Fort Belknap holds ground blessing ceremony for new wellness center

HAYS - Fort Belknap Indian Reservation community members gathered Wednesday for a ground blessing ceremony for the future Hays Health and Wellness Center, located next to Hays-Lodge Pole High School, and plan to break ground in May of next year.

"It's just a good day," Fort Belknap President Andy Werk Jr. said. "... I feel good moving to the next phase. Things don't happen overnight, and I am glad that the community and everyone, especially the community, has been patient with us."

Werk said the Hays Wellness Center was first discussed in 2008, shortly after St. Paul's Mission Grade School caught fire in the middle of the school year. He added that the school had nowhere to go, so Fort Belknap Tribal Government offered the school use of the Hays John Capture Center. Later that year, though, the John Capture Center also was damaged in a fire, resulting in the building being closed, and the school moving again to a church across from the Hays Post Office.

The John Capture Center was the community center in Hays, Werk said, and during the time of the fire the Great Recession was well underway. The tribe's insurance company at the time claimed bankruptcy taking the insurance claim for the center with it, he said.

"It was a struggle," he said. "... To this very day, it's never been paid."

He added that at the time he was a newly elected council member and the loss of the center was something he struggled with and carried with him.

Before he left the council in 2013, he said, community member Lenore Stiffarm and the tribal council at the time wrote a proposal for a planning and engineering grant to work on constructing a community center and submitted it to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. The tribe awarded Fort Belknap with two $750,000 grants. Werk added that since 2008 the council had discussed creating a community center for Hays, but until then it had not moved forward.

He said the council for years had a lot of back and forth after being awarded the grant, debating what the focus should be for the building and how the tribe was going to use the money. He added that they had some initial schematics drawn up and eventually agreed the money was going to go toward a wellness center, a wellness center filling the most need within the community.

It was thanks to the initial grant that the tribe was able to get where it is today, he said.

After the council agreed to construct a wellness center, the council continued to debate on the design and what would be included in the wellness center, he said.

It was eventually determined the building would focus on the wellness of people and revolve around health, but also have an expanded community component. The center would serve as a place to house tribal health programs and other tribal programs involving health care delivery for the community, he said, but the plans also included a community aspect, housing a gym, swimming pool and a number of other features focused around community activities.

He added that Warren Morin, Mountain Gros Ventre Representative for the Fort Belknap tribal council who is up for re-election Tuesday against challenger Geno LeValdo, has been a driving force since Morin was first elected to the council.

The center was originally estimated to cost $20 million to build, but the council decided to scale the project back to make the price more feasible, Werk said. The original plan, which included two floors and a swimming pool in a total of 4,800 square feet, went up for debate and the council agreed to remove the second floor of the building and leave the pool for phase two of the project, reducing the size of the facility to its current 2,400 square feet.

"It's just a lot of money," he added.

The project is currently estimated at $13.5 million, he said.

One of the greatest features of the wellness center is that it will be a net zero building, he said, featuring geothermal wells and solar power.

He added that the wellness center is a culmination of years of commitment from numerous council members, past and present, and a large amount of community support.

The project is now moving into the next phase in which the council will be working on a sustainability plan, a feasibility study, fundraising and a business plan for the center, he said.

"That's really what we are looking forward to," he said.

The tribe has also just recently received a tribal trust settlement and a contract support settlement - totalling about $1.7 million - which the council has obligated toward the wellness center as seed money for the project, he said. He added that the council has also recently met with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community again, which informed them they are eligible for another grant through the tribe.

"I am very thankful they said, 'You folks can put in for another grant as you move forward with your project,'" Werk said.

He added that the impact of the grant will be huge.

Morin said the building will include a clinical wing, a community center, a recreational area and a place for elders in the community. He added that the tribe is working to get the traditional language back, and having a building where the elders and youth can interact will help preserve the language and the culture of the tribe.

The center will also offer behavioral health for children, he said. Children are traumatized when their parents or guardians are abusing drugs and alcohol and are at a higher risk of having drug and alcohol abuse problems themselves in the future.

"We want to stop that," Morin said.

He said that giving the children access to behavioral health will go a long way to promote health in the community, as will targeting diabetes and obesity through nutrition and exercise education.

One of the things which has slowed the project was finding land near Hay-Lodge Pole High School, he said. He said the council has worked out a lease agreement with the high school and, because the center will be built on the school's property, the high school will have access to the center for sports events and practices. Space in the building also will be allocated for the school's classroom needs.

He added that the center will make it so students don't have to travel to Lodge Pole to go to the gym to practice or play games.

The center is meant to serve everyone in the community, because the mission of the center is to bring wellness to the community, he said.

"We need it," Morin said. "We are all in the same community; we are all in one boat together. To me it's unity, between the tribes and the school. We all have the same common goal which is our kids and helping them succeed."

He said that the wellness center will not be taking away programs from Indian Health Services, nor duplicating its services, but rather complementing IHS so the two programs can work hand in hand to improve health on the reservation.

Native American men have a life expectancy of 52 years, Morin said, and it is something that needs to change. In the rest of the state, non-tribal members, have a life expectancy of 78 years, he added, and it is important the tribes work to raise their life expectancy.

He added that the community knows what problems need to be addressed and the community is the one who needs to make an effort to heal itself.

"Nobody's going to heal us; IHS ain't going to heal us. We need to heal ourselves," Morin said. "It's each one of our responsibilities, each and every one of you out there. So start thinking about it, start thinking about the future, the future generations. This ain't going to happen overnight, but the next generation, the next generation we are going to start healing from within."

"It's a beautiful day, god gave us a beautiful day to do a beautiful ceremony for a beautiful cause, which was healing our people and future generations to come," he added.

Montana State University Extension Agent Supervisor Hillary Maxwell, who was at the event, said it has been a long time since anything has been established in the Hays area, and it is bringing important services.

Community member Wilma Werk added that the wellness center will play an important role in the community, giving people the room they need to conduct ceremonies, such as funerals. She said many people previously used the Kills at Night Center for events but it was too small for the number of people who would be in attendance. She added that, as a mother and a grandmother, she sees the importance of the building for future generations.

"It will just be good for everybody," she said.