At American Indian Catholic schools, faith and culture unite to help students 'be like Jesus'

By Gina Christian, OSV News

(OSV News) -- When they head to Mass on Sunday, students at St. Joseph's Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota, are some of the "holiest kids" to be found.

That's a favorite saying of Joe Tyrell, the school's director of mission integration, who told OSV News the Lakota students, on entering the church, bless themselves first by wafting smoke from burning sage upon themselves -- a purifying ritual known as "smudging" in North American Indigenous cultures -- and then "(dipping) their fingers in holy water." The practice richly expresses the Catholic faith through their Lakota culture.

At St. Joseph's, which provides instruction and housing for some 200 children each year, Catholic education and Lakota culture are interwoven in a manner best described as"Mitákuye Oyás'i?,” Lakota for "all my relatives," a key expression of their culture's insight into the interconnectedness of living things, Tyrell said.

The term "reminds us that in these two worlds, Native American culture and the Catholic way of life … we're all related, we're all connected, and it's a part of the dignity of the human person," said Tyrell, who previously served for six years as a religion educator at St. Joseph's.

Over the past several decades, American Indian Catholic schools in the U.S. -- some residential, others day schools -- have deepened their integration of Indigenous and Catholic identities. The inculturation of faith, explored during the Second Vatican Council and developed particularly during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, has increasingly taken hold in schools whose founders -- usually religious orders -- too often confused the mission of the Gospel with colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Yet "God reveals himself more fully in the beauty that is present in other cultures and languages," Deacon Don Blackbird, principal of St. Augustine Indian Mission in Winnebago, Nebraska, told OSV News. "That's what Catholic education looks like here."

Deacon Blackbird, a member of the Omaha Tribe and a St. Augustine graduate, became the first Native faculty appointee in 2001 and first Native administrator in 2007 at the school, which has served the Winnebago and Omaha Tribes of Nebraska since 1909.

Back in 1988, the school began to incorporate Native American elements into curriculum and liturgy, a move initiated by then-director Father Richard Whiteing. His successor, Father Tom Bauwens, continued that effort. In 1993, the school formed the Kateri Warrior Drum Group, named after then-Blessed (now Saint) Kateri Tekakwitha, a Catholic woman of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk Nation), who in 2012 became the first Native American woman canonized a saint. The drum ensemble, which toured nationally and internationally, instructed students in traditional song and dance, along with cultural values such as respect for elders.

With a master's degree from Jesuit-run Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, Blackbird also is currently chair of the American Indian Catholic Schools Network (AICSN), which is part of the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) at the University of Notre Dame.

Founded in 2009 with assistance from the Minneapolis-based Better Way Foundation, AICSN -- directed by former ACE fellow Will Newkirk -- includes St. Joseph's as well as St. Anthony's Indian School in Zuni, New Mexico; St. Augustine Indian Mission in Winnebago; St. Charles Apache Mission School in San Carlos, Arizona; De La Salle Blackfeet Schoolin Browning, Montana; St. Joseph Mission School in San Fidel, New Mexico; St. Mary's Mission School in Red Lake, Minnesota and Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Through AICSN, the schools receive professional development, share best practices and work to address common goals and challenges, Sister Kathleen Carr, a Sister of St. Joseph who is senior partnerships director for ACE, told OSV News.

For its programming, which includes an in-person summer institute at Notre Dame and regular online meetings, AICSN "identifies Native Americans who have expertise" to address key topics, Sister Kathleen said.

The network also helps its schools to raise funds for teachers who can "provide opportunities for the children to speak (their respective nations') native languages and learn the traditions of their respective cultures," she said.

That trajectory helps to heal the wounds of sexual, physical and other forms of abuse -- along with the damage done by forced assimilation -- for which residential schools in the U.S. and Canada became infamous. Pope Francis delivered a formal apology during his July 2022 pilgrimage of penance to the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit of Canada, where he asked forgiveness for the Catholic Church's involvement in the sin of colonialism and the harm inflicted by the residential schools.

"We are moving into an era of accountability for the boarding school era, and we are advocating to the bishops to be forthcoming and helpful, to be truthful," said Deacon Blackbird. "We know we can never make up for those things done to Native people at the hands of people in the Catholic Church, but what we can do is our best to help preserve and pass on" the teachings of the church.

He and his colleagues throughout the nation are modeling "how traditional values and Catholic values," as well as those respective prayer traditions, "can go hand in hand," he said, adding "Native prayer is not a contradiction of Catholic prayer."

Lorraine Russell, an Apache and principal of St. Charles Apache Mission School, agrees.

Apache culture emphasizes a profound gratitude for the created world in which "everything was put there for us -- the trees, all the green things that give us life," said Russell, who has been at the school for 39 years and the last four as principal.

All these efforts reflect an imperative John Paul II set out for the church on a papal visit to Canada in 1983, and which Pope Francis referenced in his July 2022 visit to Canada.

"Christ, in the members of his body, is himself Indian," the saint said. "And the revival of Indian culture will be a revival of those true values which they have inherited and which are purified and ennobled by the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Despite the challenges faced by Native communities -- including poverty, addiction and unemployment resulting from the damage done by U.S. and Canadian government policies -- American Indian Catholic schools have high rates of academic success, including De La Salle Blackfeet School, said Christian Brother Dale J. Moone, the school’s president.

"Our rate of students graduating from high school on time is 96-97%," he told OSV News. "Some 70-80% of those undertake post-high school study."

As they continue to forge their unique identities, American Indian Catholic schools embody "many things," said Russell, adding, "the first thing is to be like Jesus."