Deborah Scott grew up in Tulsa. Her family originally lived in Adair County and moved to Tulsa in the 1940s when dealing with World War II. In 1984, her family relocated again to Houston for economic reasons, and she attended the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and graduated with a master’s in public health. In Houston, she realized how far she was from Cherokee Nation and how important her Cherokee community was to her. Knowing from her public health training, that Cherokee was home to thousands of Native Americans, she created the Native American Health Coalition to bring the health needs of Native people to the forefront. During this time, in the early 1990s, she began to study Cherokee history and developed a course that was taught through a free adult-learning program, Leisure Learning. The participants of the Cherokee history class formed the membership for the Cherokee Cultural Society, a membership organization of Cherokees in east Texas interested in community. The Cherokee Cultural Society has been active since 1992 and evolved over time to the Cherokee Citizens League of Southeast Texas, a Cherokee Nation at-large community. Ms. Scott is back in Tulsa and continuing to work with Cherokee organizations to improve health and wellbeing. She is a founding board member for the Cherokee Nation At-Large Mutual Assistance, Inc.

Garry Ray Martin, citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a retiree after forty years with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, beginning as a residential boarding school counselor for Jones Academy and culminating as a Branch Chief for Planning, Bureau of Indian Education, Washington D.C. Notable during my career was being assigned a Jury Commissioner, Court of Indian Offenses in Northern California to being honored as a commencement speaker at Dull Knife College, Montana, as well as a college counselor with Haskell Indian Nations University, Kansas. I was taught that we all belong to one another and be mindful of our elders and employ this value in my everyday life. The enjoyment of photography, Jeeping on roads less traveled and learning of my Cherokee relations occupy my days.