Hello, Verified News Community! I’m VNN’s Rachael Schuit.
Happy to have you here for our January News Byte!
Let’s start with the historic moment everyone is still talking about - Lily Gladstone winning her Golden Globe.
VNN Oklahoma was there for the Golden Globes Watch Party in Pawhuska, presented by our news partner Osage News, when Gladstone became the first Indigenous actress to win a Golden Globe for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Earlier this week, the blockbuster hit received 10 Oscar nominations. Plans for the Osage Oscars Watch Party are currently underway.
Relations between Oklahoma tribes and Governor Kevin Stitt were hit and miss this month.
The Five Civilized Tribes announced they will not participate in Stitt’s One Oklahoma Task Force, with leaders calling it an effort to spread falsehoods about the law and minimize tribal voices.
On a positive note, compacts between Stitt and the Chickasaw and Apache tribes were successfully negotiated this month, relating to car tags and tobacco.
In other government news, The Frontier reported Oklahoma taxpayers paid $4,000 of out of state travel expenses for State Superintendent Ryan Walters.
Walters billed the state despite Governor Sitt’s public spending ban for most out of state travel expenses.
And Senator Nathan Dahm from Broken Arrow filed a bill that would require news companies and journalists to apply for licenses, amongst other things.
Some promising social justice bills were also filed to even the scales, including SB1470 (also named The Oklahoma Survivor’s Act). The bill would allow courts to issue lower sentences for abuse victims if that abuse was a significant factor in their offense. It also has a retroactive component.
SB 1470's introduction is also bittersweet for social justice advocate Amanda Ross, whose childhood friend and fellow advocate Ashlyn Faulkner tragically passed away in December of last year.
A new micro cafe in Tulsa is also championing social justice.
Carabelle’s Micro Cafe is the latest venture of Carabelle’s Legacy founder Maria Morris. She told us she is excited to employ justice-involved women while serving up good eats.
And lots of activities on the VNN Oklahoma front this month.
VNN’s Brittany Harlow was a guest panelist at the Oklahoma Municipal League’s Tribal Municipal Symposium on the panel “Breaking Down Barriers: Strategies of Community Building.”
She also traveled to Bentonville for the Heartland Stepping Stones 2024 Cohort Bootcamp. VNN will be working with Builders + Backers to take our social news media company to the next level.
VNN’s Citizen Journalism Project kicks off in just a few days. Make sure to keep up with our latest news in the VNN app and sign up for free news and updates. That’s how you will get access to our original reporting and the work of all of our collaborators.
Find more news from our VNN collaborators in the VNN News Feed, on our YouTube channel, and by signing up for our free email news and updates.
We are looking forward to our next steps on this VNN journey. Thanks for being here with us. For VNN, I’m Rachael Schuit. We’ll see you next month!