Byline: Kaylea Berry/Reporter
TVLSE, Oklahoma – River Spirit Casino Resort accommodated the 2022 Tribal Women Veterans Summit Thursday, Nov. 3. The Muscogee Nation Veterans Department organized the event with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs-Office of Tribal Government Relations, Muskogee Regional Benefits Office, and the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs. More than 90 attendees and 41 vendors came together to participate in the conference.
Discussion topics covered at the summit were employment rights, the Women Veterans Workshop, and Peer Mentoring Program. U.S. Army Retired Sgt. 1st Class Debra Mooney (Choctaw) fought in Fallujah’s first and second battles in 2004 as a combat engineer with the 120th Engineer Battalion. Additionally, in 2008, she completed a second tour in Iraq. Mooney testified about her harrowing experiences after coming home as a combat veteran with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
J.D. Ahtone (Mvskoke/Kiowa), Muscogee Nation Labor Relations Specialist/Human Resources, spoke about what employers can do to help veterans dealing with disabilities or traumas and what rights and options those employees have.
After lunch, even more personal and sensitive discussions were facilitated concerning moral injury and military sexual trauma (MST). MST is when anyone experiences any sexual activity against their will while in the military. According to the V.A., moral damage is when someone may commit, fail to stop, or witness acts that go against their firmly held moral standards and values when they are under traumatic or particularly stressful conditions.
“A lot of them are hard subjects to talk about, but that’s what they want from me,” said Mary Culley, Veteran Affairs Office of Tribal Government Relations Tribal Relations Specialist. “They want to be able to find a way to talk about it for their healing purposes.”
To be able to heal, there first needs to be a conversation about what someone needs to recover. Everyone needs to be heard, and TWVS is a place for Tribal women veterans to be heard. Considering how intense the conversations were, note cards were available for attendees to write down their questions to be read by staff.
The TWVS started in 2012 with Culley and Lisa Mussett, Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs Women Veterans Coordinator. The summit came about after Culley and Mussett talked about how to better provide for women veterans.
“As women veterans, Mary and I both encountered difficulties within the service-connected disability claim processes,” said Mussett. “I left another agency and came to this agency because I specifically wanted to learn how to write service-connected disability claims for women.”
Culley, Mussett, and others worked together as a team of women veterans helping women veterans. They noticed that the V.A.’s presence was lacking in Indian Country and reached out to the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the V.A. central office in Washington, D.C. This initiated what the VBA called presumptive events for veterans and widows in 2018.
Culley said, “We were finding so many Indian women who had never applied for a claim, didn’t even consider themselves vets, didn’t even know they were vets, definitely were not getting healthcare from the V.A.”
The presumptive events help veterans and widows through the claim process. Whether someone is filing a claim for the first time or refiling a claim after a previous denial, help is available to step by step.
“We use that platform as a way to try to get as many disability claims approved as we can, if not that day, then that week of the event,” Culley said. “So they’re not fighting this lengthy system of trying to figure out where their disability claims are.”
The first Tribal Women Veterans Summit in 2019 focused more on informing Tribal women veterans in Oklahoma on what they can file a claim for and what is available to them. They could also file a claim and receive medical care if they were injured, assaulted, or had problems resulting from their time in service.
The team of women veterans working for women veterans planned to continue to have the summit annually. However, like with everything else, covid hindered a summit in 2020. The team was resilient and found another way to hold a summit for 2021. They conducted a three-session summer webinar series, and although it was unconventional, it was effective.
“We had 260 plus women across the nation that all watched and participated with us,” said Mussett. “That was just overwhelming to us.”
The team wanted to do things differently than the previous year, so they reached out to former attendants and asked what they wanted to know about, what they thought the V.A. needed to know, and who the V.A. could better serve veterans and widows.
“That was a hard one to tackle,” said Culley. “We covered missing and murdered indigenous women, and we covered human trafficking because we’re finding out that American Indians, for some reason, that served in the military are high numbers caught up in human trafficking.”
The hard questions and topics continued this year, and issues for next year are already being talked about. These topics are not easy to hear or relive, but they are essential for healing. Having vendors with resources to help veterans through their healing journey available during the summit allows them to gather the information they need in one place.
Representatives from all over brought information on healthcare, job and education opportunities, taxes, honor guard, suicide prevention, housing, and many more topics. All these resources are available for veterans and their families to utilize, but they can only do so if they know what is available.
“There are so many levels of services available to women, veterans, and Native Tribal members that I wasn’t aware of at all,” said Tulsa Air National Guard Senior Master Sergeant Amanda Lonsdale (Mvskoke), 138th Fighter Wing Contracting Officer. “I think we all have to start awareness for programs and options that are available to members, and then education, and then inviting people to join in.”
Everyone needs someone they can count on, especially when they are going through something.
“I think the most important thing is about the connections you make when you come and attend summits or conferences like this,” said Bonnie Smith, 138th Fighter Wing Air National Guard Human Resource Advisor. “I met some pretty incredible women and veterans here at the summit.”
There are resources available to service members, past and present. Visit VA.gov or Oklahoma.gov/veterans for information on what resources are available and the location of the closest regional office.
