The consolidated commission was formed at a meeting in early November in Phoenix, Arizona, by consensus of the two bodies, one created by General Convention and the other by Executive Council. The two already had been coordinating their schedules. Now, as a unified body, members are planning the next steps in what has been a multiyear effort with significant churchwide support.

Starting in 2026, the commission will prioritize connecting with tribal leaders and tribal historic preservation officers, “to gain their guidance on how these different phases of work need to be conducted,” Leora Tadgerson, co-chair of the new commission and a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community, told Episcopal News Service by email. “We understand that each community may have their own individual process, and we are dedicated to honoring each.”

The newly combined commission is taking shape in the months since South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts, a commission member, issued an apology in August to the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe for his diocese’s past involvement in church-run boarding schools. Those schools were established starting in the 1800s to assimilate Indigenous children into white society at the expense of their Native American identities, languages and cultures.

Students at St. Mary’s, an Episcopal school for Indigenous girls on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, are seen in an undated photo from the G.E.E. Lindquist Papers, held by the Burke Library Archives at Union Theological Seminary.

Boarding school students endured a wide spectrum of experiences. Some were forced to attend the schools, run by the federal government and Christian denominations, while other families voluntarily sent their children to receive what often was the only education available. In some cases, they faced a nightmare of mistreatment, abuse and even death far from home. Other boarding school survivors recall no physical abuse but still experience trauma from the family separation and deprivation of their culture and identity.

Churchwide leaders began committing The Episcopal Church to reckoning with that past in 2021 after hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered at boarding schools in Canada. At the time, the U.S. government launched an investigation into similar sites in the United States, a decision welcomed by The Episcopal Church’s presiding officers.

“These acts of cultural genocide sought to erase these children’s identities as God’s beloved children,” then-Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said in a joint statement in July 2021 with the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, then the House of Deputies president. “We condemn these practices and we mourn the intergenerational trauma that cascades from them. We have heard with sorrow stories of how this history has harmed the families of many Indigenous Episcopalians.”

They also pledged to “make right relationships with our Indigenous siblings an important focus” of the 80th General Convention in July 2022, and in advance of that meeting, they created a working group to consider how the church should address the harms caused by its past complicity with colonialism, white supremacy and racist systems.

That working group produced an extensive list of recommendations, including to “conduct a comprehensive and complete investigation of the church’s ownership and operation of Episcopal-run Indigenous boarding schools.”

Among the resolutions proposed by the working group was A127, which was adopted by bishops and deputies at the 80th General Convention. It called for the creation of “a fact-finding commission to conduct research” into the church’s ties to Indigenous boarding schools. The churchwide budget for 2023-24 set aside an initial $225,000 for that work.

Separately, Executive Council, the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, created a related committee to gather historical information, share stories with the wider church and advocate for justice toward Indigenous people. Tadgerson was chair of that committee.

The membership of those two bodies was announced in May 2023, and Executive Council voted at a subsequent meeting to authorize an additional $2 million for Indigenous boarding school research.

Since then, the two bodies have identified The Episcopal Church’s involvement in at least 34 of the 526 known boarding schools in the United States. Some of that history was detailed in a June 2024 panel discussion convened during the 81st General Convention.

Tadgerson told ENS that because the two groups already were working together through subcommittee work, they voted to merge at their Nov. 6-8 meeting in Phoenix, which House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris attended.

As one body, “we have reorganized into five main working groups. Each of these will come together to report exciting new findings and pose questions with the main body monthly, to continue the sacred work,” said Tadgerson, who serves as director of reparations and justice for the Diocese of Northern Michigan. Pearl Chanar of the Diocese of Alaska, an Athabaskan tribal member and a boarding school survivor, is the other commission co-chair.

Tadgerson added that specific future tasks will include engagement with diocesan leaders, providing funding for collaborative research with tribes, developing policies for tribal data sovereignty and recruiting more people to help with the commission’s work.

Tadgerson said the commission is grateful for the support of Ayala Harris and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe. “They continue to lean in, learn and advocate for the tribes to lead,” she said.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Crow Creek, South Dakota. Photo: Miskopwaaganikwa Leora Tadgerson

[Episcopal News Service] The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and the Diocese of South Dakota are developing a “beautiful relationship” after South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts formally apologized for the diocese’s involvement in operating Indigenous boarding schools.

“[Folts’] apology was one of the most heartfelt, most sincere things I’ve ever listened to coming from another human being. … I had been praying about bringing healing to my people on this level for a long time,” Crow Creek Chairman Peter Lengkeek, the son of a boarding school survivor, told Episcopal News Service in an Oct. 9 telephone interview. “I could actually feel the conviction in every word and every breath. …That was definitely a gateway opportunity to a beautiful relationship and opportunities to heal.”

Hundreds of boarding schools were operated by the government and religious denominations starting in the 19th century as part of a federal policy of forced assimilation of the continent’s native inhabitants. Since then, research has shown that most of the boarding schools with Episcopal ties were in South Dakota, including the Crow Creek Dormitory.

“Our actions have alienated and separated us from you, our Native siblings. Instead of showing ourselves as imitators of Jesus Christ, as our Scriptures call us to be, we instead have acted as divine enforcers of a misguided notion of entitlement and betterment,” Folts said in his apology delivered Aug. 16 to Lengkeek at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. The apology was first made public when it was read during South Dakota’s Oct. 3-4 diocesan convention in Pierre.

Read Folts’ apology here.

The bishop told ENS in an Oct. 9 email that it’s important for The Episcopal Church to apologize for its historic role in supporting Indigenous boarding schools because it signifies truth-telling and a desire to build positive relationships with tribes.

“The Episcopal Church’s history of participating in a system that took children from Native and Indigenous families – stripping them of language, story, and identity as sovereign peoples – cannot be undone. But it must be named,” Folts said in his email. “A formal apology is the first way the church can speak this truth aloud. It says to those who were harmed, and to their descendants, that we see the pain our church helped cause and that we are committed to walking a different path.”

During the Diocese of South Dakota’s Oct. 3-4 convention, Crow Creek Chairman Peter Lengkeek presented South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts with a handmade Native American star quilt, which symbolizes wisdom, understanding, the four stages of life – infancy, youth, maturity and old age – and the four cardinal directions. Photo: Lauren Stanley

Last year, The Episcopal Church identified church involvement in operating 34 of the 526 known boarding schools in the United States. The church’s fact-finding commission, established by General Convention Resolution A127, has discovered at least a dozen more schools since then, according to Veronica Pasfield, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and an Indigenous boarding schools historian who works as an archival consultant for The Episcopal Church. These schools included federally operated schools where Episcopal clergy taught Christian education and government schools that required students to attend nearby Episcopal churches for worship services and classes.

Pasfield told ENS that church-operated boarding schools are often referred to as “mission schools,” but they were, in fact, contract schools. She said specifying the language is important because the signed contracts meant the U.S. Department of the Interior would pay churches to operate schools using funds that had been designated to support Native American tribes. This means that church leaders were motivated not just by opportunities to proselytize, but also by money.

“This notion that it was simply these missionaries who wanted to pull these ‘savages’ into the community of God-fearing humans is only half of the story,” Pasfield said. “This is part of why [The Episcopal Church’s boarding schools research and advocacy groups] have pursued dialogue and relationships with tribal governments.”

Pasfield’s academic background includes a doctorate in American studies, specializing in researching Indigenous boarding schools.

During the small gathering where Folts apologized, Pasfield gave an overview of the records found in government and church archives she and the A127 commission have been analyzing since 2024.

The boarding schools were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices. Children were forced to learn English and were violently punished for speaking their Native languages. By official records, nearly 1,000 children are known to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries in boarding schools nationwide, according to a July 2024 report by the Department of the Interior. However, some experts estimate the number is closer to 40,000. In many cases, children faced physical, sexual and mental abuse.

Lengkeek said the generational trauma stemming from boarding schools continues to harm Crow Creek Native Americans today through chronic sickness, addiction and violence. Tribal members’ life expectancy is 45 years, well below the national average of 78.4 years. Lengkeek described the mental and physical health issues as consequences of the “boarding school cycle.” The cycle began when toddlers were forcefully removed from their homes and sent to a school – oftentimes hundreds of miles away – without knowing when they would reunite with their families. They usually couldn’t return home for several years; many children never returned home.

“You’re put into that system at a very young age, and you’re raised by nuns and priests who don’t have your best interests at heart and don’t display any love, kindness, welcoming or nurturing – just a roof and a scant meal. And then you become an adult and age out of the system with no nurturing, housekeeping or basic life skills. Then you have children and raise them the way you were raised by the nuns, and they grow up and raise their children the same way,” Lengkeek said. 

“We’re still seeing that cycle playing out in many of our families today. Families who have broken that cycle raised their children with love; love is how you break the cycle.”

Lengkeek explained the “boarding school cycle” to Episcopalians during his speech at South Dakota’s diocesan convention. He also talked about the tribe’s and diocese’s early discussions aimed at co-developing Indigenous-led truth-telling and reconciliation initiatives.

The Crow Creek Sioux mostly descend from the Mdewakanton Dakota of Minnesota. When they were exiled by governmental order from Minnesota following the Dakota War of 1862, the U.S. government initiated a $250 bounty per Dakota Sioux scalps. Those who escaped settled in present-day South Dakota. Many Crow Creek Sioux continue to practice Dakota ceremonial rituals today, such as the burning of red willow bark, that were incorporated into the August gathering where Folts apologized. Lengkeek also prayed and sang in the Dakota language.

“It was great to see a bishop understand the spiritual needs beyond Indigenous ministries from a Christian lens, right into tribal sovereignty and self-determination,” Miskopwaaganikwa Leora Tadgerson, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s director of reparations and justice, told ENS. “It established a spiritual, reciprocal sacredness before we officially started the meeting.”

Tadgerson also serves as chair of The Episcopal Church’s boarding schools advocacy committee, which was established by Executive Council through Resolution MW062. She was the keynote speaker for South Dakota’s diocesan convention, where she provided an overview of the advocacy committee’s work. She also brought with her to South Dakota’s diocesan convention the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s traveling exhibit, “Walking Together: Finding Common Ground,” which showcases stories of Indigenous boarding school survivors in Michigan.

Even though the Aug. 16 gathering was small and only a few Crow Creek tribal members were present to hear Folts’ apology, “the land heard it, and it was spoken into existence,” said Lengkeek, who plans to meet regularly with Folts to continue building the tribe’s relationship with the Diocese of South Dakota.

Folts told ENS in his email that the apology is not an end, but a beginning. “It is the first of many steps as we seek to listen again, learn again, and rebuild trust again – with humility, courage and hope.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

While Episcopalians were on a May 18-22, 2025, pilgrimage to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, they visited the burial site of Sacajawea – oftentimes spelled as Sacagawea – the enslaved Lemi Shoshone woman who as a teenage wife and mother was an interpreter and guide during the Corps of Discovery expedition – led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the early 19th century – from near St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean and back. Photo: Peggy Hotchkiss

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church in Wyoming hosted a three-day listening pilgrimage to the Wind River Indian Reservation, which is shared by the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes.

The pilgrimage was a continuation of the diocese’s efforts to recognize and reconcile its involvement in federal and church policies that have historically harmed the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. The diocese operated at least three known Indigenous boarding schools in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Shoshone-Episcopal Mission for girls in Fort Washakie, St. Michael’s Mission in Ethete and the federally funded Wind River Industrial School.

During the May 18-20 pilgrimage, the 54 pilgrims – about 90% of whom were white Episcopalians from Wyoming – visited all three school sites. Members of at least half of the diocese’s 46 congregations participated.

For the Rev. Roxanne Friday, Wyoming’s Indigenous Minister for Wind River Reservation, the pilgrimage “was all about truth-telling and what really happened.”

“We’re not hiding the truth at all. … It’s an important part of overcoming and healing from the past,” said Friday, who is Eastern Shoshone and the granddaughter of boarding school survivors. “It’s important for our children – to know who they are, where they came from and to be proud of who they are because of truth-telling.”

Friday serves the diocese’s two churches on Wind River: St. David’s Shoshone Mission on the Eastern Shoshone side, and St. Michael’s Mission, more commonly called Our Father’s House, on the Northern Arapaho side.

The pilgrimage began with an overview of the program and a reflection session led by Sarah Augustine, co-founder and executive director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, and the Rev. Joe Hubbard, who leads the coalition’s Episcopal Indigenous Justice Roundtable. The coalition is a Mennonite Church-affiliated nonprofit committed to mobilizing Christian church communities to follow Indigenous leadership and seek reconciliation through nonviolence. The roundtable, which is made up of Episcopalians and Episcopal-affiliated groups, meets monthly to further the coalition’s work by learning and coordinating resources to address the needs of Indigenous land and water protectors nationwide.

“The leaders here in Wyoming have taken a conscious step toward joining Indigenous peoples and their efforts for self-determination and sovereignty,” said Augustine, who is Tewa and a member of The Episcopal Church’s fact-finding commission that focuses on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in Indigenous boarding schools. By design, the schools were meant to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices.

One step toward reconciliation occurred in October 2024, when the Episcopal Church in Wyoming returned a collection of about 200 tribal items that had been in the diocese’s possession since the 1940s. The repatriation of the cultural artifacts, which range from ceremonial headdresses and handcrafted women’s dresses to children’s toys and medicine bags, coincided with a broader nationwide movement to pressure museums and other institutions to return certain Indigenous items to the tribes where they originated.

On May 19, the pilgrims visited the site of the Shoshone-Episcopal Mission, which burned down in 2016. A gazebo now stands where the school used to be, and nearby structures established by the Rev. John Roberts, a Welsh Anglican priest and missionary, still exist, including St. John’s Chapel, the Church of the Redeemer and a parish hall in active use. Robin Rofkar, administrative assistant of the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Cultural Center, explained the sites’ historical significance to the pilgrims.

While in the area, the pilgrims visited Sacajawea Cemetery, which is a half mile from the chapel. The historic cemetery is the burial site of Sacajawea – oftentimes spelled as Sacagawea – the enslaved Lemi Shoshone woman who as a teenage wife and mother was an interpreter and guide during the Corps of Discovery expedition – led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the early 19th century – from near St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean and back.

A historical marker at a cemetery near Fort Washakie School, formerly the Wind River Industrial School, acknowledges the Episcopal Church in Wyoming’s “role in perpetuating the violence, ethnocide, and other systems of oppression through operation of Indigenous boarding schools on the Wind River Indian Reservation.” Photo: Bobbe Fitzhugh

They also visited the Fort Washakie School, formerly the Wind River Industrial School, and a nearby cemetery where at least 25 known Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho children who died at the boarding school between 1884 and 1940 are buried. At the cemetery, the pilgrims joined tribal elders and community members for a ceremony and prayer service of lamentation and remembrance acknowledging the Episcopal Church in Wyoming’s role in the children’s deaths.

During the service, a new historical marker was unveiled and dedicated, which reads:

“The Episcopal Church in Wyoming acknowledges our role in perpetuating the violence, ethnocide, and other systems of oppression through operation of Indigenous boarding schools on the Wind River Indian Reservation. We commit to truth-telling about these atrocities and the resulting intergenerational trauma. We repent of the brutal methods used to strip Indigenous peoples of language, cultural identity, and human dignity. Further, we seek healing with our Indigenous relatives.”

Friday, who is related to one of the 25 identified children buried at Chief Washakie Cemetery, said “many tears were shed” during the ceremony while Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho drummers performed. In their Native languages, they sang songs dedicated to the deceased children. The songs’ lyrics were about healing and souls moving on to their next journeys. A couple of members of the Episcopal Service Corps who are completing their year of service in Wyoming broke down crying as they knelt to sprinkle tobacco – one of the “four sacred medicines” along with cedar, sage and sweetgrass in Indigenous cultures that are used for offerings and ceremonies – on each grave. 

“In coming together collectively, we were able to set those children free,” the Rev. Joe Hubbard, who also is a member of The Episcopal Church’s Indigenous boarding schools fact-finding commission, told ENS.

Hubbard’s wife, Ashley Dobbs Hubbard, is Cherokee and serves as diocesan missioner for the Diocese of North Dakota.

During a ceremony and prayer service of lamentation and remembrance at a cemetery near Fort Washakie School, formerly the Wind River Industrial School, in Wyoming, members of the Episcopal Service Corps broke down crying as they sprinkled tobacco on the graves of at least 25 known Indigenous children who died while enrolled at Wind River Industrial School, a boarding school for Native American children. By design, Indigenous boarding schools were meant to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices. May 19, 2025. Photo: Bobbe Fitzhugh

After the service, the pilgrims toured the Eastern Shoshone buffalo enclosure, where the tribe, in collaboration with the Tribal Partnerships Program of the National Wildlife Federation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, successfully reintroduced buffalo to Wind River. Buffalo were mostly killed off in the 19th century because of overhunting, habitat destruction, the expansion of settlers and U.S. government policy aimed at eliminating Native Americans’ food supplies.

“Seeing what’s been accomplished up close was another holy moment for me on this pilgrimage,” the Rev. Bobbe Fitzhugh, the Episcopal Church in Wyoming’s canon for mission and innovation, told ENS.

The pilgrims then visited the site of St. Michael’s Mission and listened to elders and boarding school survivors discuss how the boarding school experience continues to harm Native American individuals and communities.

Local leaders also shared a redevelopment project on St. Michael’s Mission property with the Episcopal Church in Wyoming. The property is a group of nine buildings arranged in a circle. One of the buildings, Our Father’s House, stands out as the only structure made of logs instead of rocks. A playground now stands where the boarding school used to be. A teepee-like concrete structure stands at the center of the circle. Redevelopment efforts include pavement repair and landscaping. A museum is also under construction. When finished, many of the cultural items the diocese returned to the Wind River tribes in 2024 will be displayed in the museum.

After a full day of touring, the pilgrims gathered to reflect on the day’s stories and to answer why truth-telling is a crucial part of racial and cultural reconciliation. They also reflected on how to participate in truth-telling and continue reconciliation work in their communities. The day ended with a litany of hope and healing.

“As we were wrapping up, there was joy and celebration as we heard the vocalized commitment of many pilgrims to now engage fully in this process of restoration of relationship, land and community,” Augustine said.

The pilgrimage concluded on May 20 with talking circles with members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, followed by final group reflections on identifying the next steps for relational reconciliation and prayer.

“I think this pilgrimage has opened up a lot of people’s eyes, and they didn’t know what part The Episcopal Church played in the way that things have turned out for Indigenous people,” Friday said. “But now we have a good group of people who are involved in trying to do the right thing to listen and learn what they can do to help with healing.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

Elders from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in southeastern Montana listen to speakers during a session for survivors of government-sponsored Native American boarding schools, in Bozeman on Nov. 5, 2023. Photo: Matthew Brown/AP

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal leaders welcomed President Joe Biden’s Oct. 25 formal apology to Indigenous peoples over the federal government’s 150-year involvement in boarding schools that separated Native American children from their families to strip them of their language and culture and assimilate them into white-dominant society. 

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program, but the federal government has never formally apologized for what happened, until today,” Biden said. “I formally apologize as president of the United States of America for what we did. I formally apologize.”

Biden made his apology to all Native Americans while speaking at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, a reservation on the south side of Phoenix. The Indigenous boarding school system destroyed the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their descendants.

“The Episcopal Church welcomes President Biden’s apology today while recognizing that our own journey of truth-telling and reconciliation continues. Through General Convention Resolution A127 and Executive Council Resolution MW062, we have committed $2.5 million to a comprehensive investigation of our church’s role in the boarding school system,” Indigenous Episcopal leaders, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris said Oct. 25 in a statement responding to Biden’s apology. 

The Rev. Bradley Hauff, the missioner for The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries who is Lakota and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe — as well as the son of boarding school survivors; Pearl Chanar, an Athabaskan tribal member, co-chair of the church’s boarding schools research commission and a boarding school survivor; Warren Hawk, also a co-chair of the boarding schools research commission and a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; and Miskopwaaganikwe Leora Tadgerson, chair of the church’s boarding schools advocacy committee and the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s director of reparations and justice who is a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, joined Curry and Ayala Harris in the statement. 

Arizona had the second highest number of known Indigenous boarding schools in the United States, behind Oklahoma. None of the identified boarding schools in the Diocese of Arizona were operated by The Episcopal Church, although the diocese is conducting its own archival investigation to make sure none were overlooked.

The exact number of Indigenous children who attended boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries is unknown, but at least 60,889 of them were enrolled by 1925, according to a study conducted by historian David Wallace Adams in the 1990s. By 1926, nearly 83% of Indigenous children were attending boarding schools. The schools were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices.

“Kill the Indian, save the man” was the rationale for that system offered in 1892 by Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which served as the flagship boarding school in the United States from its founding in 1879 through 1918.

The Episcopal Church is known to have operated at least 34 of the 523 boarding schools in the United States identified by the nonprofit National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, more commonly known as NABS. Most of the 34 Episcopal-operated schools were located west of the Mississippi River, but “there is evidence that Episcopal dioceses and congregations on the East Coast helped to financially support the schools,” according to the statement.

“The Episcopal Church must fully understand its role and involvement in boarding schools,” the statement said. “That is why we are pursuing a thorough fact-finding process while supporting community-based healing initiatives led by Indigenous communities.”

Nearly 1,000 Native American children are known to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries in boarding schools throughout the United States, according to a July report by the U.S. Department of the Interior. However, some experts estimate the number is closer to 40,000. In many cases, children faced physical, sexual and mental abuse.

“The pain it has caused will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history. For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention, not written about in our history books, not taught in our schools,” Biden said. “But just because history is silent, doesn’t mean it didn’t take place. It did take place. While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing. Injustices are heinous, horrific and grievous. They can’t be buried, no matter how hard people try. …We must know the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.”

The Episcopal Church has two Indigenous-led boarding school groups that are working together under a $2.5 million budget allocated by Executive Council, yet they have distinctive mandates. General Convention’s fact-finding commission focuses on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in the boarding schools. Executive Council’s committee focuses on advocacy work.

The two groups first met in person in October 2023 in Seattle, Washington, to discuss how to interpret and apply the resolutions that enacted the boarding school groups, General Convention Resolution A127 and Executive Council Resolution MW062, and met again in January 2024. Later in the springtime, the groups hired Veronica Pasfield — an Anishinaabekwe, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and a historian – as an archival consultant.

“Our reckoning centers tribal sovereigns, and our research confirms the findings of the Department of the Interior: Indigenous day and boarding schools were largely created and funded by treaties between tribes and the federal government,” the statement said. “The Department of the Interior contracted with The Episcopal Church to create and maintain Indigenous schools. Tribal trust monies and/or treaty agreements funded, in whole or in part, Episcopal-contracted schools. Thus, the current work of the Episcopal commissions is seeking the engagement and guidance of Tribal Nations.”

The Episcopal Church is partnering with NABS, the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and other organizations as research and advocacy work continue.

During the 81st General Convention in June 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky, The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries hosted a panel discussion on the church’s historic role in operating boarding schools. Boarding school survivors shared their stories, and Pasfield shared progress made so far with archival discovery.

Also at the 81st General Convention, the House of Bishops and House of Deputies unanimously voted to adopt Resolution C032, “A Prayer to Remember the Innocents,” which expresses the church’s remorse for its role “in the irreparable harm suffered by Indigenous children who attended Indigenous boarding and residential schools in the 1800s and 1900s, and acknowledges that the effect of that harm carries on in boarding school survivors and their descendants.”

The Episcopal Church’s Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations is in touch with the Department of the Interior over work and research on the boarding schools. The office is also pushing for Congress to pass legislation supporting a federal truth and healing commission for Indigenous boarding schools.

“We continue to pray for all Indigenous children who were in residential boarding schools—those who died there, those who survived, and their descendants who still carry this legacy,” the Episcopal leaders’ statement said. “As we say in our Prayer to Remember the Innocents, ‘We will always remember them.’”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

On Aug. 17, 2024, Episcopalians in the Diocese of Arizona toured the now-defunct Phoenix Indian School, the second-largest Indigenous boarding school in the United States, as part of a yearlong Indigenous boarding schools pilgrimage hosted by the diocese and its Council for Native American Ministry. Elena Selestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe and the nonprofit Native American Connections’ Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center specialist, was the pilgrims’ tour guide. Photo: Shireen Korkzan/ENS

[Episcopal News Service — Phoenix, Arizona] Upon learning from a 2022 federal report that the state of Arizona had the second highest number of known Indigenous boarding schools in the United States – behind Oklahoma – the Diocese of Arizona and its Council for Native American Ministry responded by planning a Listening and Healing Pilgrimage in 2024.

The yearlong pilgrimage to each of the four regions of the diocese is an opportunity for Episcopalians to listen to boarding school survivors tell their stories and visit various relevant sites throughout the state. The pilgrimage’s structure emphasizes listening above all else, organizers said. 

“When I read the report, I could not believe it. …I’m a Native Arizonan, born and raised, and I had no idea that we had that many boarding schools in Arizona,” the Rev. Debbie Royals, canon for the Diocese of Arizona’s Native American Ministry and a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, told Episcopal News Service. “I brought the report to the Council for Native American Ministry, and together with Arizona Bishop Jennifer Reddall, we decided to set up this pilgrimage. I think it’s important because Native people in Arizona are, for the most part, unknown and unrecognized.”

A mix of Episcopalians and ecumenical partners participated in the third of four pilgrimage events on Aug. 16 and 17, visiting sites in Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale. The pilgrimage’s previous events took place at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Holbrook, located south of Navajo Nation and west of Petrified Forest National Park on historic Route 66, and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which houses special offices and organizations for Indigenous students, faculty and staff.

On the first day, they visited the Heard Museum – a nonprofit museum committed to the advancement of Native American art – to view the exhibition Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories. Wendy Weston, a Navajo Episcopalian who is the executive director of Cook Native American Ministries Foundation, served as the tour guide. Weston previously served as director of American Indian relations at the Heard Museum.

“You can see by the shoes and by the size of the dresses, these kids were kindergarteners, basically, that were taken away, and a lot of times they weren’t allowed to go home,” Weston told the pilgrims during the tour while pointing at a display of typical boarding school uniforms. “These Indian schools were run like a military school … and many did end up going to the military.”

Some federally run boarding schools still exist, but they fall under the Bureau of Indian Education, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The exact number of Indigenous children who attended boarding schools in the 18th and 19th centuries is unknown, but at least 60,889 of them were enrolled by 1925, according to a study conducted by historian David Wallace Adams in the 1990s. By 1926, nearly 83% of Indigenous children were attending boarding schools. The schools were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices.

Nearly 1,000 Indigenous children are known to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries in boarding schools throughout the United States, according to a July report by the U.S. Department of the Interior. However, some experts estimate the number is closer to 40,000. In many cases, children faced physical, sexual and mental abuse. 

“Some of these children died from disease because there were foreign diseases that they had never been exposed to. Some died from mistreatment or starvation,” Weston said during the tour. “Some died from broken hearts because they didn’t have a will to live. We have no headstones for them.”

In its latest report from August 2023, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has identified 59 boarding schools in Arizona, which is home to 22 federally recognized Indigenous tribes. The Episcopal Church is known to have operated at least 34 of the 523 identified boarding schools in the United States. None of the identified boarding schools in the Diocese of Arizona were operated by The Episcopal Church, although the diocese is conducting its own archival investigation to make sure none were overlooked.

“We think that we did not have any boarding schools within the diocese, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t participate in them,” Reddall told ENS in an in-person interview. “I think it’s really important for the church broadly to take responsibility for and repent of the trauma we have caused, and we have caused trauma through boarding schools and through policies about Native peoples.”

After visiting the Heard Museum, the pilgrims toured two remaining buildings of the now-defunct Phoenix Indian School, the second-largest boarding school in the United States. Elena Selestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe and the nonprofit Native American Connections‘ Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center specialist, was the pilgrims’ tour guide. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a still-active federal agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, operated the school, which is located on the grounds of what’s now known as Steele Indian School Park. They learned about the everyday life of a student at the school, which included hours of hard labor.

The Rev. Debbie Royals, canon for the Diocese of Arizona’s Native American Ministry and a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, led a traditional prayer at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, where Episcopalians and ecumenical partners in the diocese listened to Indigenous boarding school survivors tell their stories. The event was the third of four pilgrimage events that encompass the yearlong Listening and Healing Pilgrimage. Aug. 18, 2024. Photo: Shireen Korkzan/ENS

The next day, the pilgrims gathered in Scottsdale at the Franciscan Renewal Center, a Franciscan Order of Friars Minor-operated retreat center and worship community, to listen to boarding school survivors share their stories and how their experience has shaped their lives. Speakers included Wanda Frenchman, a Lakota seminarian at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in the newly launched Theological Education for Indigenous Leaders program in Berkeley, California; and her mother, Mary Louise Frenchman, who is Lakota and mission developer for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Native American Urban Ministry. They co-pastor the Native American Urban Ministry in downtown Phoenix. Hopi elder Pershlie “Perci” Ami, who is both a boarding school survivor and a descendant of boarding school survivors, also shared her story.

“I would ask my father why we were not taught the language, so I don’t speak Hopi,” Ami told the pilgrims. “I was not able to learn my language and not able to participate in my Native culture because of Christianity and the boarding schools.”

Sarah Augustine, a Tewa descendant, is co-founder and executive director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, a Mennonite Church-affiliated nonprofit committed to mobilizing Christian church communities to follow Indigenous leadership and seek reconciliation through nonviolence. She and the Rev. Joe Hubbard, rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Rapid City, South Dakota, are both members of The Episcopal Church’s fact-finding commission that focuses on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in Indigenous boarding schools. Augustine and Hubbard both explained the commission’s work, goals and progress made in the last year. General Convention enacted the fact-finding commission through Resolution A127 in 2022.

“What does it mean for The Episcopal Church to be ready? Who knows? Some of us are ready now. There’s now a national platform, and we’re going to use that platform to the greatest extent that we can to address injustice in the nation and within the church itself,” Augustine told ENS.

“I’m here as part of our commission to recognize that the entire church is called to right our mandate, not just the mandate from General Convention, but our mandate from Jesus – this work to speak the truth, to reckon with the wrongs and to journey together towards healing is something that will take all of us together,” Hubbard told ENS. “We have only just begun this work, and we are trying to help coordinate this ministry for the entire church across dioceses, between congregations, amongst communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous.”

Hubbard’s wife, Ashley Hubbard, is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and currently serves as canon for formation for the Diocese of South Dakota, which is home to the largest Indigenous ministry in North America, serving the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people, according to the diocese’s website.

Also in 2022, Executive Council formed a committee to focus on Indigenous boarding school advocacy work. The two Indigenous boarding school groups are working together under a $2 million budget allocated to them by Executive Council, although they have distinctive mandates. The endgame of the two groups’ research and advocacy efforts is healing by eliminating the intergenerational trauma caused by Indigenous boarding schools, which lingers today in various forms, including poverty, violence and substance abuse.

Some uncomfortable, though well-meaning, discussions during breaks and mealtimes made it clear that there’s a need for the dominant culture to come to a better understanding of how centuries of systemic racism and oppression continue to harm Indigenous people today. Still, Augustine said, the fact that people showed up to the pilgrimage to listen and to learn is “a hopeful sign.”

“We’re embarking on a relationship where there’s a power imbalance,” she said. “We’re going to bump into each other, and that’s hard, so we have to try and do that with the posture of loving kindness.”

It’s these conversations, however, Royals said, however, that serve as a learning opportunity for the dominant culture.

“We are all still learning. Hopefully, we can take these moments to learn better and to be better, and we continue these moments with grace,” Royals said. “Nobody is claiming to be perfect, but we are claiming that we are intentional with our thoughts and our words and our actions.”

The fourth pilgrimage listening and learning event will take place Sept. 7 at Grace Episcopal Church in Lake Havasu City, which borders California. On Nov. 23, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Phoenix will host a traditional Native American healing ceremony, which will include a traditional Ceremony of the Burning of the Tears, also called a Wiping of the Tears ceremony, where gathered tissues pilgrims and presenters used to wipe away tears throughout the pilgrimage will be burned as a symbol of healing from grief.

— Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service based in northern Indiana. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

South Dakota Deputy Deanna Stands (right) leads the House of Deputies in reciting the Prayer of the Innocents, which is part of Resolution C032, after deputies joined bishops in adopting it. Supporting Stands are Navajoland Area Mission deputies the Rev. Michael Sells and the Rev. Cathlena Plummer. Photo: Screenshot

[Episcopal News Service – Louisville, Kentucky] The House of Deputies unanimously voted on June 27 to adopt Resolution C032, “A Prayer to Remember the Innocents,” which expresses the church’s remorse for its role “in the irreparable harm suffered by Indigenous children who attended Indigenous boarding and residential schools in the 1800s and 1900s, and acknowledges that the effect of that harm carries on in boarding school survivors and their descendants.”

It also offers a prayer, titled “A Prayer to Remember the Innocents,” which the resolution says the church receives as a gift and a way to remember children forced into boarding schools:

Ohiŋni wičhauŋkiksuyapi kte.  “We will always remember them.” 

Dear Lord, Almighty God, we pray for all Indigenous children who were in residential and boarding schools in Canada and the United States.  Some died there; we ask that you give assurance to   their descendants that their souls are with you and their ancestors. Some survived there; we ask that you give your healing grace to all who endured hardship while there and are still struggling with those memories. Lastly, we ask you to help us guard our children against harm in this world. All this we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.  Amen.

Deanna Stands, who is Yankton Sioux and a deputy from the Diocese of South Dakota, is the daughter of boarding school survivors and a parishioner at Woniya Wakan (Holy Spirit) Episcopal Church in Wagner. She co-wrote the prayer with fellow Woniya Wakan parishioners Pat Roulette, LaHoma Johnson, Nadine Selwyn and Janice Provost, as well as the Rev. James Marrs, superintending presbyter of the Santee-Yankton Mission. The prayer was introduced and accepted in 2022 at the annual Niobrara Convocation in South Dakota, a gathering of Indigenous Episcopalians and mission churches, and later that same year it was adopted by the Diocese of South Dakota’s diocesan convention.

“Keep in mind that this prayer was developed because of the boarding school children and that we are not that far removed from that boarding school era,” Stands told Episcopal News Service. “While we wrote this prayer, we were asking God – asking in Jesus’s name – that the Holy Spirit guide us to use those words.”

South Dakota’s Diocesan Convention in 2022 originally proposed C032, which also encourages the church to set aside Sept. 30 on the liturgical calendar to remember the children. Sept. 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day; an annual day of remembrance and awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women, as well as Indigenous boarding school victims.

“I have had and continue to have very, very good teachers in the Diocese of South Dakota when it comes to Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Native American ways, and what has happened in the past what is still continuing to happen in the present,” South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts told ENS. “We have to deal with the atrocities of the Native American boarding schools, where native and Indigenous children were assimilated and taught how to dress and taught how to speak and taught how to pray.”

Students at St. Mary’s, an Episcopal school for Indigenous girls on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, are seen in an undated photo from the G.E.E. Lindquist Papers, held by the Burke Library Archives at Union Theological Seminary.

Hundreds — or as many as tens of thousands — of Indigenous youth are estimated to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries while attending boarding schools, which were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices. In many cases, students faced physical, sexual and mental abuse, even death. The Episcopal Church is known to have operated at least 34 of the 523 identified boarding schools in the United States, including at least nine in South Dakota.

On a voice vote, the House of Bishops unanimously voted to adopt C032 during its legislative session on June 24. Retired Rhode Island Bishop Geralyn Wolf expressed concern about the prayer’s poetry, and retired Iowa Bishop Alan Scarfe suggested it be reconfigured for its flow. Massachusetts Assistant Bishop Carol Gallagher noted that the prayer was written by people for those who need it.

Folts reminded the bishops that the prayer came from Native folks, “and they don’t need white people telling them again how to pray.”

“As an Indigenous prayer, it’s genuine and authentic,” the Rev. Bradley Hauff, missioner of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries, told ENS. “Why should Indigenous people subscribe or be held to expectations to conform to the esthetic standards of their oppressors? That’s an absurd notion, and all that serves to perpetuate the oppression.” Hauff, who is Lakota and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is the son of boarding school survivors.

Stands said the prayer isn’t meant to sound poetic because “we are asking God for his help.”

“When the bishops and deputies voted to adopt this prayer, I knew the Lord is working and that people are putting it into their minds and in their hearts that things have been done,” she said. “But now it’s time to do the hard work.”

The Episcopal Church has two Indigenous boarding school groups that are working together yet have distinctive mandates. General Convention’s fact-finding commission focuses on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in the boarding schools. Executive Council’s committee focuses on advocacy work. The two groups first met in person in October 2023 in Seattle, Washington, to discuss how to interpret and apply the resolutions that enacted the boarding school groups, General Convention Resolution A127 and Executive Council Resolution MW062, and met again in January 2024.

After the deputies voted to adopt C032, Stands and Navajoland Area Mission deputies the Rev. Michael Sells and the Rev. Cathlena Plummer led the entire house in reciting “A Prayer to Remember the Innocents.”

Stands said everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, is welcome to use “A Prayer to Remember the Innocents” in their parishes and dioceses.

“We ask that you think about the children when praying,” she said. “We need to keep our children safe.”

— Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service based in northern Indiana. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries hosted a June 25, 2024 panel discussion on Indigenous boarding schools and the church’s historic role in operating at least 34 of them of throughout the United States. Boarding school survivors Pearl Chanar, an Athabaskan tribal member and co-chair of General Convention’s Indigenous boarding schools research commission, right, and Navajoland Area Mission Deputy Ruth Johnson, left, spoke at the event. Photo: Randall Gornowich

[Episcopal News Service – Louisville, Kentucky] The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries hosted a June 25 panel discussion at the Hyatt Regency Louisville on Indigenous boarding schools and the church’s historic role in operating at least 34 of them of throughout the United States.

“Every time I talk about this, there’s some crying. …It’s hard to talk about,” Navajoland Area Mission Deputy Ruth Johnson, a boarding school survivor, said during the panel discussion.

Hundreds of people attended the panel discussion, and over 2,000 more viewed the livestream on the Indigenous Ministries’ Facebook page, to listen to two boarding school survivors share their stories. Pearl Chanar – an Athabaskan tribal member, co-chair of the research commission and a boarding school survivor – led the panel discussion. The Rev. Bude VanDyke, rector of Church of the Good Shepherd in Decatur, Alabama, and a part of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, provided opening music and served as a chaplain for anyone in need of immediate pastoral care.

The Episcopal Church’s two Indigenous boarding school groups are working together yet have distinctive mandates. General Convention established a fact-finding commission to focus on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in the boarding schools. Executive Council formed its committee to focus on advocacy work. The two groups first met in person in October 2023 in Seattle, Washington, to discuss how to interpret and apply the resolutions that enacted the boarding school groups, Resolutions A127 and MW062.

Hundreds — or as many as tens of thousands — of Indigenous youth are estimated to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries while attending boarding schools, which were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages. In many cases, students faced physical, sexual and mental abuse, even death.

This year, the groups hired Veronica Pasfield – an Anishinaabekwe, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and a historian – as an archival consultant. During the panel discussion, Pasfield presented a PowerPoint lecture on the historical context of The Episcopal Church and Indigenous boarding schools and progress made so far with archival discovery. She also explained what work the church’s commission and committee need to do now, noting that “we are still in the research phase” before work on advocacy and healing can begin.

“Indigenous boarding schools, and everything attached to it, is systemic injustice,” Deborah Parker, a member of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington and the chief executive officer of the nonprofit National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, also known as NABS, told ENS. “It’s not a personal experience alone, which is what people try to construe it as. This is systemic, and it’s going on over generations of time.” Parker was also a panelist.

The legacy of boarding schools made international headlines in 2021 with the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children at a former Indigenous boarding school in Canada. Following the discovery, the U.S. Department of Interior announced it was launching a comprehensive review of American boarding school policies dating to 1819. The Episcopal Church established its boarding school research and advocacy groups in response to the report.

When ENS reported the January gathering of the church’s Indigenous boarding school research and advocacy groups in Port Aransas, Texas, nine Episcopal-operated boarding schools were known to have existed as listed among the 523 schools identified by NABS. However, General Convention’s fact-finding commission recently discovered The Episcopal Church Archives had in 2022 quietly published a document listing 34 known Episcopal-operated boarding schools.

View the Episcopal Church Archives’ document listing 34 known Episcopal-operated boarding schools here: TEC Archives – Boarding School Info. 03-29-2022

“It doesn’t surprise me, really, because the records were not kept with a whole lot of intention, and some of these schools burned down,” the Rev. Bradley Hauff, Indigenous Ministries’ missioner, told ENS. Hauff, who is Lakota and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is the son of boarding school survivors.

The Rev. Joe Hubbard, rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Rapid City, South Dakota, was also a panelist. A member of the church’s fact-finding committee, Hubbard told ENS that The Episcopal Church Archives’ document listing the church’s boarding schools is incomplete because not every diocese has been investigated yet.

“The work continues, which is why we are reaching out to The Episcopal Church and inviting members of our community to join us in this work, because it’s not enough to appoint a commission,” he said.

“What I think is so exciting about what The Episcopal Church is doing, and why I want to be a part of this project, is because they’re not only counting the schools that they ran, but also that they were contracted to run by the federal government,” Pasfield told ENS. “They’re also fully leaning into their participation, even as clergy for schools that were run by the federal government.”

The panelists also answered questions and listened to comments panelists had.

“Our ancestors stood tall, and it’s because of them I’m around today,” the Rev. Jonathan Old Horse, vicar of Woyatan Lutheran Church in Rapid City, South Dakota, and a boarding school survivor, said during the panel discussion. “Every sacrifice that they gave for us – their lives, their minds – for us to be here. As survivors, we have to do everything in our power to always honor what they did for us, for us to be here.”

Indigenous Ministries, the Indigenous boarding school groups, Navajoland Area Mission and the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery have informational booths inside the exhibit hall at the Kentucky International Conference Center for the 81st General Convention, which is underway through June 28. The Diocese of Northern Michigan’s traveling exhibit, “Walking Together: Finding Common Ground,” which showcases stories of Indigenous boarding school survivors in Michigan, is also on display.

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service based in northern Indiana. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

The Diocese of Northern Michigan’s racial reconciliation initiative, “Walking Together: Finding Common Ground,” is centered around a traveling exhibit that showcases stories of Indigenous boarding school survivors in Michigan. It includes a recording of Northern Michigan Bishop Rayford Ray formally apologizing for The Episcopal Church’s participation “in the human trafficking of children to place them in orphanages, boarding schools, forced adoption and foster care as an attempt to wipe out Indigenous culture, language, identity, sovereignty and beliefs.” Photo: Walking Together: Finding Common Ground Traveling Exhibit/Facebook

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Northern Michigan has launched a racial reconciliation initiative, “Walking Together: Finding Common Ground,” centered around a traveling exhibit that showcases stories of Indigenous boarding school survivors in Michigan. 

The diocese spans the state’s Upper Peninsula and is based in Marquette, the ancestral and present-day homeland of the Anishinaabe people. Episcopal churches in the diocese are engaging in reconciliation efforts with Indigenous people locally and across the state, many of whom live with intergenerational trauma that can be traced to the United States’ historical attempts to erase their culture through the boarding school system.

The traveling exhibit documents how Indigenous boarding schools’ legacy continues to impact Native American people today. Known survivors are listed on an exhibit panel. When visiting the exhibit, participants can scan a QR code with their smartphones to listen to boarding school survivors tell their stories. Part of the exhibit features pre-existing information that was featured in a 2021 exhibit at Northern Michigan University in Marquette titled “The Seventh Fire: A Decolonizing Experience.”

Robert Hazen, an elder in the Lac Vieux Desert Band, attended the Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church and Indian School in Harbor Springs. He is one of several survivors who shared their stories for the “Walking Together: Finding Common Ground” traveling exhibit:

“It’s part of a healing that’s so much needed in terms of our work with the Indigenous Anishinaabe people here,” Northern Michigan Bishop Rayford Ray told Episcopal News Service. “We’re always looking towards reconciliation, and we have to heal first.”

At least hundreds — possibly as many as tens of thousands — of Indigenous youth are estimated to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries while attending boarding schools, which were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and cultures. Many of those boarding schools were operated by Christian churches, including The Episcopal Church, though the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s research did not find any local ties between the church and the schools.

Of the 12 federally recognized Native American tribes based in Michigan, five are in the state’s sparsely populated Upper Peninsula. The diocese’s exhibit includes educational panels explaining the Upper Peninsula’s precolonial history. It also includes videos showing different perspectives on decolonization and Anishinaabe culture, including foodways, education, sovereignty and the issues Indigenous people face living in a colonized world. 

“The traveling exhibit is just one huge aspect of becoming culturally competent through learning authentic history — those one-on-one interviews — that’s huge,” Leora Tadgerson, the diocese’s director of reparations and justice, told ENS. “There are so many different dioceses that are not at that phase yet that we are discussing with colleagues.”

The exhibit formally launched in January at the Niiwin Akeaa Center in Baraga coinciding with but separate from the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community’s winter powwow. About 200 people visited, most of whom were Indigenous. The exhibit was next displayed for one week at the Ojibwa Senior Center in Baraga.

“Our hope with the traveling exhibit is to learn the culture, the traditions and also the pain and suffering that people have had to endure, and the genocide,” Ray said.

In 2018, the diocese received a $30,000 grant from The Episcopal Church’s United Thank Offering to work on the traveling exhibit, which was developed in partnership with the Great Lakes Peace Center, a Rapid River-based nonprofit committed to promoting peace building. The diocese received an additional $28,500 UTO grant in 2022. A family foundation then gave the diocese an additional $100,000 grant to be distributed over the course of five years. Most recently, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Midland in the Diocese of Eastern Michigan awarded the Diocese of Northern Michigan an additional $20,000 grant to continue supporting the exhibit. The diocese also accepts donations through its website to continue funding the exhibit. The money is being used to pay for research resources and equipment needed to physically set up the exhibit.

The legacy of Indigenous boarding schools made international headlines in 2021 with the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children at a former boarding school in Canada. Following the discovery, the U.S. Department of Interior announced it was launching a comprehensive review of American boarding school policies dating to 1819. In 2022, a federal report revealed that more than 500 children died over the course of 150 years in Indigenous boarding schools, though Native American scholars estimate the number is closer to 40,000.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has identified at least 523 schools that were part of the Indigenous boarding school system — including no less than eight in Michigan. Four of those were in the Upper Peninsula and one was on Mackinac Island between the Upper and Lower peninsulas. Nationwide, at least nine schools by the coalition’s tally were thought to have Episcopal Church connections, though the lack of churchwide records has made it difficult to fully account for the church’s role in the schools. Most of the boarding schools had closed by the mid-20th century or were taken over by Native American tribes.

The Northern Michigan traveling exhibit includes a recording of Ray formally apologizing to the Indigenous tribes in Michigan on behalf of The Episcopal Church and the wider Christian church. In the apology, Ray condemns The Episcopal Church’s participation “in the human trafficking of children to place them in orphanages, boarding schools, forced adoption and foster care as an attempt to wipe out Indigenous culture, language, identity, sovereignty and beliefs.” Ray also expresses his support of repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, a centuries-old theological and political doctrine used to justify colonization and the oppression of Indigenous people. General Convention passed a resolution officially repudiating the doctrine in 2009. Ray told ENS the Department of Interior is aware of his apology and the exhibit.

Listen to Ray’s apology here.

“For me, as an Episcopalian, what Jesus calls us to do is to dismantle the racism and the white supremacy that is so much part of our way of life here,” Ray said. “We need to continue to make systemic change.”

Tadgerson, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, has served as the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion since 2022. 

“What I love from the perspective of the director’s position, is how the diocese continues — even before I was there — to become culturally competent living in an Indigenous area,” she told ENS.

The 80th General Convention created a fact-finding commission to research The Episcopal Church’s historic role in boarding schools, and Executive Council has a Committee for Indigenous Boarding Schools and Advocacy. The research commission and the advocacy committee met most recently in January at the Mustang Island Conference Center in Port Aransas, Texas, and they plan to meet at least once more before the 81st General Convention takes place June 23-28 in Louisville, Kentucky. Until then, the research commission is drafting a strategic plan to address all points of General Convention’s Indigenous boarding school resolution. At the January meeting, Tadgerson was selected to serve as chair of the advocacy committee.

“There’s a community aspect, that the church is so dedicated toward bridge-building and racial justice and racial equity,” Tadgerson said. “We are doing the same work through different avenues, and when we come together, we have a much larger impact.”

Ray said the “Walking Together: Finding Common Ground” exhibit is also scheduled to be on display at the Province V meeting April 25-27 in South Bend, Indiana. The traveling exhibit will eventually travel throughout the entire state of Michigan. The diocese also accepts local invitations to display the exhibit.

“This work is part of being the Beloved Community,” Ray said. “The Episcopal Church has been called to make supporting Indigenous communities a significant part of its life and missional work around healing and reconciliation. And that’s what Jesus’ role is about, healing and reconciliation.”

In addition to Ray and Tadgerson, traveling exhibit staff members include Kathy Vanden Boogaard, project coordinator; Ariel Gougeon, graphic designer; Mitch Bolo, videographer; Dan Druckey, director and curator of Northern Michigan University’s Beaumier Upper Peninsula Heritage Center, and Lainie Scott, who served as an archival research intern while an undergraduate student in history and Native American studies at Northern Michigan University.

The five federally recognized Native American tribes in the Upper Peninsula are Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians; Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians; Hannahville Indian Community of Potawatomi Indians; Bay Mills Indian Community of Anishinaabe Indians; and Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Altogether, more than 240,000 Indigenous people live in Michigan.

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service based in northern Indiana. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

Students at St. Mary’s, an Episcopal school for Indigenous girls on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, are seen in an undated photo from the G.E.E. Lindquist Papers, held by the Burke Library Archives at Union Theological Seminary.

[Episcopal News Service — Port Aransas, Texas] The Episcopal Church is working to address the intergenerational trauma many Native Americans live with today and how to best engage in advocacy and reconciliation efforts.

Hundreds — or as many as tens of thousands — of Indigenous youth are estimated to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries while attending boarding schools, which were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages. Many of those boarding schools were operated by Christian churches, including The Episcopal Church.

The legacy of boarding schools made international headlines in 2021 with the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children at a former Indigenous boarding school in Canada. Following the discovery, the U.S. Department of Interior announced it was launching a comprehensive review of American boarding school policies dating to 1819. In response to the discovery and report, the 80th General Convention established a fact-finding commission to research and document The Episcopal Church’s historic role in these boarding schools. Around the same time, Executive Council created the Committee for Indigenous Boarding Schools and Advocacy. The commission and committee met Jan. 17 and 18 at the Mustang Island Conference Center in Port Aransas, Texas, to establish an agenda for the coming year.

The topic of Indigenous boarding schools is “complex” because of the varied experiences Indigenous children had, the Rev. Bradley Hauff, The Episcopal Church’s missioner for Indigenous Ministries who is Lakota and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, told Episcopal News Service. Some children were forced to attend, while other families voluntarily sent their children to receive what was often the only formal education available. In many cases, students faced physical and mental abuse, even death. “There was no uniform Indigenous boarding school experience,” Hauff said.

“The boarding schools alienated families from each other. I myself never knew my grandparents because they lost touch with my parents and died young, and I grew up barely knowing my aunts and uncles,” said Hauff, whose parents attended Indigenous boarding schools during the Great Depression.

The Episcopal Church’s two Indigenous boarding school groups are working together yet have distinctive mandates — General Convention Resolution A127 established a commission to focus on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in the boarding schools. Executive Council formed its committee to focus on advocacy work. The two groups first met in person in October in Seattle, Washington, to discuss how to interpret and apply existing General Convention resolutions.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has identified at least 523 schools that were part of the Indigenous boarding school system. At least nine of those boarding schools were thought to have Episcopal Church connections, though the lack of churchwide records has made it difficult to fully account for the church’s role in the schools. Most of the boarding schools had closed by the mid-20th century or were taken over by Native American tribes.

It was a 2022 federal report that revealed that more than 500 children died over the course of 150 years in Indigenous boarding schools, though Native American scholars estimate the number is closer to 40,000. Hauff, who’s a member of both the research commission and advocacy committee, called those deaths a “genocide.”

“How does a people recover from genocide? I don’t know if that’s even possible or what it would involve, but I think the first step is talking about the truth of what happened and not sugar-coating the truth with a false narrative,” he said.

Much of last week’s discussion centered around sharing stories of the intergenerational trauma experienced today by Indigenous people, as well as healing efforts and the need to specify advocacy priorities. The intergenerational trauma caused by Indigenous boarding schools lingers today in various forms, including poverty, violence and substance abuse. The groups also discussed how to best spend the $2 million Executive Council allocated to them. 

During the two-day meeting, Executive Council’s committee selected leadership. Leora Tadgerson will serve as chair. She serves as the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s director of director of reparations and justice and is a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and the Wiikwemkoong First Nation. Roth Puahala, junior warden of the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, and a native Hawaiian, will serve as secretary.

Hauff told ENS he thinks the advocacy committee selecting its leadership during the discussions was a “major breakthrough.”

“It empowered these two commissions to move forward working together, and at the same time it’s responsible to the two different governmental entities of The Episcopal Church — Executive Council and General Convention,” he said.

The research commission’s immediate priority is to hire a facilitator and draft a strategic plan to address all points of General Convention’s Indigenous boarding school resolution before the 81st General Convention takes place June 23-28 in Louisville, Kentucky. Collaborating with tribes, dioceses with significant Native American populations and other Christian organizations involved in similar research into Indigenous boarding schools and reconciliation is a possibility for the future. Because many boarding school records were lost or destroyed upon closure, the commission also discussed searching for names of unknown victims through cemetery records in nearby areas. 

Members from both the commission and the committee unanimously agreed that gathering stories from boarding school survivors will be crucial for advancing research and advocacy efforts.

“We need things such as trauma-informed interviewing styles,” the Rev. Leon Sampson, curate priest at Good Shepherd Mission in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and a member of the General Convention commission, said during the discussions, which he attended via Zoom. “We need to try to do this work very sensitively so that we don’t offend anybody.”

Outside of strictly addressing boarding schools, members of both groups also discussed how The Episcopal Church can bring awareness to the high number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States and Canada. In the United States, Indigenous women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than women from any other demographic, according to research conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“A lot of the work that’s being done now is at the grassroots level,” Sampson said. “So, what do we do as The Episcopal Church to support the grassroots groups?”

In 2022, General Convention passed legislation recognizing the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis and supporting advocacy efforts to support victims, including directing the church’s Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations to support related federal government legislation.

Intergenerational healing was also a major discussion topic, and the endgame of the commission and committee’s research and advocacy efforts. The Rev. Cornelia Eaton, The Episcopal Church in Navajoland’s canon to the ordinary and a member of the research commission, mentioned Navajoland’s efforts through its Hozho Wellness Center as an example. The center, which is based in Farmington, New Mexico, serves as a support and counseling center for Navajo women and their families by offering a food delivery program and parenting, gardening, cooking, art and storytelling classes. The word “hózhó” means “balance and beauty” in the Navajo language.

Hauff told ENS that the commission and committee plan to have another in-person meeting before the 81st General Convention.

“It’s taken us a long time to get here, and it will take time to reach a point of resolution,” he said. “We’re not going to resolve anything quickly, but the onus is on us, in The Episcopal Church, to look to Jesus and rationally respond to the damage that’s been done.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

Attendees of Winter Talk 2024 gather for a group photo Jan. 14 at the Mustang Island Conference Center in Port Aransas, Texas. Photo: Shireen Korkzan/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service — Port Aransas, Texas] Episcopalians representing multiple Indigenous tribes throughout the United States and worldwide gathered in person and virtually Jan. 13-15 at the Mustang Island Conference Center in Port Aransas, Texas, for the annual Winter Talk conference.

“This endeavor strengthens our Indigenous community, which we then take with us back to our own communities,” said Forrest Cuch, a member of the Ute tribe and senior warden of St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in Whiterocks, Utah. “It’s just a wonderful time. It’s something we all look forward to. It’s incredible.”

The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries organizes Winter Talk as a forum where participants can highlight their Indigenous traditions and contributions to the church. This year, 38 people participated in person and as many as 75 people participated via Zoom. Participants included priests, bishops, lay leaders and tribal elders. Every day of Winter Talk included morning and evening worship. Many participants prayed aloud in their native languages.

This year’s Winter Talk theme was “Indigenous Ways of Learning, Knowing and Relating.”

“Jesus had an Indigenous worldview … Indigenous people — our way of learning — is circular. It’s not linear,” the Rev. Bradley Hauff, a Lakota and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who serves as the church’s missioner for Indigenous ministries, said during his remarks opening the conference. “We see life as a lifelong learning experience.”

After Hauff spoke, participants created an altar — a table adorned with a handmade quilt and blessed beforehand by a tribal elder — by bringing forward items of significance to them personally, as well as their culture, tradition and ministry. Items included handmade jewelry, books and seashells. The Rev. Lauren Stanley, canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of South Dakota, brought ashes from Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Parmelee, which arsonists burned to the ground in October 2023. The historic church served Episcopalians on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Virtual participants, joining from Latin America, Africa and New Zealand, also symbolically offered items to the altar.

Cuch told Episcopal News Service that it’s important for Indigenous people to share their stories as a step forward to collectively heal.

“We must extend that up to greater communities, and the more we can share, the greater the interfacing with the international community,” he said.

During Winter Talk 2024 in Port Aransas, Texas, participants created an altar — a table adorned with a handmade quilt and blessed beforehand by a tribal elder— by bringing forward items of significance to them personally, as well as their culture, tradition and ministry. Items included handmade jewelry, books, seashells and ashes from Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Parmelee, which arsonists allegedly burned to the ground in October 2023. Photo: Shireen Korkzan/Episcopal News Service

Every day of Winter Talk consisted of presentations addressing a range of topics, including a presentation from Alan Yarborough, church relations officer for the Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations, explaining the function of the office and the Episcopal Public Policy Network. During the presentation, Yarborough explained how the Office of Government Relations works with organization and coalition partners to address areas of concern in Indigenous communities, such as the alarmingly high number of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Other discussions included creation care efforts and the lasting harmful legacies of the Doctrine of Discovery, a centuries-old theological and political doctrine used to justify colonization and the oppression of Indigenous people. General Convention passed a resolution officially repudiating the doctrine in 2009.

Several bishops from dioceses with significant Indigenous populations also participated in Winter Talk either in person or virtually. They offered words of encouragement and support for the Indigenous Episcopal communities.

“I stand here before you, extraordinarily grateful not just for your friendship,” South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts told Winter Talk participants in person. “Your relationship with each other in Jesus Christ, that’s tangible. I can touch that; I can feel that; I am emboldened by that, and I’m grateful for that.”

The Diocese of South Dakota is home to the largest Indigenous ministry in North America, serving the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people, according to the diocese’s website.

Northern Michigan Bishop Rayford Ray, who participated in Winter Talk virtually, informed attendees of the diocese’s ongoing reconciliation efforts with Indigenous people in the Upper Peninsula. On Jan. 26 and 27, during an event in Baraga, the diocese will launch “Walking Together Finding Common Ground,” a traveling exhibit that will take place alongside a local powwow gathering. During the launch, Ray will offer a formal public apology of Christian churches’ efforts to assimilate Native American children into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and cultures in boarding schools. Some children were forced to attend, while other families voluntarily sent their children to receive what often was the only formal education available. In many cases, students faced physical and mental abuse, even death. The intergenerational trauma caused by Indigenous boarding schools lingers today.

“I appreciate the work that’s been done by many people here in the Upper Peninsula, and we have lots more to do,” Ray said. “We’re just getting on with the healing process towards reconciliation, and we’ve got a way to go, but we are working towards them.”

The 80th General Convention created a fact-finding commission to research The Episcopal Church’s historic role in boarding schools, and Executive Council has a Committee for Indigenous Boarding Schools and Advocacy. The commission and the committee are meeting Jan. 17 and 18 at the Mustang Island Conference Center.

The Rev. Garth Howe, community/cultural liaison officer for Church Pension Group and a deacon in the Diocese of Chicago, shared CPG’s outreach initiative to establish a network of support for Indigenous clergy, many of whom are non-stipendiary, meaning they don’t earn a salary or receive health insurance.

“That’s why I’m here at this conference,” said Howe, who is of Oglala Sioux and Stockbridge ancestry. “I’m here personally to experience the good work around here … to make sure that the organization I represent here has the best understanding of the ins and outs of Indigenous thinking.”

In between presentations, the Rev. Bude VanDyke, rector of Church of the Good Shepherd in Decatur, Alabama, and a part of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, played guitar and sang songs he wrote himself about pain, addiction, healing and hope for Indigenous communities. VanDyke told ENS that he picked up music after recovering from alcoholism more than 20 years ago.

“Even amid all of the institutional kind of stuff [with The Episcopal Church], what I’m interested in is this relationship with people that matter to me and knowing that I matter,” he said.

Winter Talk concluded with participants taking down the altar. Some people kept the items they shared while others gave their items away to fellow participants.

“We ended up inspiring each other, invigorating each other and building our faith together — our love and understanding,” Cuch said. “A lot of wonderful things came out of these meetings. We inspired each other with our stories, and we just shared everything that’s in our hearts.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.