The only community center like it in Montana: The idea for a new $23 million recreation, education, wellness and community center for the headquarters of the Fort Peck Tribes came from an unexpected place.

Put bluntly, the youth of this reservation community in Eastern Montana were tired of watching their family members die. They told the tribal council there must a be different way.

When it opens, it won’t only be a model for how tribal communities can fund larger community projects using Montana’s tax-credit incentive program, but it remains an example of how Poplar persevered during the course of years as it wrestled with the still-unchanged fact that tribal members die a full 20 years earlier – or one generation – before their counterparts living elsewhere in the state.