The Pawhuska Village community gathered to celebrate the start of the new larger Wakon Iron Community Building project on Aug. 3.
Osage Nation government officials joined Pawhuska Village Committee members and 20-plus community members for a groundbreaking ceremony with celebratory remarks and a group dirt shoveling amid the work already underway.
Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said the village has a long history of the community attending cultural and celebratory functions in the previously standing community buildings, including the most recent Wakon Iron building razed in July to make way for the new structure.
“We’ve outgrown it, so now here we have this,” Standing Bear said of the planned new building. “And so, working with you members of the community and with George Stabler Sr., our Head Committeeman, our committee cooks, the community members, everybody had all those (building planning) meetings and I got to watch some of them, and you helped design this, you told us the size, you told us about the kitchen … We’ve been working with the Congress for the funding, so it took a lot of different people working together.”
With a larger building on the way, Standing Bear noted “our people are growing, which is good and they’re coming back, and we have a lot of events at the center of what we do here in this district just like the other two districts. And so, when people say it’s pretty big, it’s that way on purpose. This was not just made up, a lot of people had a say-so in it and an opportunity to say something. We’re on this path, we are where we are and if you want to participate, there’s plenty of room to participate.”
Acknowledging young children at the groundbreaking, Standing Bear said: “We’re all in this together and if we can get another 50 years out of this new (building), well, the next generation, you guys are going to have to figure out what you want to do, so we’ve carried it this far and we’re going to carry it a little further.”
Casey Johnson, now the Secretary of Development for the Executive Branch, said other entities and officials are working on the project including the Nation’s Roads Department, Tribal Development, and the outside architect and engineering firms. The new Wakon Iron Community Building will “literally look like a football field. The building’s going to be approximately 17,000 square feet, that’s huge, that’s almost as large as the Butcher House down in Hominy,” Johnson said.
Congresswoman Paula Stabler, a former Village Committee Chairwoman, sponsored a $5.7 million appropriation bill to fund the community building’s construction. In April 2021, the Seventh ON Congress approved the bill and a separate $1.7 million appropriation to fund the new larger Wakon Iron chapel, which was recently completed.
Stabler, a longtime village resident shared a rundown of past village community structures leading to the present day.
“First there was the longhouse. Then there was the grass arbor. Then the roundhouse. Then the wooden arbor. Then the little Wakon Iron. Then the tin arbor. Then the big Wakon Iron. Then the steel arbor. And now the new and improved Wakon Iron Hall is coming to fruition,” Stabler said. “All serving one purpose, to house our traditions and culture, which is us, our people. We don’t have to have walls but it gives comfort to us to be able to do what we want to do. When we come together as a district, this is our home.”
Stabler thanked the current Village Committee for their work, which includes Cherokee Cheshewalla, Jamison Cass, Patrick Luey and Pete Bighorse. She also thanked the Pawhuska District cooks who gave feedback on the building features. “These women fought hard for the design of what they wanted … When we build a building, a lot of times we think why didn’t we do this? Or, why didn’t we do that? In the end, it will take care of us and that’s what we wanted,” Stabler said.
Johnson said Builder’s Unlimited, which has worked on prior Nation building projects, is constructing the new Wakon Iron building and construction is expected to be finished in May 2023.
In closing, Stabler said: “We must hold tight to our culture and our traditions and pray for this building, this village and this land; that it will continue to provide a safe place for our future generations.”
