The Caddo Nation is situated in an extreme childcare desert, a place where the demand for childcare disproportionately outweighs available services. Only one dedicated childcare facility exists within a 5-mile radius of Binger, Oklahoma, where the tribe’s headquarters are located according to a state database.
For years, Caddo parents have faced persistent waitlists, often of 90 children at a time, coupled with their status as long commuters, meaning the average parent travels more than 30 minutes to and from work each day, said Lauren French, who is Delaware and Caddo and serves as the Caddo Nation’s Child Care Director.
To top it off, the average Caddo parent has to travel an additional 20-40 minutes per day to and from child care, she said, often traveling far from their work site just to find an available day care provider.
A new tribal childcare facility opening this fall aims to relieve not only families in search of childcare, but provide a multi-function space for Caddo Nation youth. The center is more than three years in the making, French said.
The new 12,250-square foot facility, located in Hinton, Oklahoma, about one hour west of Oklahoma City, is purposely near Interstate 40, which a majority of parents use daily on their commutes, French said.
She and others like Caddo Nation Chairman Bobby Gonzalez wanted to provide a multi-use space, not just a building with four walls and a roof where you drop your kid off every day, because for many children this will be their second-home. They wanted a space that reflected Caddo culture and tradition and provided a variety of learning opportunities both inside and outside of a traditional classroom, she said.
To create that second-home feeling, the Caddo Nation partnered with MASS Design, a nonprofit design lab that works with tribal nations to help develop new culturally-informed infrastructure, to create a culturally informed multi-purpose facility. From these conversations, the teams worked to develop an innovative center that could meet a variety of needs expressed by community members.
The new Caddo Nation Childcare Center will feature both indoor and outdoor classrooms and learning centers as well as a gym, a pool, a library, a fully staffed nursing center and a playground highlighting the Caddo Nation’s mound-building tradition, something that’s central to Caddo culture, French said.
The center will create an estimated 20-23 new jobs for the community and serve a total of 75 children between as early as six months old capping at 12 years old.
The project is one of the Caddo Nation’s first new construction projects in decades, according to MASS Design, and was constructed by Arrowood Kakinah Enterprise, a new Caddo-owned construction company.
“The whole impetus was, ‘How do we kind of think about seeding the site with the future leaders of the Caddo Nation,’” said Joseph Kunkle, Northern Cheyenne and a principal with MASS Design. “This is a facility for the generations to come, so how can we ensure we’re starting this larger development right?”
A childcare center is a critical part of a community’s infrastructure, much like a fire station, an emergency dispatch station or a police department, Kunkle said. The ability for families, especially rural families that often commute long distances daily for work, to have a safe-space they can take their children to was paramount to the project’s design and conception, he said.
“All communities need this type of infrastructure in order for us to go to work, to go to school, to make sure that our children are learning about the culture,” Kunkle said.
Native communities don’t often get that type of luxury, French said, referring to the ability to send their children to a culturally enriching environment they can trust isn’t always an option.
“We [Natives] should be able to have quality and we should be able to have a premier site for our families and for our communities to be, to grow up in and to share milestones with the communities and everything else like that,” French said.
One key component aimed at helping families is the facilities offering an on-site registered nurse. Rather than needing to take time off work to drive to a hospital or urgent care clinic, families can have their children taken care of at the same facility they take them to every day, French said.
From a design perspective, every aspect of the center’s creation is rooted in Caddo culture. Caddo people traditionally lived in structures called Koo Hoo Kiwat, which are dome shaped thatched homes made of river cane, tall grasses and logs. The Caddo Nation Child Care center’s exterior, a cedar shake facade, pays homage to the traditional look of the Koo Hoo Kiwats, while the interior features several motifs and murals alongside laminated timber structures and exposed wood.
Amelia Schafer is ICT's North Central Correspondent based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Schafer covers MMIP, Indian Gaming and business for ICT. She is of Wampanoag and Montauk-Brothertown Indian Nation descent.... More by Amelia Schafer
