MUCKLESHOOT RESERVATION — It used to be no one here lived long enough even to get cancer. But the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe is determined to change that.

The tribe has opened a nearly $20 million, state-of-the-art health-and-wellness facility, fully operational as of last month. It is the only tribally owned facility of its kind in Washington, maybe in the Pacific Northwest.

The need is clear: Indian and Alaska Native people have the shortest life expectancy in Washington at 74 years, younger than any other racial or ethnic group, according to a new state report. The prevalence of diabetes among Indian people and Alaska Natives nearly doubled between 1996 and 2001. And members of no other ethnic group die more often in car crashes, by drowning or suicide.

"I have been to so many funerals," said Lisa James, a Muckleshoot tribal member and health-division director for the Muckleshoot Health & Wellness Center. "Our tribe doesn't want to take that — to let it keep happening. Every family is affected. I don't want it to get to the point where it is just accepted. It is not supposed to be like that."

The facility's 95,000 square feet are evenly divided between treatment and prevention services. The medical center offers a full medical clinic and pharmacy; chemical-dependency and mental-health services; massage therapy; acupuncture; and dental care. Optical and radiology services are in the works.

The wellness center offers a gym, racquetball courts, free weights, weight-training machines, and a heated, six-lane, 25-yard competition lap pool flooded with natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows. Physical-therapy services include a heated therapy pool with a chair lift and ramp.

There are treadmills outfitted with flat-screen TVs, recumbent exercise bikes, fitness trainers offering individualized instruction, and group exercise classes in everything from yoga to kickboxing.

Comforts include steam rooms, dry saunas made of sweet-smelling cedar, on-site day care for kids, and a cafe that serves only healthful snacks.

Weight-management classes and a diabetes-prevention program include a demonstration kitchen to show tribal members how to cook healthier foods.

Outreach staffers even make house calls to the elderly and homebound, and to hospitalized tribal members.

Paid for entirely by the tribe, the building is imbued with the tribe's culture throughout, from the cedar-bark basket pattern in the stonework of the lobby floor to the Native artwork on the walls, and flowing water features on either side of the entryway, reminiscent of the White and Green rivers near the reservation.

The center — which provides all services free to Muckleshoot members and their families — is a triumph for this tiny tribe of about 1,900 members, once among the poorest in Washington. That changed in 1985, when the tribe opened its casino.

James, 47, grew up about three blocks from the gleaming wellness center, in a home with no running water or indoor plumbing. Baths were once a week in a metal tub behind the woodstove.

Health services? That meant visits to a ramshackle trailer where a visiting dentist was as likely to pull a tooth as fix it; shots were delivered by a visiting county nurse at the local church; and many a baby was delivered at home by women helping other women on the reservation.

James says the hard part of achieving wellness is just beginning: "Building this was the easy part." Now, tribal members have to get into the wellness habit.

So far, about 700 tribal members and their families have registered at the wellness center, and a handful of about 100 people are using it, including about 25 to 30 regulars, James said.

"It's been a slow start, but we expected that going in," she said. "More and more people come every week. We want them all to use it. Our tribal people are our future. And if they are not healthy, we don't have very much of a future."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com