Luther King or other Civil Rights activists that were marching or crossing bridges and doing other demonstrations to where if the cops started gassing people, started siccing attack dogs on them, hitting them with batons, they would be there to treat those protestors immediately. Because especially back then oftentimes the local ambulance would not treat them out of spite. [00:39:00]
It also served as that, but it also served too to have these mostly at that time white doctors and nurses marching with Civil Rights activists. It also lended a little bit more weight and credibility to that movement too like look, we’re out here marching too, you can’t ignore us. What does that say when you see doctors out here marching with these Black civil rights activists? It’s still very much in that spirit too of why I go too.
At this point we’ve done some—we’ve helped out with some Black Lives Matter marches, demonstrations, but also very much Native American ones too. There was a sit-in in Oklahoma City put on by a group of Native American women so they asked us to be out there
[00:40:00] to help. They really needed us because there was a lot of heat exhaustion that day and then one heat stroke.
Plus when the white nationalists show up too, the Boogaloo Boys, and the Three Percenters, extreme Trumpers, Proud Boys, all those chugs, like a lot of what street medics do too is that we will deescalate situations before they become more violent or try to intervene and step in because sometimes street medics get targeted by the white supremacists specifically and the cops also will target street medics specifically. Because what street medics do too is act as kind of like morale when you’re at these demonstrations because we are pretty neutral. We’re political, sure, but when we’re actually out there we’re not chanting, we’re keeping an eye [00:41:00] on everybody and retrieving them if they get injured.
And also making sure we’re safe because if we’re not safe how are we going to treat other people. It acts too as like to just bring morale to a group of people that are rightfully really upset about something and getting emotionally worked up, and sometimes just pulling them aside and talking to them. Being one and one and having that emotional compassion with them, and acting as an in-between because yeah, maybe this one boog is like screaming in somebody’s face but then a medic steps in and is like, “Do you need a protein bar? Do you need a water? You seem really agitated? Are you a little hot?” and it kind of like, I call it kind of like culture jamming or just throwing them off to where it helps calm that situation down. Sometimes they’re a little [00:42:00] less likely to hit the help, but some of them will too.
DELLINGER: [00:42:10] Yeah, just listening to you talk about all of this sounds like fascinating work but there is obviously this aspect of danger involved in what you’re doing too and it’s all voluntary.
PIÑA: Yeah.
DELLINGER: [00:42:22] So that’s an amazing part of that too. I want to ask you this, I know that you are heavily involved in activist activities. You’ve already stated that your parents were activists in their own rights and you involved yourself in social justice issues that focus on this
country’s oppressed and marginalized peoples, including indigenous people and communities. I wanted to give you an opportunity, if you would, to talk a little bit about some of this work and some of the non-profit organizations that you engage with. [00:43:00]
PIÑA: There’s a few non-profits I’m involved with. I’m involved with the Auntie Project, and Matriarch, and also Thick Descriptions, which is a non-profit that was started by this Black anthropologist. In that capacity I help teach youth that are Brown, Indigenous, Black youth, about science concepts. It’s basically like STEM stuff by Brown people for Brown people to be like, look, you see yourself represented here, we did it, this is how you can do it too, this is why it’s cool, this is why it’s interesting, but also recognizing that we have a very—Brown people have a very problematic relationship with healthcare, and medicine, and science. We have really great things that have come from it and especially from us being a part of it, but [00:44:00] the only reason why a lot of the stuff has turned around is because we’ve gotten involved with it rather than it just being strictly done by European Americans or European systems.
So Matriarch is a Native women’s non-profit group. We do a lot. We have an established network within that. We are legion here in Oklahoma. I feel like anymore we’ve been doing it for four years now, and if you see a Native woman in the community, I’m really proud of the fact
that they have either heard of it or they’ve been a part of it. Anymore it’s like you get a group full of like fifteen Native women here in Oklahoma, two of them have been involved with Matriarch. We have overwhelmingly had a good response from the women involved with it.
We meet basically like during the calendar school year for about nine months. Everybody is too busy going to pow-wows [00:45:00] and ceremonies in the summer. We meet every two weeks whether it’s in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, we have two different chapters right now. We always have dinner and then there will be a topic that we talk about in that class. Some of them are really heavy, we talk about suicide rates in Indian country, we talk about our own personal experiences with rape and trauma, and also police violence issues.
But we also have really fun classes where we do beadwork, we make ribbon skirts. I do one that’s really popular where I talk about indigenous sexuality and relationships, different perspectives that we had like a hundred years ago, and different tribes had, and how we can infuse that into modern times, and into our sex and relationships. [00:46:00] One of my favorite ones is Neko, she’s a Cherokee indigenous chef. She does a food sovereignty class where she cooks and we make that stuff with her, so we learn how to do it.
Then the Auntie Project, that’s a group of us Native women, it’s mostly based in Oklahoma City, Norman; I’m like the lone Tulsa one. We started that group as a response to migrant children that were being housed in detention centers intentionally separated from their family, from their mothers, by Trump at the Texas border. So there was a group of them that were going to get sent to Fort Sill, here in Oklahoma. There’s a long history of Native Americans being sent to Fort Sill and dying, and being housed there by the United States [00:47:00] military, so that hit us pretty hard. As if it didn’t already with—because we as Native women
intimately know the histories of what it does when children are separated from their parents forcibly by the United States government, so we stepped in and intervened. They didn’t end up getting housed at Fort Sill. There was a lot of push back, a lot of it by us. But they were still at the border so we ended up doing these fundraisers and we worked with a local group here where they went down to see the detention center themselves and to make sure those kids were getting basic things like blankets, toothbrushes, food, things like that. So now that’s kind of changed to where we consider ourselves Native American women in service to indigenous youth here in Oklahoma. [00:48:00]
DELLINGER: [00:48:03] Wow, that’s a lot of really important work that you’re involved in. Not only are you doing all of these things that we’ve talked about here, but you’re also in nursing school right now, right?
PIÑA: (laughs) Yeah, why do I do this to myself? (laughter) Because I see a lot of things that upset me and I’m not good with just sitting on my butt and not doing anything. I attempt to help however I can. Yeah, so this will be my second degree, and it will be a Bachelor’s in Science and Nursing. This semester just ended a few weeks ago and it’s a really rigorous and hard program, but I know it’s one of the best nursing programs here in Oklahoma so I’m very thankful to be in it. I’ll be graduating next May. In the meantime I’m working as a movie [00:49:00] set medic on Killers of the Flower Moon.
DELLINGER: [00:49:05] I was going to ask you about that too.
PIÑA: That’s been a really rad experience. Because I’ve been working in hospitals since I was what, twenty, twenty-one? So that’s like a second home to me in a way, another dysfunctional home that I love. (laughter) Being able to take a lot of things I’ve learned through the years with my EMT training, and nursing training, and utilize that on a film set. Which honestly I don’t really—it’s not really that exciting. I mean, it is, but medically I’m mostly handing out Band Aids and pain pills for the crew that may or may not be hungover. [00:50:00]
But everybody is super nice on that film set. There’s a lot of Natives that are local hires, and a lot of us are pretty proud to be working on that, and hope when it comes out that it’s portraying the history of the Osage Indian murders pretty respectfully. Time will tell about that. Leonard DiCaprio is nice and that’s all I can say about that. He’s very interested in Native rights, and history, and also really digging the indigenous food he’s been given. It’s really beautiful locations so I kind of feel privileged that during my last month of nursing school, I’m like studying my nursing school homework in my car, but I’m on this beautiful movie set in a really remote [00:51:00] part of Osage County, and I’m surrounded by a hundred wild horses, and there’s a creek. I’m like, it could be worse. (laughs)
DELLINGER: [00:51:10] It could be worse. That sounds fun. I mean, that sounds amazing. What are your plans? What are you going to do when you get this nursing degree? Do you have plans?
PIÑA: (laughs) I always have too many plans. The nursing degree, yeah. My plan is when I graduate I want to start working specifically at the Claremore Indian Hospital in the ER because there’s like kind of different personality types within the hospital whether it’s like you’re a labor
and delivery nurse, or you are a pediatric nurse, which is aggressively not my scene, I am not that nurse. But where I do fit in is with the ER nurses. [00:52:00] So kind of a thrill junkie, I guess.
But I also want to exclusively work within Indian healthcare systems too because I want to act as a bridge, as much as I can, to honor a Native patient’s cultural preferences if they have any in their treatment of why they’re hospitalized. I’m not going to make fun of them if they’re like, well, I want to do some traditional medicine along with what you guys are doing or I’m not
going to tell them no.
Also just acting like a bridge between communicating unique needs to this patient population of which I am myself between perhaps a white doctor or other healthcare staff, and then what’s going on with this Native family, why is it they’re coming across this way. Why is it in this patient’s room there’s ten other family [00:53:00] members that just don’t leave and they’re crashing on the floor? That may annoy you, but that’s how we do things. It’s actually really beneficial to the patient so it only helps the patients. Yeah, that’s a short answer.
Eventually I think I would like to go on to become a nurse practitioner too and maybe have my own clinic at some point. But I’m also really tired of being in school. I just want to work. Now that I’ve done this movie set gig, it’s in my blood; it’s too fun, like I’m in it. So I always want to do that part-time on the side too.
DELLINGER: [00:53:45] All right, fantastic. What I want to do now is I want to transition our interview into some questions that concern your experiences and thoughts about COVID-19 and the pandemic [00:54:00] that has been caused by it. The United States is now over one year into
the COVID-19 pandemic, but do you remember how and when in 2020 you first heard about the virus and where you were when you first heard about the virus?
PIÑA: I don’t remember the specifics like that because I follow a lot of science news anyways, but I remember it being I would probably say I heard about it a little bit sooner than the average American. I think I remember hearing about it back in December and reading up on it, and what was happening with it, because I’ve always been really fascinated by viruses since I was a young
person. And like, is this the one? And reading about it from some legitimate science websites and being like, [00:55:00] I think this might turn into a thing, I better keep an eye on this. That was maybe about in December.
Then also worrying about if this does become a thing, how the hell is stupid, I mean, sorry, Trump going to handle this. He’s going to mess this up, which he did. I also am friends with scientists on social media and so talking to my other friends about it. I think it was by February where I’m like this is going to happen, there’s no way this isn’t going to happen here in America. And trying to prepare for that.
At that time I was joined into a private Facebook group by one of my friends and it was this private Facebook group of mostly just science people, like epidemiologists, other scientist, and doctors. [00:56:00] A lot of them were doctors in Italy and in Europe, so they were telling us back in February what was going on, what they were seeing in their hospitals, and saying to us in America, “Americans get prepared because this is going to come your way and take it seriously. Try to tell the people in your community.”
So trying to do that as best as I could being one person, and just seeing how it was just not taken seriously at all by the Trump administration, and how a lot of things could have been
handled better, could have been averted, could have been taken more seriously, but understanding that overall Americans are very science illiterate. Just ignorant in the true sense of the word, not that they’re necessarily stupid, they just don’t understand it. [00:57:00]
Also understanding that certain public health measures may seem really extreme to you and it’s like, “Nothing even happened anyways,” “it didn’t even get here,” “we only had four cases,” like that’s the point. That’s the whole point of epidemiology is that that’s how you know it’s working when you have a very low number and it seems like we blew it out of proportion because if we didn’t take those strong measurements then everybody would be getting COVID and that’s exactly what happened because Americans are so damn stubborn and individualistic. Like, “Won’t happen to me,” and it did happen to you. Or maybe it didn’t happen to you, but it happened to your mom, it happened to somebody else in your family, or somebody else you’re close to. That’s kind of always been a problem with I would say American culture in general is that we’re so unnecessarily stubborn and individualistic, [00:58:00] even if it’s to the point where we shoot ourselves in the foot.
DELLINGER: [00:58:11] During those—go ahead.
PIÑA: I don’t even remember what I was going to say with that.
DELLINGER: [00:58:20] Between the months of December of 2019 and February of 2020 were you thinking that the virus could make its way into Oklahoma and even into the Muscogee Nation? What were your thoughts about that?
PIÑA: I already knew it would just from—yeah, just from when I studied epidemiology and did my own research on a research project in undergrad. I’m not an epidemiologist by any stretch of the means, but I know just superficial stuff about it. Even with that superficial knowledge I’m like this is definitely going to come here, especially in a state like mine where people just don’t give a damn [00:59:00] about regards for their neighbors, which is ironic because it’s such a heavy Christian congregated state, and I believe some of the lessons are care for thy neighbor, love thy neighbor as yourself, but I often don’t see that happening.
It was sadly unsurprising to me when I saw so many churches just totally buck taking safety measures, even something as simple as wearing a mask where they ended up killing some of their congregation or people in the community, but just had to meet in person with no mask.
DELLINGER: [00:59:44] Yeah, I know what you’re saying. I kind of had those same thoughts unfortunately. At the beginning of the virus when this thing first started in 2020, do you remember what some of the initial [01:00:00] conversations were that you had with family and friends about the virus?
PIÑA: Extreme frustration that more people weren’t taking it seriously. Being if you say the laypeople were not taking it seriously. It’s like you kind of have this feeling of you can see something that is coming into your community and as we know, especially for Brown communities such as Native people, we always get hit worse, disproportionately, than somebody living in Jenks, Oklahoma. Thinking like how is this going to affect my tribe, how is this going to affect elders, how is this going to affect people that I love, and what precautions are we going to take.
Thankfully at that time I was living with my mom, still getting back on my feet after my separation from my son’s father, [01:01:00] and she took it seriously, so we were locked down, we were not messing around. Making sure my son Jose is safe, trying to tell his dad—nobody prepared me for co-parenting during a pandemic, I should write a book about it now perhaps, but trying to tell him hey, this is coming down the line, this is really going to be a thing, and him being like, there’s only four cases in Oklahoma. I was like, that’s four cases that we know of, it’s going to go higher, I promise you, and being told I’m medically arrogant when I’m trying to share this information in links from like peer reviewed legit sources from these doctors I’m exchanging conversations with that are in Italy and other parts of Europe.
It’s just so frustrating to be like I’m not trying to be arrogant, I’m trying to tell you, and help you, and give you some good intel [01:02:00], and you just spit it back in my face. That’s Oklahomans, I see people so differently now than how I did before this pandemic and we’re not even like past it. I have a category in my head now of kind of two types of people based on this pandemic and their response to it.
DELLINGER: [01:02:32] The next question that I was going to ask you, you already touched on it, I was going to ask you if you did stay sheltered in place, and if you did lock down there at your house. It sounds like you and your mom did do that.
PIÑA: Yeah, honestly it wasn’t too hard for us because we’re both kind of introverts and can keep ourselves entertained individually anyways. [01:03:00] I’m just like cool, more time to read, or go hiking. We’re both really outdoorsy people and no matter what the weather, so we’ll just gett Jose, and we would get him bundled up, and we would go hiking around Keystone,
sweet, nobody else is out here. (laughs) We just did a lot of outdoor activities no matter the weather, and then come home and get warmed up, and get into bed, and watch a movie in bed or something, talk to my friends on the phone. It wasn’t so difficult necessarily for me.
I also did a thing where in Oklahoma City I have three very, very close friends who were also quarantining, staying at home, very seriously, but they were my pandemic family is what I called them. [01:04:00] So if I was getting bored of Tulsa and not seeing a lot of people, I would just drive to Oklahoma City, and I had a spare bedroom down there, and I would just stay with them for a few days just to do something different. But they were also in strict quarantine and I was pretty much the only other person they saw too, so it really helped my sanity of having kind of that measure in place.
DELLINGER: [01:04:28] How did it impact your semester?
PIÑA: That semester I was not in school. I had to take a sabbatical, I had some personal family deaths happen, and I just needed to take a break from that program for a semester. But my friends that were still in the program, they were able to do their clinicals until March when the quarantine started and then they weren’t able to do their hospital clinicals the way that they normally would have. They really felt like they missed out because it’s like I wanted to do a [01:05:00] rotation in neuro trauma and I didn’t get to do that. Or, classes were online so even right now the semester I just did our classes are online and it’s not quite the same experience. But it also is kind of cool because I can just literally roll out of bed, get coffee, then sit at my laptop within fifteen minutes so I’m not late to class. (laughs)
I need to take a quick break because I really need to use the bathroom.
DELLINGER: [01:05:35] Okay, let me pause here. (Pause in recording) Okay, Miss Piña, I want to ask you what is your knowledge and understanding about the COVID-19 virus? Including if you can where it came from, how it spread, and the physical impact it has on the body.
PIÑA: So there’s a lot of different types of coronaviruses, [01:06:00] it’s more of in virology the coronavirus is a umbrella statement for a type of virus and within the coronavirus category there’s a lot of subtypes. This one is specifically novel coronavirus 19 because 2019 is when it was identified, that’s the 19 part and COVID—I can’t remember exactly what COVID is. I know it stems from coronavirus though.
But Wuhan, China is where the first outbreak happened but it’s really hard to kind of pinpoint the exact origins of some viruses. Even though that’s where we first started taking serious notice of it, it could have had an origin different than Wuhan, China. [01:07:00] Especially when you have a large population like how you have in China and especially when you have a lot of people living in close proximity to animals such as a wet market, such as a farm. That’s when you see a lot of viruses jumping from an animal to a human or conversely from a human to an animal through a process called zoonosis.
We oftentimes think of cowpox is a good example of that, which is how smallpox came to be. An animal could have a virus and it doesn’t affect them, right? But somehow that animal, say a chicken, has a virus and then it somehow comes into contact with a human, it could have a devastating effect on us. What I like to remind people of too is that when we’re at the petting zoo [01:08:00] or interacting with wild animals is that we could also have viruses that we don’t know
about that we’re shedding and it doesn’t affect us, but an animal comes into contact with it, then it could kill them, it could make the animals really sick even though it doesn’t damage us. What was the other part of your question? Sorry.
DELLINGER: [01:08:26] How the virus is spread and the physical impact that it has on the body.
PIÑA: Yeah, for this one it tends to be aerosol spread, so through sneezing, close contact. Not so much fomite surfaces, which is to say my hands have been all over my desk right now, I’m touching it, and then say you come an hour later and you sit at this desk that I’m sitting at and I had COVID, the chances of you getting it are there potentially, but [01:09:00] it’s still pretty small because it’s just not—viruses for the kind of damage they can do, they’re actually pretty puny and weak outside of being in a host cell and doing its damage. They die pretty quickly if they’re on outside surfaces. It’s really through close contact, through people sneezing or talking and there’s these little microscopic spittle that you can sometimes feel and often don’t feel that get on your face if you’re in close contact talking to somebody, like at the bar loud talking over music and drunk or something.
And specifically for COVID-19 how it affects people is going to vary greatly. It depends on that person’s particular genetics, do they have a compromised immune system, do they have other [01:10:00] comorbidities, are they overweight, do they have a compromised respiratory system. That one especially if they have a compromised respiratory system is going to affect how aggressive they’re going to feel the effects of that virus or not. For some they may have it and they’re asymptomatic, usually younger healthy people.
Some people I know have gotten it and it was like a really, really bad case of the flu to them but they weren’t hospitalized. That said, one of my friends I was talking to recently, she is approximately my age, she’s in her thirties, and in pretty good health. She got it; it knocked her on her butt for a week or two like a really bad flu. She still can’t smell though. It’s been almost a year since she’s had it and she has lost her sense of smell. It’s really freaking her out because she’s like I didn’t realize how much I need it, I miss smelling garlic, I miss smelling my food, [01:11:00] it affects my taste, and it really has made her depressed because that would depress me. Even though she didn’t die, there’s still these lingering effects, these long haul effects.
Let alone the people that are older, and they get it, and it ravages their system, takes hold pretty quickly, and they end up in an ICU, and they don’t make it, or they barely made it.
DELLINGER: [01:11:32] What has been your plan of action to stay safe from the virus both at home and when you leave the house? Can you share some of your tactics for staying safe from the virus?
PIÑA: I wish I still had it, I had an N95 mask and I took a sharpie and I wrote really big on it, I might have COVID. (laughs) Because I noticed it’s always dudes, right, when I’d go to Target and they’d [01:12:00] still be up in my personal space. And I would just kind of lie honestly. Like there was one dude that was in a line and he was standing really close to me, this is when I had to go to Walmart in Sand Springs, of course. They were not that serious about wearing masks as they were in midtown Target. And he was standing really close to me without a mask at the height of the pandemic and I told him to back up. I was like, I’m immunocompromised,
could you please step back six feet? He was like, oh, okay, and he did. But I would just say stuff like that.
But I also had a mask on. I never got COVID, thank god, but I had a mask that said, I might have COVID. When people see that they do a double take and it’s like, is she being snarky, does she mean it? I don’t know, but I’m not getting near her. And it’s like, thank you. Also a way to have men find your repulsive but whatever, it’s a pandemic. (laughs) [01:13:00]
Also trying to get good intel out there. I really strive to be a good science communicator, especially for Indigenous and Brown communities where we rightfully have a reason to be suspicious of the healthcare systems and overall our history of being experimented on by dominant medicine. But I can read things about—also in my undergrad I took a lot of history of sciences classes and two of my favorite classes were Plagues and Populations, absolutely one of my favorite classes. So I understand a lot about plagues and epidemiology from that class, made an A. Made an A in all these classes, they were so great.
Then there was [01:14:00] another class taught my Dr. Aparna Nair who is India Indian, I always have to make that distinction because she’s around a bunch of Natives and we ended up becoming friends, and she ended up becoming my research mentor, and it was kind of we laugh about it because I’m like, oh yeah, Indians this, and she’s like, “Ah, say Native American,” and I’m like “Nah, you’re in Indian Territory, we’re not in India anymore.” (laughs)
But she taught a class called Racism in Science and then another class, I can’t remember the exact name, it was kind of wordy, but it was Twentieth Century Science in Empire and it was talking about how the British Empire colonized a lot of places and the implications it had for science and medicine and the naturalists. Plagues and Population was taught by Dr. Diane
Warren. Both of them ended up becoming [01:15:00] my research mentors in undergrad when I was doing research. That’s kind of the praxis I’m coming from.
Other things I did was taking some of that knowledge that I learned in those classes and publicly on Facebook or on Instagram making little update videos for my friends, but I made them public, and I would share them in the big Creek Nation Facebook page, there’s a couple of them, so that they would see somebody from the same community that’s Creek, that’s Chicana, that’s Brown, but also I have a background in science, I’ve been in the ish and I’m a frontline worker, and I’m saying I’ve read a lot of these articles and let me translate them from the scientific jargon to just the damn basics, what does it mean without all the fluff, this is what’s going on. We’re not being experimented on with this vaccine and here’s why. This is going to [01:16:00] everybody in the entire world whether it’s the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Astro Zeneca, Moderna, Pfizer. I even looked up the actual ingredients of those vaccines and tried to discuss that and translate that.
It really made me feel good to have some Native people private message me saying, hey, it means a lot that you’re doing these videos. I was on the fence about getting the vaccine, but now seeing you, somebody from the community, talk about it, you answered a lot of my questions. I’m going to get it and I’m going to have my family get it now. That meant a lot to me. I can’t remember the rest of your question.
DELLINGER: [01:16:50] That’s okay. I think we’ve kind of moved on anyway at this point. Since you’re talking about the vaccine let’s go ahead and stay with that for a minute because [01:17:00] I was going to ask you if you had been vaccinated. Then if you have, I was going to ask you if you had any side effects from the vaccine.
PIÑA: Yeah. I got vaccinated back in early January because I am a frontline worker, I had access to it sooner than most, tier one here. I specifically—I’m on team Moderna. I got it at OU Health Center at 41st and Yale. The first shot it really knocked me on my butt. But not that bad, it was just like a day and a half. I felt kind of like—honestly, I just felt really fatigued, but I didn’t have a temperature, I had some body aches, but I just relaxed. I think Friday was the second day after the shot and I just relaxed that weekend. One of my friends [01:18:00] ran me by some food and left it on my porch.
But then after a day and a half I felt fine. The second shot I got a month later, I had planned, because it’s usually the second shot that’s knocking people on their butt, and making them sick, so I had prepared. I got it on a Friday so I’d have the whole weekend to recover. Not anything happened. No. But I also did kind of follow the advice where I was preparing. My friends gave me some really, really high quality vitamin D pills. I was reading these stories that were showing a possible correlation between taking a very good adequate amount of vitamin D and staving off the sickness that you would get from COVID. So about a week and a half before I started taking a lot of vitamin D pills. They were [01:19:00] really a kind of expensive high quality one.
I don’t know if that’s why, but it’s something I did in preparation for the second shot. But I didn’t get sick and I was totally expecting to. Mine was the opposite of most peoples’.
DELLINGER: [01:19:18] How has the vaccine changed life for you?
PIÑA: Do what?
DELLINGER: [01:19:23] How has the vaccine changed life for you?
PIÑA: I’ll give you a great example. This past weekend on Saturday, one of my friends, April, she’s been a local activists concerning vaccines and mask wearing, and we’ve worked a lot together this past year. And when we’ve had acute moments of frustration, also been crying on the phone to each other, like why won’t these people listen, why won’t they care, give a damn about their families and communities. She had a get together though. She’s known for [01:20:00] having these every eight day parties where she has a get together at her house every eight days, so it kind of rotates throughout the week. If you missed it on Saturday, you can come the next week, it’s on Sunday, and we’re just going to do a brunch.
I have really sorely missed those throughout the pandemic. And she had her very first one again, not quite post pandemic, but say post age of vaccine. In order to get into this house party of hers, you had to show your vaccine card at the door. So it was a vaccinated only. Usually I’m not like exclusive like uh, you have to show this to gain entry. But for this I will be exclusive, and snobby, and yes, you’ve got to show your vaccination card.
It was awesome seeing a lot of my friends that I haven’t seen in a year and actually get to hug them. It was a pretty emotional thing [01:21:00] for a lot of us involved. And being like we still feel weird about being indoors and in such close proximity to everybody here, but it felt really good to have that sense of community too being like hey, we’re being responsible as we can about this, and it feels safe, so we’re allowed to do this because we’ve taken these protective measures for ourselves but for others too.
I’ve actually been quite social this week and I feel like I’m getting back some semblance of my old life where there’s like different art gallery shows I want to go to or hanging out with some of the Reservation Dogs cast and crew members last night.
DELLINGER: [01:21:40] Yeah, it’s a great feeling, isn’t it? I want to ask you, since you have Jose; you said Jose is four years old?
PIÑA: Yes.
DELLINGER: [01:21:51] Throughout the pandemic, what have been your thoughts about possibly Jose contracting the virus?
PIÑA: I thought about it a lot. That’s why me and my mom did such a [01:22:00] strict lockdown. Also my mom is in her sixties, if she were to get it, it may not be really good for her. But also we don’t quite know the extent that it was affecting children and so I just mad researched as much as I could the peer reviewed research that was coming out from scientists all over the world, seeing any up to date stuff, trying to get ahead and see what the latest updates were. I had gathered that it wasn’t as harmful to children, it’s not 100% guaranteed. There are children that have died from COVID-19. But I knew that if Jose were to get it, it may not be as bad for him or he would be asymptomatic.
I really put an emphasis on us playing together, on us cooking together at home, because I knew he was missing his friends from school, his Boston Avenue weekday school he goes to [01:23:00] because his daycare had shut down. So it was really great actually that I took that
semester off because I was able to be around and watch him a lot and spend that time with him. Yeah, just trying to be safe for my son.
And trying to explain it to him too what was going on. I know that he said a couple of times in the past year, “I can’t go stay at Manny’s house because of the virus. The virus makes people sick.” He does have kind of this understanding of what’s happening as much as he can for his developmental age.
DELLINGER: [01:23:52] Do you have any ideas or thoughts about what has been the toll of illness and death [01:24:00] in the Muscogee Nation as a whole because of COVID-19?
PIÑA: I don’t. I don’t have any numbers that I can quote for you. I just know that we have lost people, elders, to COVID-19, and that for a lot of Native people we tend to live in these intergenerational households, so that also can affect the likelihood of somebody getting COVID when you have houses where more people are living in smaller spaces together. Taking care, watching out, dropping food off to grandparent folk. But I don’t have really a good grasp on how it’s affected my tribe.
What I can say about my tribe is that there was a lot of vaccine hesitancy that I was seeing, so I was doing my [01:25:00] best to help mitigate that and to get good information out there from somebody that’s also of the Nation, but also knows the science world and can translate that information, and hopefully they trust me enough to believe what I’m saying and I’m not just like a stooge for the CDC or something.
DELLINGER: [01:25:23] Right, I was going to—
PIÑA: Yeah, go on.
DELLINGER: [01:25:24] I was going to ask you your thoughts on how the Muscogee Nation Health Department has performed throughout the pandemic including their testing last year, their care of our citizens who have become sick with the virus, and the vaccination process. Do you have anything else that you’d like to say about that?
PIÑA: I am extremely proud of Creek Nation for how we’ve handled it and how we took it seriously immediately. How a lot of tribes in Oklahoma [01:26:00] took immediate action to do mask mandates, even sending out little care packages to citizens full of like hand sanitizer, and masks, and wipes, and information. We should have been running the state, not Governor Stitt, during this pandemic. Hands down, hands down. This has been a great show of what tribal sovereignty looks like in action and how we’re not doing this stupid political tap dance. It’s like what needs to happen, okay, let’s do it.
Firstly, it was for our tribal citizens, and then secondly, for the non-tribal citizens, because whether we like it or not, they’re still part of our community and what they do is going to affect our tribal community as well. I’m really proud of how Creek Nation took it seriously and tried to have actions in place to social distance, to wear masks, [01:27:00] to give out good intel about things you can do to mitigate spreading this virus and to be safe.
Then when the vaccine did come out, how we just rolled it out, and it’s like who can get vaccinated, and us getting people vaccinated, our tribal citizens, and then also when the time came getting non-tribal citizens vaccinated too. It wasn’t just us; a lot of tribes are doing that.
Whereas Governor Stitt’s dragging his feet, making it political, saying, “Oh, it’s not that bad.” Well, maybe not for you, white man, but for us, you and I did not grow up in the same neighborhood, we did not grow up in the same zip code, so I got a totally different praxis I’m operating from.
DELLINGER: [01:27:51] Right, and on that note, I was going to ask you how do you think the city of Tulsa has done [01:28:00] throughout the pandemic.
PIÑA: Dr. Bruce Dart, who is basically like Tulsa’s own Dr. Fauci, has done a very good job as best as he can with his hands also being tied politically. He has gotten death threats, he has been told to not go to Broken Arrow City Council meetings because it would be dangerous for him to go to them. I think a lot of the mask mandates that happened, going back to my friend April
Brooks, who had her cool vaccinated only party. She is just a regular Tulsa citizen, has no formal training, she’s just very passionate and very dedicated. She was super instrumental in getting the mask mandate passed here in Tulsa.
Mayor Bynum is just [01:29:00] —he’s very political, but he also is trying to get votes, so even though I think he knows in his heart what the best thing was to do, he’s not going to do it because he’s trying to get elected again and also because he’s trying to keep his republican base. Look at what he did when President Trump came, he was initially doing a good job with masks, like trying to do mask stuff in Tulsa, and closing down restaurants, and quarantining. But that was just a short amount of time and as soon as Trump was like, hey, I’m going to have a really huge rally in your city, he’s like, okay! Come with open arms! It’s like where did that go? So he’s just a shill, I’ve lost so much—I don’t like Bynum anymore, he’s terrible.
History will not remember him kindly for his inaction and his ineptitude [01:30:00] during this. Whereas people like Bruce Dart who have been trying to do the right thing, even though they’ve been threatened politically, having his position removed, and also death threats. I myself was punched in the face by an anti-masker.
DELLINGER: [01:30:25] Can you talk about that?
PIÑA: Sure. I did kind of a stunt on October 31 where that was when we were really having some crazy high numbers, because I would look at the numbers weekly. And I knew that because it was Halloween, we were going into fall so more people are indoors, it was about to be the holiday season, how are people going to navigate gathering or not gathering for Thanksgiving, for Christmas. I just knew our numbers were going to go up because no matter what when the colder [01:31:00] seasons happen virus numbers go up.
I was just so frustrated, and I just felt like—I come from this background of doing demonstrations, like what’s an effective way, a tool, of getting a message across to people. So screaming and yelling in their faces isn’t going to do a damn thing. That has never changed anybody’s mind. I don’t find that to be effective. You’ve got to do things where it’s like culture jam. You’ve got to come in through this other way that people aren’t expecting.
What we did is me and my friend Derek, he’s another Green Corn Medic, we got Tyvek suits. Thanks Yvette Wiley, my mom, she totally snagged me the Tyvek suits from work. (laughs) We got duct tape. My friend Derek, who is a little computer savvy, he literally made [01:32:00] us these DIY badges that we just made up a name. We called it the Tulsa County
Health Taskforce Team. It had a Tulsa logo on it, like the old Tulsa City logo, and it just said like Tulsa County Health Taskforce Team, and COVID response unit.
So we had those badges on but then we also had like the full Tyvek suit on, and we got yellow dish gloves, and we taped them so it looked like—it was a very good suit. Then we had our boots on, and we duct taped all of it, because we did need to protect ourselves legitimately but also for the look. Then one of my other friends, he’s a scientist at I’m not going to say where,
but he’s like a local professor/scientist, he 3D-printed us some face shields to also protect our face and we were wearing masks underneath. [01:33:00]
We were like geared up, did not get COVID, by the way. I went downtown and I Facebook livestreamed all these people going into all these bars. I get really mad still thinking about this where there’s lines going down the street. I had a clipboard, and I was just going around, and it was just a joke, this is total like guerilla theater that I’m doing, kind of a performance piece where I’m just saying, “Hi, we’re with Tulsa,” and we’re just walking all of us fully geared up in these Tyvek hazmat looking suits, and we got some strange looks because there were all these people that are not wearing masks. They’re in like, oh, I’m in a Wonder Woman costume, I’m Captain America, I look like a slutty nurse, all dressed up.
And I’m like, “Hi, we’re with the [01:34:00] Tulsa County COVID Taskforce and we need to get your information for contact tracing because I see that you’re not wearing a mask.” I’m just real professional sounding, calm, and I’m like, “I see you’re not wearing a mask and so we need to contact trace you because there’s a very high chance that you will get COVID if you go into this bar because we’re having our highest positive cases specifically in this county right now.” And that was true: it was red. I do my research on this so all that—and I looked at it that morning, so all the data I was giving them was the most up to date data as of that morning for the
number of positive cases, and how I knew we were about to run out of ICU beds in the local area hospitals, which we eventually did.
In fact, I think it ended up getting to where there were no ICU beds for like a hundred mile radius around us, so people were having to get flown to Arkansas or Missouri. Sorry, I digress. [01:35:00] You really should have seen the look on their faces. I have that video; by the way, I could shoot it to you. Where people would do this and just like turn around. I’m like, wait, wait, why are you so ashamed? Are you ashamed that you’re not wearing a mask? Then I would ask will you just do me a favor; will you sign this piece of paper where you promise not to see your grandma or your parents for a month after this and that you’ll self quarantine? And people are just—they knew what they were doing was wrong, but they were doing it anyways.
I actually am weirdly thankful for a couple of the people where I’m like, “Why are you out here?” and they’re like, “I guess if gave a shit I really wouldn’t be out here, would I? But I paid for my ticket to go to this Halloween party.” It was specifically Blue Dome District bars, “So, I’m going to go anyways.” Some of them [01:36:00] they were just getting really defensive and screaming in my face. But they knew what they were doing was wrong, and a few of them felt really guilty, and were like, I guess I didn’t really think about it. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m going to do it anyways. I guess I don’t really care. And I’m like, well, thanks for admitting that you don’t care about anyone else.
There was this other guy and he was a rave promoter, he was having an indoor rave, and me and Derek went there. We intentionally stayed on the sidewalk. He didn’t have a mask on, but as soon as we walked up, and it looked like we were official hazmat, he put his mask on. And I’m like, “Hey, we’re with the,” like real straight faced, “We’re with the Tulsa County COVID
Taskforce Team. We saw that you’re having this party here; tell me what your COVID precautions are.” It was such BS because he was like, “We’re doing temperature checks, and we’re—hand [01:37:00] sanitizer.” Which is ultimately just Hygiene Theater, it doesn’t really do much when you have people that are drunk or doing drugs. I mean, do you think people who are drunk or doing drugs are going to really be conscientious and good about keeping their mask on? They’re not. There were so many people I saw inside dancing that did not have their masks on.
He got frustrated with us, and he was talking about how, “Well, I’m doing this because so many of my friends have killed themselves because of social isolation.” I’m like, “I’m sorry, but how many?” He was trying to say eighteen. I just started talking data to him and I’m like, I’m sorry, you’re an N-value of one, and that’s considered statistically insignificant. Your N-values are not very good sir; let me show you these other values. Then I start talking about COVID data and how many people are dying from COVID. I’m like, this is not a good justification for having a party because ultimately if you’re worried about your friends dying, [01:38:00] you potentially are going to cause more people to die rather than committing suicide, which I think was just kind of a lie on his end.
He got frustrated and he had one of his buddies who was drunk, he was like, “Security, will you get these people off the property?” So his drunk friend came over and proceeded to shove my friend up against a van and got in his face, and this is all on tape. Even though we were on public property the whole time, we were within our legal rights to be there because he doesn’t own that building, and we were on public property. Then that guy came up to me and I was like, “Hey, by the way I’m recording this, get off my friend Derek,” who he had shoved against a van. Then he came up and he punched me, which knocked the phone out of my hand.
DELLINGER: [01:38:52] Like punched you in the head or the face?
PIÑA: Yeah, he was kind of drunk, it was like this, but that’s [01:39:00] what I would expect from that lot of people.
DELLINGER: [01:39:07] I don’t know if that was brave of you to go down there and do that because people are people and they’re going to do what they want to do. So I’m glad that nothing worse happened to you down there in that situation. But yeah, that is very unfortunate.
PIÑA: It did ultimately serve a goal. I was livestreaming it and I got other people seeing how bad the situation was here. So I had people in New Mexico, in New York that were watching saying, oh my god, we’re in strict quarantine, how the hell is Oklahoma being this open and having bars open? They were shocked and then they were sharing it and discussing it. I know too that parts of that snippet I was contacted by a news reporter, so it was on Channel 8 News. [01:40:00] Then it was broadcast on the news and that caused a discussion locally. Then I also know that certain parts of that video I shot were shown in a private meeting with Bynum and City Council and that was ultimately my goal was to show how ridiculous we looked compared to the rest of the United States and the extremes.
Maybe it wasn’t the—I don’t know, a different tactic needed to happen and so I was just kind of thinking along the line of Abbie Hoffman and how they did political stunts. Yeah, I got punched but I’m fine. Ultimately I think it was actually a really effective thing that I did overall through the community and especially the people that saw it.
DELLINGER: [01:40:53] I’m going to start watching for you more on the news. (laughter) [01:41:00] We are kind of winding down here. We’re getting towards the end of our interview, but I can’t end this thing without asking you about the COVID Chronicles, the Marvel Comics of this creation of this comic book called COVID Chronicles and your character in that. Can you please just share a little bit about that and how that came about?
PIÑA: Yeah, so during the Trump rally we had this one Cherokee journalist, Graham, and he was kind of an embedded journalist with the Green Corn Medics. He wrote an article about Green Corn Medics and me that made it to Indian County Media Today and I think Lakota Times too. I don’t know how he saw it, but this guy from Marvel Comics had seen those online and he contacted me a couple of days after the Trump rally. [01:42:00] I thought it was fake at first.
He was like, “Hey, my name is Ethan. I’m with Marvel Comics and I’m putting together a comic called COVID Chronicles where I’m documenting different kinds of frontline workers and I see that you’re Native American, you started a street medic team, and you were protecting people at the Trump Rally, I really would like to interview you and highlight that. We ended up having a discussion and it was legit. He wanted me to be a part of it. I was like, well, that’s not why I’m doing this stuff. I was in Pawhuska and I talked to a few Native female friends I trust like, I don’t know if I should do this because I’m doing this to help people, not doing it to be like, hey look at me.
They’re like, “Apollonia, you have to do this because we don’t have enough positive representation in media and usually if we’re [01:43:00] portrayed in comics or media it’s sad, or suicide, single moms, alcoholism, not like hey, here’s a mother, and she’s a STEM major, and she’s doing these things.” I was like, okay, god, I’ll do it. So I did it. He interviewed me and it
was a very collaborative process where he let me edit the things, like the actual script. Not the script, but the words that will be in the comic bubbles. Then he actually let me see the rough drafts of the comic images themselves to be like, does this check out, is this accurate. So what you see portrayed is very accurate because I had a hand in editing some minor details.
But yeah, I’m really proud to be a part of that project because the other frontline workers that were documented were a doctor in Canada, a nurse [01:44:00] in New York City at the height of the pandemic, a journalist in New York City, this Italian opera singer in Italy when they were on strict quarantine lockdown where he would sing opera songs from his balcony each day to entertain his neighbors while they couldn’t leave their houses. But I got to represent Green Corn Medics and also Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There’s also this really cute panel where it’s me and my son. Ethan is like, “I don’t know if you want to do this, but we can draw your kid into one of the panels, and maybe that’s something that he can look back on when he’s older.” So Jose makes a cameo appearance in the comic too.
DELLINGER: [01:44:49] Yeah, I have already checked out the comic. I haven’t purchased it yet, but I do plan on doing that. I know that little picture that you’re talking about that has both of you [01:45:00] in there. But congratulations on that, that is such a cool project and really an honor that you’ve got there, so that’s fantastic.
All right, we’re down to our last question and here’s what I’m going to ask you. This is for future generations of Muscogee who may find themselves trying to survive a global health and economic event such as our current coronavirus pandemic. What words of advice or wisdom can you give them about living with and surviving such a catastrophic event?
PIÑA: I really hate using the term resilient because I feel like resilient gets tossed around and used way too much. I just want to say that we’re a tough people and [01:46:00] we’ve seen worse. We have lived through Andrew Jackson, we’ve lived through Trump, and we intimately have firsthand knowledge of knowing the devastation that viruses and diseases can have on a population and decimate. But we have still survived all of that and most of us will be able to survive this too. But we have to think collectively, not individualistically, which is a hard concept here in America. I think we, as Indian and Creek people, we do a better job of that than most.
DELLINGER: [01:46:59] Is there anything else that you would like to say [01:47:00] or share about your experiences, your thoughts, about the COVID-19 pandemic?
PIÑA: I just want to keep reiterating how proud I am that our tribe and other tribes in Oklahoma did in response to this pandemic by taking it seriously immediately, not blowing it off thinking it will just blow over. And also our response to how—we did a very excellent job with the vaccine
rollout. So I would really like, particularly for us in Oklahoma in this chapter of our history, I would like for this to be remembered as a time where tribes really shown in their sovereignty of what is possible when you let us engage in our self-determination, not only for us, but for non native citizens as well. And how we did a better job navigating this pandemic and the vaccine rollout [01:48:00] than our own Governor Stitt did.
DELLINGER: [01:48:05] Yes. Miss Piña, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to participate in this project. Your thoughts and words here today are greatly appreciated. I just want to say mvto, thank you very much.
PIÑA: Enkv.
END OF INTERVIEW