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Steeped In Symbolism

New Payne Family Native American Center first of its kind

By Jacob Baynham

In fall 2004, architect Daniel Glenn was caught in a conundrum. A member of the Crow Tribe, Glenn was hired to design The Payne Family Native American Center at The University of Montana. The center would be built near the Oval, adjacent to the neoclassical buildings of the celebrated architect A.J. Gibson.

Glenn knew his design would go nowhere if it didn’t fit in with the surrounding historical structures. His drawings, after all, would have to pass the scrutiny of the Missoula Historic Preservation Commission.

So one fall day, Glenn walked through campus with a group of tribal elders to solicit their opinions on its Western European architecture. He explained to them that the center would need to echo this style.

“They explicitly reacted against that idea,” Glenn says. “Many people would consider them quite beautiful buildings, but to many of the elders they reminded them of the Indian schools to which they were sent as children.”

Glenn understood. His grandfather and great-grandmother were sent to oppressive boarding schools where Native American children were stripped of their culture and taught the ways of the white man. To them, the red brick and columns of the schools’ buildings inspired fear, not charm.

The elders said they wanted a design that was “boldly Native American.” But how would that blend into a historical campus? Glenn found his answer one day while looking through old photographs. He came across a photo of a Salish family standing outside their teepee at the foot of Mount Sentinel in the late 1800s. They were standing on the very ground of today’s campus.

The teepees in the picture were the original architecture of the Missoula valley, Glenn thought, predating the UM campus, A.J. Gibson, and neoclassicism itself. When he showed the photo to the Missoula Historic Preservation Commission, Glenn received the go-ahead to start drawing.

“That photograph,” Glenn says, “became the heart of our design.”

The $8.6 million, 30,000-square-foot Payne Family Native American Center will be completed in the beginning of February. It is the first building of its kind at any American university, and when it opens at spring Commencement, it will house UM’s Native American Studies department, American Indian Student Services, and related campus programming.

It’s also the first building in the Montana University System certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. Glenn expects that when all the points are tallied, the center will achieve the rank of LEED Gold—the second-highest designation. LEED certification was important for the building, Glenn says, as it reflects Native Americans’ respect for Mother Earth.

Kevin Krebsbach, UM associate director of Planning and Construction, has overseen campus building for twenty-three years. He says the Native American center will be one of his most memorable projects. “We’re really proud of that building,” he says, adding that all UM’s future buildings will be required to attain at least a LEED Silver rating. “I think it is an outstanding achievement that The University of Montana will have completed the first green building in the Montana University System,” he says.

The center’s main entrance faces east—keeping with Native American tradition—and opens to a tall rotunda of canted, transparent walls. A long skylight is cut into the roof overhead, recalling the slit of a teepee’s smoke hole.

Above the rotunda is a mezzanine level, supported by twelve pine logs dredged up from the bottom of the Blackfoot River when Milltown Dam was removed in 2008. The poles represent the twelve tribes of Montana and form a structure emblematic of a Sun Dance lodge, common to many tribes. Beneath the poles, twelve parfleche patterns are etched into the floor—one from each Montana tribe. This circular area is Glenn’s favorite part of the building and will be used as a gathering space. He hopes it will draw Native Americans from around the nation to meet and discuss their future.

The seals of Montana’s seven reservations and of the landless Little Shell Chippewa Tribe are carved into the exterior walls alongside quotes from UM President George Dennison and Native American elders such as Earl Barlow and Joseph Medicine Crow. Eight flagpoles stand nearby. Seven native plant and herb gardens surround the building, symbolizing the state’s reservations and the seven stars of the Big Dipper, known to the Crow and Sioux as the Seven Buffalo Brothers. An oval storytelling area represents a traditional sweat lodge, and a shade arbor rounds out the necessary elements of Plains Indian dwelling places. Native grasses and plants will fill the grounds around the center.

The building is steeped in symbolism, but it’s no museum. Just ask Wendy Running Crane, a Blackfeet graduate student from Browning. Running Crane and her friends are excited about the new center’s size and amenities. She says the current Native American Studies Building, a small house sandwiched between a dormitory and Arthur Avenue, is too small to accommodate increasing Native American enrollments.

Running Crane first came to study at UM in 1989. She was eighteen years old and had three daughters. Like many Native students, she found the transition from reservation to campus difficult. She lasted a year before moving back to Browning. Less than 14 percent of Native students graduate within four years. Running Crane, who returned to UM in 2006 with her mother and daughters, explains that Native students drop out for many reasons.

“I think they feel really intimidated, because college is just a lot different than the reservation,” she says. “We’re used to having extended families to go to if we need something. In college we don’t have that.”

It doesn’t help, Running Crane says, that the various programs designed to help Native students finish their degrees are currently housed in different buildings around campus. The new center will be a one-stop hub for students’ needs. Running Crane thinks it will attract and retain more Native students.

“It’s really important to have a place where we can develop our extended families away from home,” she says. “Once we get to know each other, then we do the same things for each other as we do at home.”

Running Crane also hopes the new center will expand the Department of Native American Studies. She says Indian reservations are unique places with very particular circumstances. It can be hard to learn from a general education everything necessary to go back and work on a reservation, she says.

“Most of the students I talk to, their whole reason for coming to college is that they want to go home and make their reservation a better place,” Running Crane says. “It’s not even really about them. They’re here for their community.”

Fredricka Hunter, director of American Indian Student Services at UM, is looking forward to moving out of her tiny Lommasson Center office and into the new building.

Hunter says the size of the center will allow her to plan more student activities, such as a lecture series. “Our biggest obstacle right now is a lack of space,” she says. “The new building is a place to bring all the students together, and we’ll be able to serve them under one roof.”

AISS tries to prevent Native students from falling through the cracks. If students can make it through their first year, Hunter says, the following years will be easier. The students who need the most attention are those who are transferring from a community college or are the first from their families to attend a university.

“Many know very little about the financial aid process,” Hunter says. “Most of these students wait until the very last minute to apply to school, which causes a delay in their financial aid. We work closely with these students to help them navigate this process.”

Students already are asking Hunter when they can move into the new center. “People feel a sense of pride and excitement,” she says. “There’s more of an invested interest in the building now. They realize they’re going to be the first occupants of the building. There is a sense of ownership there. That really is our building.”

Hunter graduated from UM in 1993 and has watched the University steadily expand its programming for Native students. “I didn’t have half the support that the students do now,” she says. “It’s really nice to see that the University has come a long way.”

The center, in her mind, is tangible proof. “What it says to Native communities here in Montana is that we truly do value your contributions and that you are a valued member of The University of Montana.”

Plenty of times, it seemed the center would never be built. Gerry Fetz was dean of UM’s College of Arts and Sciences (which includes the Department of Native American Studies) from 2003 to 2008. Together with Julia Horn, then CAS’s development director, he traveled the country looking for donors, which were generous but few. When the UM Foundation launched a fundraising campaign, Fetz and Horn asked that a Native American center be included as a priority building project.

Terry Payne, a Missoula-based insurance executive and 1963 UM graduate, was on the Foundation’s fundraising committee. He noted the particular importance of this project, for which he saw plenty of intellectual and emotional support, but insufficient financial backing. The time was ripe to start building, he thought. Payne wrote a check and became the center’s major donor.

“It was just a matter of stepping up to a project that I felt was so meaningful to the Native American people and to the University, the state, and the country,” he says. “This is a unique opportunity to support a project that means so much to so many. Native Americans certainly deserve something that recognizes their place in society and the University.”

Payne says the project is exceeding his expectations. He hopes the center will be more than just an academic facility, by providing a cultural education as well. “I hope it can be a conduit for learning and communication for the entire University,” he says.

Tony Incashola, director of the Salish-Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee, hopes the center will remind the University community of the original inhabitants of the campus area. Incashola knows from elders’ stories that long before the M was set into Mount Sentinel, before the first bricks of campus were laid, and before Lewis and Clark arrived on their fateful march west, the Missoula Valley was called “Nemisoolatakoo,” and it was the aboriginal territory and winter campgrounds of the Salish and Pend d’Oreille tribes.

“When the white settlers started moving in, that changed the way of life considerably for Native people in this area,” Incashola says. “They were forced out of their aboriginal land, the food-gathering places, hunting places, camping areas. That was a burden; it was a big change.”

Incashola says he hopes UM’s new Native American center will be a place for Native students to educate themselves to be a part of society while retaining their culture.

In April 2008, Incashola took part in a ceremony to bless the land on which the center would be built. He prayed that the building would be a place for Native and non-Native people to learn about one another.

“To me, once people start to understand one another, that fear of each other disappears,” he says.

Reservation Outreach Key To A Stronger UM

While The Payne Family Native American Center was under construction on campus, top UM administrators traveled the state to spread the word. In the past eighteen months, delegations led by UM President George Dennison have visited all seven Montana Indian reservations.

“We are engaged in recruiting Native Americans, the first Montanans, to the University,” says UM Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Jed Liston, who traveled to the Blackfeet, Fort Belknap, and Rocky Boy’s reservations last year.

Liston says the purpose of the trips was to talk about the new center, visit Native students, strengthen relationships with tribal colleges, and reconnect with alumni. Native enrollment at UM has grown steadily over the years, from just 239 students in 1990 to 545 in 2008. Dennison would like to enroll 1,000 Native students or more, so the University’s student population will better reflect the demographics of the state.

Dennison’s presence on these outreach trips was invaluable, Liston says. He fielded questions and listened to concerns from communities on the reservations while taking the time to meet with prospective students. In Browning on the Blackfeet Reservation, Dennison visited an elementary school to read a book about Monte to the students.

“His interaction with a classroom of first-graders when he read that Monte book will be firmly etched in my mind as one of his greatest legacies,” Liston says. “That group of kids started off sitting on the floor, and as he was reading they crept closer and closer until they were touching his arm, and soon we couldn’t see him. There were kids completely surrounding him. All we heard was his voice underneath, and he was laughing.”

About the Author Jacob Baynham graduated from the UM School of Journalism in 2007. He is a freelance journalist in Cincinnati. His stories and photos have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Toronto Star, the San Antonio Express-News, and Newsweek.

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