Ms. Thomas’s son, Patrick Thomas, said he called the I.H.S. clinic in Wewoka the next month to schedule vaccinations for him and his mother. They were denied, he said, because they were Freedmen.
“When it got to that point, I felt like, ‘Man, you all hate us that bad, I don’t even trust you to give me a shot now,’” said Mr. Thomas, who is also a former council representative.
The denial of health services to Freedmen came up during a hearing on their status in July, provoking a furious reaction from Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee.
“People died, including leaders of the Freedmen people,” Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee citizen and president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association, said.
“I don’t know what else to say,” Ms. Waters replied after a stunned silence.
In a statement, I.H.S. said the Wewoka Indian Health Center made the vaccine available to Freedmen on March 1 — two months after the center began offering it to tribal members.
It is unclear how many Freedmen were denied vaccinations by the I.H.S. The coronavirus has torn through the ranks of tribal elders in Oklahoma, and the pandemic has killed American Indians and Alaska Natives at nearly twice the rate of white Americans.
The I.H.S. and the Seminole Nation have blamed each other for the denial of services. The health agency said in June that the agency “has no role” in determining whether the Freedmen were eligible for its services. In March, the Seminole Nation’s chief said the tribe does not operate the I.H.S. clinics and has “no policy oversight” on the Freedmen’s eligibility.