Native American Church Prepares for New Facility, Grounds
The Native American Church broke ground on March 16 for a new dining hall and sleeping facility located at 3798 Meers-Porter Road near Elgin, Oklahoma.
Billy Komahcheet was present for prayer and is the president of the 1918 Charter Chapter. He said the project has been in the works for some time now.
“The main church is going to be our tipi and we're setting up a ground out there for the tipi and…it's just something that we thought would be a lot better for our out-of-state tribal members and the tribal members that live in the cities that are not able to have their own grounds so that they can set their tipi’s up and have meetings,” he said.
Komahcheet said there will be two to three rooms for women and visitors to use, along with a kitchen area and showers. Outside, there will be a main area for a tipi, parking spaces and an awning for eating.
“And there's going to be a cooking area outside for the cooks to be able to cook outside,” he said. “That's just kind of our way, you know…a lot of families try to utilize the outside cooking method instead of cooking inside over a stove. Sometimes it can't be helped, but…we'll try to have everything that a home with a fireplace for meetings would have for everybody.”
Comanche Nation owns the property, and the funding came from opioid money.
“We try to have monthly meetings and one of the things that were that was brought up in one of the meetings was this whole concept and we talked about it and in our endeavors to get a 501c3 for our church it was brought up that this would be a little bit easier for us to reach out and possibly obtain funding for such a project,” Komahcheet said. “And in one of our discussions, the chairman came to our meeting, and after hearing some of the things that we were talking about, he said…‘I may have an answer to you guys question about possible funding.’ And he asked us if this could possibly in some way entail the opioid crisis that the tribe is going through, and we said, ‘Absolutely.’ With you know the opioid problem being the way it is, you know all of our families need some place to pray and to basically fix themselves the way that nobody else can fix them…it's got to start from within. And our church and our way of prayer, that's the perfect way to get that beginning, and so we visited with him a little bit, and he went back to the business committee and talked to them, and he came back to us, and he told us, ‘Well, this may be a fit. We may be able to get these things done that you guys are looking at without you having to go out and finding another source of funding.’”
Komahcheet said it’s important for tribal members to connect to their religious history.
“Where I’m from, Cache and Indiahoma area, at one time I sat down and started counting when I was growing up, all of the families around the area had had their own fireplaces at their homes, and I counted anywhere between 25 and 30 families in that surrounding area. Well, now there's only one, and it's mine,” he said. “And there's another up and coming, but a permanent ground is right there at my home place. The benefit is to those families that…live out of state, and they want to come home. Because this…method of prayer that we have through the native American church is our original religion before the church came along, this was our main method of prayer. And so, a lot of families know, or they have the knowledge of the history of their families participating in the Native American church in the past, but it's, you know, evolution and everything else, and other things, I guess, kind of took the place of that. But…a lot of the families know the current families know that they have a history in the Native American church, and somewhere along the line, that little flame's going to become a fire. And they're going to say, ‘I want to go back to my roots, but I’m living in California,’ or ‘I'm living in Texas,’ or whatever the case may be, when they're out of state and this way they'll have a place to come to. They'll notify the chapter or the tribe. We haven't worked all the details out yet, but they'll notify somebody and have the opportunity to get a date where they can come home and be able to have a Native American church service.”
Komahcheet is an inspector for Comanche Nation Housing Authority, and said he will be active in inspecting the building and have another set of eyes on the project.
Komahcheet said it’s for the people to come together and is grateful Comanche Nation has laid the groundwork.
The property is expected to open sometime in August.
