ARLEE — Just 29 miles north of Missoula on U.S. Hwy. 93 lies a hidden wonder, where a barn full of small Buddha statues resides. It’s a blend of rural Arlee and Tibet, known as The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas.

For nearly a decade, people of all races and religions have flocked to Arlee to celebrate one common theme: peace.

“This garden is bridging people of all cultures, people of all races and especially people of all religions,” Dr. Georgia Milan, organizer of the 7th Annual Festival of Peace, said. “This is not a religious site. This is a site for peace and we’re hoping that people can come here and feel beauty and peacefulness.”

The celebration of peace has developed greatly over the past seven years, growing from a spur-of-the-moment idea to a day-long event where popularity has skyrocketed to the point where Milan has been forced to turn away vendors and performers because of limited time and space.

“The first one, we organized in two weeks,” Milan said. “It was an idea in our heads and it came together beautifully, but it was not organized and yet it lasted 12 hours. Performers, artists and dancers just showed up from all over the area to participate. Over the last seven years, we have evolved tremendously. People have been working very hard on this since last year.”

That work was evident in every area of the festival, beginning with the event’s first Walk-A-Mile for Peace, in an effort to raise money for The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas.

From there, the site brought together people from all around the area to celebrate peace. Visitors to the festival danced, prayed and enjoyed food from local vendors, but also marveled at the work being done on the garden, a transformation that continues to unfold year by year. Performers, musical acts and speakers also highlighted the day, which has had a profound impact on visitors to the festival, according to Milan.

“Every time they come and see physically what’s manifesting, the thing they’ll also say is that they feel more peaceful; that things just spontaneously seem to be happening better for people,” Milan said. “They feel more harmonious, less angry.”

That physical change is most evident in the process of hand-making 1,000 Buddha statues. The garden, which is quickly nearing completion, is expected to be finished by next summer and is currently home to approximately 850 small Buddhas. The purpose of the garden, according to Milan, is to change the hearts and minds of all people. When done, the Dalai Lama will travel to Montana to consecrate the site.

“It’s going to be so exciting for him when he comes to see what Westerners have done,” Milan, coordinator for the Dalai Lama’s visit, said. “We’re so busy building stores or shopping malls or buying cars that we often forget our sacred sites.”

None of this would have been possible, however, without the man behind the garden’s construction, Tibetan Buddhist Lama Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche. It was Rinpoche who, on a walk through the land, realized that the area had been prayed over for many generations and was the vision he had seen in his dreams.

While the garden resides on the Flathead Reservation, Milan excitedly noted that the tribes have been very welcoming since Rinpoche’s initial visit to the Jocko Valley.

“What’s so important for us is that we collaborate with the indigenous people because it’s on their land and because the indigenous people, we feel like, hold a lot of wisdom,” Milan said. “This particular peace festival is about spirituality, human and environmental health and talking about the interdependency and the plight of human health and environmental health right now and ways that we can look to the voices of wisdom from the indigenous cultures to change the hearts and the minds of people. We are grateful to the tribes for letting us have the garden within their sacred land.”

Since the beginning of the festival in 2005, Milan has noticed more and more people coming out each year, including an increased Native American involvement, something very pleasing to her for multiple reasons.

“We’re seeing a lot more Native Americans,” Milan said. “Last year, we very intentionally had the Peace Festival to commemorate 100 years that the reservation had been open for homesteading and there were very few venues for the Native Americans to talk about what that meant for them, how their lives had changed and so that’s what we talked about at the Peace Festival. This year, of course, there is a lot of Native American involvement and we’ve been looking to them as well as the Tibetans to be the indigenous voices of wisdom in these perilous times.”

Despite the times, Milan believes that the Garden, as well as the Festival, is helping bring people together for good. Seven years in, the celebration keeps growing.

“It was very clear that this garden stands for peace, happiness and enlightenment,” said Milan. “People may disagree about how you get to peace, but everyone agrees that they want peace in the world.”