Indigenous people sing “songs of resistance” as they march following a People’s Plenary held on the final day of the United Nations climate summit, COP30, that took place in Belém, Brazil, Nov. 10-21. Photo: Albin Hillert/LWF

[Episcopal News Service] After 12 days of calling for centering environmental advocacy and justice around Indigenous voices at the 30th United Nations climate conference, or COP30, in Bélem, Brazil, church leaders are reflecting on what they learned and how Episcopalians can work to address climate change.

Several Episcopal and Anglican leadership who traveled to Brazil last month for COP30 spoke about the experience in a Dec. 1 church webinar. 

Despite the geographical differences of COP30 participants, “one of the things I noticed that is both sad and hopeful is that, like in all of the panels, the story [of Indigenous people worldwide] is so much the same,” the Rev. Isaiah “Shaneequa” Brokenleg, The Episcopal Church’s interim Indigenous Ministries missioner, said during the webinar.

At the U.N. conference, Indigenous leaders representing different tribes worldwide shared how they have engaged in tribal sovereignty initiatives to protect lands and local food supplies. For example, Brokenleg said, some Māori people from New Zealand shared their efforts to regulate jade mining to prevent further land destruction.

Brokenleg, who is Lakota, represented Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe at COP30 in the church’s 11th consecutive year participating in the conference.

Brokenleg’s participation at the Nov. 10-21 climate conference supported an Anglican Communion delegation led by Archbishop of Brazil Marinez Santos Bassoto, who also serves as Anglican bishop of the Amazon, where the world’s largest rainforest is located.

During COP30, world leaders, policymakers, climate scientists, activists, corporate executives and faith representatives addressed multiple issues related to climate change and environmentalism, including waste management and agriculture. This was the first year the United States didn’t formally send representatives to the conference, though California Gov. Gavin Newsom led an alternate delegation of more than 100 U.S. lawmakers.

Faith representatives participated in an ecumenical march and vigil for the Earth and a worship service at the Catedral Santa Maria. Brokenleg described the service as “beautiful.”

Martha Jarvis, the Anglican Communion’s U.N. representative, explained during the webinar the “Lungs of the Earth” initiative, which describes how Anglicans can be involved in working to restore and protect three vital ecosystems: forests, oceans and frozen landscapes. This includes participation in reforestation initiatives like the Communion Forest, and also amplifies environmental and advocacy work from Anglican provinces around the world and celebrates the work of Anglican environmental activists, including Green Anglicans and the Anglican Communion Environmental Network.

“This focus on being in the Amazon, the importance of the COP being right at the center of one of the ‘lungs of the earth,’ made it into many political declarations, many written statements …  This focus was one of the things that was recognized quite consistently in the political declarations,” Jarvis said.

More than 90 countries supported a deforestation roadmap, but the measure failed to reach a final agreement. Last year, 8.1 million hectares of forest were lost globally, according to data from the Forest Declaration Assessment 2025, which was published in October.

COP30 did, however, result in some victories. For example, several countries pledged $7 billion for the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a multilateral fund to help developing countries preserve their tropical forests.

“There is so much work that is left to do, and hopefully the spirit has touched each of us with our particular charge and call for action in our particular dimensions,” Lynnaia Main, The Episcopal Church’s U.N. representative, said during the webinar. “It takes all of us together.”

At 8 p.m. Eastern tonight, The Episcopal Church and the Green Caucus will host its monthly creation care Compline via Zoom. Click here to register. 

Episcopalians can learn more about the church’s commitment to addressing the global climate crisis on its website.

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

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.

In advance of the 30th United Nations climate conference, COP30, The Episcopal Church hosted an Oct. 27 webinar on “Climate Action and COP30,” where Episcopalians talked about climate mitigation projects and why creation care is important for everyone. Photo: Screenshot

[Episcopal News Service] Ten years after nearly 200 countries signed the Paris Agreement promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, global dependence and investment in fossil fuels still dominate the energy sector over renewable resources. And at the same time, surface temperatures continue to reach record levels, and severe weather events like droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, heavy rain and floods are increasing.

In advance of the 30th United Nations climate conference, COP30, The Episcopal Church hosted a webinar on “Climate Action and COP30,” where Episcopalians talked about climate mitigation projects and why creation care is important for everyone. 

In the Lakota language, “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ means we are all related. But when we say that, we’re not just talking about people, we’re talking about plants and animals and all of creation,” the Rev. Isaiah “Shaneequa” Brokenleg, The Episcopal Church’s interim Indigenous Ministries missioner, said during the Oct. 27 webinar. She will represent The Episcopal Church at COP30, the 11th consecutive year The Episcopal Church has participated in the conference.

During COP30, world leaders, policymakers, climate scientists, activists, corporate executives and interfaith representatives will gather Nov. 10-21 in Belém, Brazil, to address multiple areas of climate change and environmentalism, including waste management, agriculture and more. In an interview with The Guardian ahead of the conference, António Guterres, the U.N.’s secretary-general, said overshooting the target in the Paris Agreement will have “devastating consequences” for the world.

Anglican Archbishop of Brazil Marinez Santos Bassotto, who also serves as bishop of the Amazon, has called for Indigenous voices to be at the center of the discussion. Brokenleg’s participation at COP30 will support the Anglican Communion delegation led by Bassotto.

“We’re really there to engage with all of [Bassotto’s] plans and her witness within Brazil and globally. We’re also there to play our part in the worldwide church’s witness on this topic,” Martha Jarvis, the Anglican Communion’s U.N. representative, said during the webinar. “We work ecumenically with other church denominations and with other faiths to say that this is an issue that matters to our God and to influence the negotiations, through symbolism, through one-to-one meetings, through the stories that we’re able to get the media to carry and through events that we host at the COP itself.”

COP30 will focus on the efforts needed to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the presentation of new national action plans and the progress on the finance pledges made at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

By engaging in climate action, “we are choosing justice over convenience,” the Rev. Lester Mackenzie, The Episcopal Church’s chief of mission, said during the webinar.

Barbara “Barbie” Okamoto Bach, co-chair of the Diocese of New Jersey’s environmental commission and a founding member of the House of Deputies’ Green Caucus, said that “baby steps” are key to long-term environmental impact.

For example, “Before asking the cathedral and all the congregations to eliminate disposable utensils and single use plastics from hospitality events – coffee hours, receptions – first we have to research and recommend appropriate compostable cups, plates and forks and spoons to replace volumes of trash,” she said.

Henry Bibelheimer, who volunteered with the Young Adult Service Corps in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines between 2018 and 2020, said he learned about asset-based community development while in the Philippines, including sustainable, cooperative approaches to banana and coffee plant harvesting.

“Organizations that function similarly to a co-op can be a powerful tool for community action,” he said.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. No U.S. delegates are expected to participate in COP30.

“It’s a particularly important time to take a moment to consider, given some of the political narratives around us at the moment, where our church globally can play an important part in offering a different way, a third way [of approaching climate action],” Lynnaia Main, The Episcopal Church’s U.N. representative, said.

Episcopalians who are interested in participating in COP30 remotely can find ways to do so here. 

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

The Most Rev. Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassotto is primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil and bishop of the Amazon.

[Episcopal News Service] The Most Rev. Marinez Roa dos Santos Bassotto, primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil and bishop of the Amazon, on Oct. 20 said that the voices of Indigenous people and advocacy for environmental justice must be central to discussions that will take place at COP30, the United Nations climate change conference taking place Nov. 10-21 in the Brazilian city of Belém.

Her comments were made during an online press conference of ecumenical faith leaders, facilitated by Christian Aid, a U.K.-based nonprofit that works globally to end poverty, and shared by the Anglican Communion News Service.

Bassotto, who is also the bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Amazon, is in the U.K. through Oct. 24. She will also meet with Norwich Bishop Graham Usher, the Church of England’s lead bishop for the environment, and take part in a round table discussion about climate justice at Lambeth Palace with U.K. church leaders and activists.

She will also play a major role in the People’s Summit, a parallel event to COP30 taking place Nov. 12-16 that will provide a platform for civil society, social movements and marginalized communities to voice their concerns and demands for climate justice.

The bishop is adamant that the voices of the Indigenous people of the region must be heard. She said, “I hope that their participation will be central and impactful. Their voices need to be at the center of discussions, because they are the ones who hold the ancestral and practical knowledge necessary for preservation. “

She added, “Climate justice will only be achieved when the territorial and cultural rights of these communities are fully recognized and respected. We want their voices to influence the negotiations, because their influence is the key to ensuring that the commitments made at the Summit are translated into concrete, effective and fair action.”

Mass deforestation continues to cause harm in Brazil, where in the Amazon 68.9 million hectares of forest cover have been lost between 2001 and 2023, which threatens biodiversity, displaces Indigenous peoples and accelerates climate change.

During a May 2025 visit to Trinity Church in New York City, Bassotto said that from 2016 to 2023, Brazil saw a dismantling of environmental policies that had been in place for more than 40 years. As a result, “We saw Indigenous peoples lose access to their traditional lands, the return of banned pesticides, mining on previously protected land, and an increase in deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture.”

Bassotto was also the lead signer on a March 20, 2025, statement by faith leaders and organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean calling for action in the face of the climate crisis.

In it, they said, “Our territories, understood by us as sacred, are being destroyed. We witness the destruction of the Amazon, other ecosystems and the people who live there, caused by large-scale agriculture, mining, and fossil fuel extraction.” They noted, “Those who protect our lands – environmental and human rights defenders – are increasingly being persecuted.”

The Episcopal Church will be represented at COP30 by the Rev. Isaiah “Shaneequa” Brokenleg, the church’s interim Indigenous missioner, who will attend the conference in support of an Anglican Communion delegation led by Bassotto. This will be the 11th year The Episcopal Church has participated in the U.N. climate conference.

“As a winkté [two-spirit] and person of faith, I know that the Creator calls us to be good relatives, in right-relationship, to ALL of Creation.  In Lakota culture, we end our prayers with “mitakuye oyasin [we are all related], which reminds us of this truth,” Brokenleg told Episcopal News Service. “Indigenous voices at COP30 are vital because our spirituality, teachings, and ways of life testify to the world that caring for creation is not simply a policy choice, but a sacred responsibility; rooted in relationship, reciprocity and love.”

In a press release, the Rev. Lester Mackenzie, chief of mission program, said: “We are looking to partner more closely with those on the front lines of climate change, particularly with Anglican Communion partners. “We aim to lift up the voices of Indigenous siblings for the People’s Summit, recognizing the unique perspective and witness they can offer.”

Episcopalians also can learn more about the church’s commitment to creation care and climate justice during an upcoming two-part webinar:

• Oct. 27, 2 p.m. Eastern: “Climate Action and COP30.”
• Dec. 1, 2 p.m. Eastern: “Climate Action Beyond COP30.”

Registration is available here.

“Climate change impacts everyone. Our world will continue to be affected by our individual choices and collective decisions in response. Indigenous peoples are central to our understanding and practice of healthy relationships between people and planet,” Lynnaia Main, the Episcopal Church’s representative to the U.N., told ENS. “Episcopalians have an opportunity to listen and learn, and amplify Indigenous voices, by participating virtually during COP30 and sharing their own stories of local climate action. Learn more about how to participate on the Episcopal Church’s COP30 webpage.”

Ahead of COP30, the Anglican Communion Office has been sharing information about the “Lungs of the Earth” initiative, which describes how Anglicans can be involved in working to restore and protect three vital ecosystems: forests, oceans and frozen landscapes.

This includes participation in reforestation initiatives like the Communion Forest, and it also amplifies environmental and advocacy work from Anglican provinces around the world and celebrates the work of Anglican environmental activists, including Green Anglicans and the Anglican Communion Environmental Network.

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.

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.

Worshippers fill the sanctuary of the Church of the Mediator in Kyle, South Dakota, for Easter services in April 2025. Photo courtesy of Michelle Dayton

[Episcopal News Service] The Church of the Mediator in Kyle, South Dakota, has long been a fixture in the life of its community on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The small congregation’s Sunday services typically draw about 20 worshippers, and it also is a place where Episcopalians and other residents gather for personal and social milestones, from baptisms, wakes and funerals to the church’s large celebrations on Easter Day.

Those gatherings, however, have always been limited by what the 115-year-old Church of the Mediator does not have: running water.

That is about to change. The congregation has secured a United Thank Offering grant to help pay for a construction project that will connect the church to tribal water lines, install a septic system and add restrooms and a kitchen sink to the church building. Visiting the hill-top church will no longer require carrying up water or using outhouses.

“We’ve been talking about it quite a while,” Mona Vocu, a lay minister at Church of the Mediator, said in discussing the plumbing project with Episcopal News Service. “I’m sure people will really appreciate it.”

The South Dakota project received $69,050 from the churchwide United Thank Offering program, one of 27 projects awarded more than $1 million in June. This round of UTO grants was focused on projects providing water access, sanitation and education.

“The grant awards emphasize both the physical and spiritual importance of water in our lives,” Karin Elsen, president of the United Thank Offering board, said in a UTO news release. “These funds will be used for the construction of many practical things, such as showers and wells, while also fostering service, hospitality and renewal through the projects.”

The Church of the Mediator in Kyle, South Dakota, was built in 1910 atop a hill. It finally will be connected to the Pine Ridge Reservation water system with help from a UTO grant. Photo courtesy of Michelle Dayton

That certainly is the case at Church of the Mediator, where the spirit of service and hospitality is alive despite the building’s limitations. The church normally would host the large, multiday wakes that are traditional for the Oglala Lakota, but the congregation has faced challenges in accommodating such gatherings. They often are held instead at facilities closer to town that have running water.

“Without indoor plumbing and a water source, our community has not been able to have their services” at Church of the Mediator, the Rev. Michelle Dayton, superintending presbyter for the Diocese of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Episcopal Mission, told ENS. “It’s just not convenient. It’s just not possible.”

Even so, Dayton said, there is a clear longing for such big gatherings at the church. Last Easter, she estimated about 80 people attended the congregation’s Sunday service and celebration.

“We had the little children up in the bishop’s chair,” she recalled. “All the youth, I had them sitting around the sanctuary, and we added extra chairs around the pews, because it was standing room only.”

It was festive and well-attended, but the celebration didn’t last as long as it would have if the church had the convenience of drinking water and restrooms inside the building. The closest water source is a hand pump down the hill from the church. That is as far as the tribe’s water main extends. The congregation, despite wanting to install a connection to the tribal water pipes, has not been able to afford it until now.

“They are wealthy in community and not in bank accounts,” Dayton noted, so the UTO grant will have a transformational impact.

The new restrooms will be accessible for people with disabilities. Adding a sink to the church’s existing kitchen area will mean readily available drinking water and water for brewing coffee. The congregation will be able to wash dishes after hosting gatherings at the church. Running water even will solve liturgical challenges.

“We’ll have water for baptism, for goodness sake,” Dayton said. “It will make a huge difference.”

Church of the Mediator is one of nine congregations that make up the Pine Ridge Episcopal Mission. Dayton celebrates Holy Eucharist once a month at Church of the Mediator as part of a worship rotation with the other Pine Ridge congregations. On the other Sundays, lay ministers lead Morning Prayer at Church of the Mediator.

In addition to worship services, the church has hosted vacation Bible school, sewing groups and birthday and anniversary celebrations, as well as about 40 wakes and funerals a year – all of which will benefit from the plumbing project.

“UTO has been actively participating in God’s mission with us in South Dakota for quite some time, and they are a valued partner in ministry,” South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts said in a diocesan article about the project. “I also want to commend Mother Michelle and the people of Mediator for dedicating the time and effort to organize this project. It was no small task. They took both initiative and responsibility, placed themselves in the Spirit’s capable hands, and transformation occurred.”

Congregational leaders now are working to schedule contractors to begin the first phase of the construction, including installing the water connection and underground septic system, possibly this fall. Indoor work can be conducted over the winter, with the hope of having the project completed by the spring.

Vocu said worship attendance had declined during the pandemic, but despite that disruption and the challenges posed by the lack of water in the church, the congregation is hopeful for the future.

“We’re growing,” she said. “We’re getting back our congregation, but it’s taking time.” She expects attendance to continue to grow once the plumbing project is complete.

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

The Anglican pilgrimage to the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico took place Aug. 1-9, 2025. Photo: Diocese of Pennsylvania/Facebook

[Episcopal News Service] Nearly three dozen Anglicans worldwide have returned home from a nine-day pilgrimage to the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland with a deeper knowledge and appreciation of Diné culture and spirituality.

“It was a rich experience. We really gained an understanding through sharing our sacred stories and our songs and prayers,” the Rev. Cornelia Eaton, Navajoland’s canon to the ordinary, told Episcopal News Service. “The pilgrimage was done in a respectful way, and it was powerful to us when the Māori offered their own warrior dance and prayers in our honor.”

The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American tribe by both land and tribal enrollment. Its reservation occupies a large portion of the Four Corners region, including parts of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.

Eaton led the Aug. 1-9 pilgrimage, which was organized by Archbishop Don Tamihere of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. Tamihere, as one of the province’s three co-equal primates, represents the province’s Indigenous Māori people.

Other church leaders who participated in the pilgrimage included Archbishop Marinez Santos Bassoto, presiding bishop and primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, and Archbishop Chris Harper, national Indigenous Anglican archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

The 34 pilgrims stopped in Episcopal parishes and sacred spaces throughout Navajo Nation, including Good Shepherd Mission in Fort Defiance, Arizona; the Navajo Nation Museum in nearby Window Rock, Navajo Nation’s capital; and Spider Rock, a large sandstone spire located at the junction of Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, where Diné families have been living for nearly 5,000 years.

“When we were at Spider Rock, we just listened to the wind around us and took in a moment of silence,” Eaton said. “That silence brings such different voices from the canyonlands that has a lot of history, because Spider Rock is where a lot of our ancestors were captured and forced to march to Fort Sumner during the Long Walk. So, it was through being quiet where we all got to experience listening to our ancestors.”

The pilgrims also visited St. Christopher’s Mission in Bluff, Utah, and Episcopal congregations in the Farmington, New Mexico, area, where the Navajoland diocese is based. They also visited the diocese’s Hozho Wellness Center in Farmington. The center 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.

During the Anglican pilgrimage to the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland, Aug. 1-9, 2025, the pilgrims met with former Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. Left to right: The Rev. Cornelia Eaton, Navajoland’s canon to the ordinary, Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez and Haaland. Photo: Diocese of Pennsylvania/Facebook

Near the end of the pilgrimage, the pilgrims stopped at Santuario de Chimayó near Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez, president of the Anglican Communion Compass Rose Society and a New Mexico native with Mesoamerican ancestry, led a prayer service. They also stopped at Picuris Pueblo, one of New Mexico’s 19 Native American pueblos whose inhabitants have resided there for centuries. Each pueblo is a sovereign nation. While at Picuris Pueblo, the pilgrims met with former Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, and Tom Udall, former U.S. ambassador to New Zealand.

Gutiérrez told ENS that the Compass Rose Society is working to elevate Indigenous voices in the Anglican Communion.

“Indigenous people have been ignored and maligned, especially by the church, yet they are the most faithful people with deep concern for the Earth and walking in the world with presence,” Gutiérrez said. “We want to empower their work – God’s work – in the world.”

Each day, the Diné Episcopalians served the pilgrims local homemade meals, such as lamb stew, fry bread, Navajo tacos and blue corn mush. At dawn, they shared sacred corn pollen, tádídíín, while silently praying.

“It was really powerful, just amazing to be present there while facing east as the sun was rising,” Eaton said.

Several of the pilgrims told Eaton the food tasted “like back home.”

“There were so many similarities between our cultures despite where we are in the world,” Eaton said.”

The pilgrimage also was a celebration of the Navajoland’s formal recognition as a diocese. Navajoland was created in 1977 as an area mission of The Episcopal Church. In 2024, the 81st General Convention authorized its elevation to missionary diocese status, allowing it to call its own bishop. That status was formalized in June 2025 when Executive Council approved Navajoland’s new constitution. It soon will launch a bishop search.

“We celebrated the work of self-determination and of being who we are today,” Eaton said. “Part of it was staying faithful and staying prayerful. It’s a huge step forward.”

Eaton said she’s spent the last few days reflecting on the pilgrimage, calling it a success:

“This experience, I feel, was healing in every way and for the world that is in need of healing and restoration – this is what the hózhó, the Beauty Way ceremony, is all about. We were in ceremony, in prayer, as we journeyed in the four directions of Navajoland,” Eaton said. “In my knowledge, our pilgrims’ relatives of the Māori, Amazon, Canada and Lakota – we all bring this knowledge of how we are related to the elements, the land, plants and animals, that give us sacred sustenance to bring us life. 

“The Diné and the Anglican pilgrims have a deep connection to God’s holy creation that makes us one people intertwined in a sacred and holy way. This is a gift of the Divine Creator. I am proud and grateful to walk this journey together.”

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

The Anglican pilgrimage to the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland will begin at Good Shepherd Mission in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and journey around the diocese Aug. 1-10. Photo: Good Shepherd Mission

[Episcopal News Service] Nearly three dozen Anglicans and Episcopalians representing Indigenous cultures from around the world have gathered in the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland to begin a weeklong pilgrimage intended to deepen cross-cultural relationships while celebrating Navajoland’s recent elevation to diocesan status.

The 34 pilgrims began arriving July 31 at Navajo Nation, the 27,000-square-mile reservation that includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Their Aug. 1-9 itinerary will include stops at Episcopal congregations and cultural landmarks in each of the Navajoland diocese’s regions.

The pilgrimage was organized by Archbishop Don Tamihere of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia  in collaboration with the Rev. Cornelia Eaton, Navajoland’s canon to the ordinary, who will lead participants on their journey. Other participants include Archbishop Marinez Santos Bassotto, the presiding bishop and primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, and Archbishop Chris Harper, national Indigenous Anglican archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Eaton, in a July 31 interview with Episcopal News Service, said the pilgrimage was designed to be “packed full of stories,” to be shared by members of the hosting Navajo communities and their Indigenous visitors. “I think that’s the best way to get to know each other,” she said. “We’ll share around a lot of our culture and traditions and our faith.”

She and Tamihere first talked of organizing such a pilgrimage in 2023 while attending an Indigenous theological gathering in New Zealand. The Anglican province there is organized around three parallel cultural streams, or tikanga: Māori, New Zealander and Polynesian. Tamihere, head of the Tikanga Māori, is one of the province’s three co-equal primates.

“A pilgrimage is a sacred journey undertaken with intention, reflection, and reverence,” Tamihere said in a written message welcoming his fellow pilgrims. Their visit to Navajoland is “an opportunity to walk prayerfully through landscapes rich in spirit, history and meaning while deepening our connection to God and one another.”

He also described the pilgrimage as “a collective celebration of the Diocese of Navajoland’s formal recognition.” Navajoland was created in 1977 as an area mission of The Episcopal Church. In 2024, the 81st General Convention authorized its elevation to missionary diocese status, allowing it to call its own bishop. That status was formalized in June 2025 when Executive Council approved Navajoland’s new constitution. It soon will launch a bishop search.

“This milestone reflects a relationship that has been nurtured over many years built on trust, shared prayer and deep respect for Indigenous ways of life and leadership,” Tamihere said in his message to pilgrimage participants.

The past year has been an exciting time for Navajo Episcopalians, Eaton said, and that excitement was heightened by their preparations to welcome Indigenous pilgrims from other Anglican provinces.

“They’re really coming here to celebrate with us, to support us, to be in solidarity with us,” she said. “It really is quite a gift that we’re being acknowledged in this way by the Anglican Communion.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, though he was unable to join Navajoland’s guests in person, offered a written statement welcoming them to this newest diocese of The Episcopal Church.

“I celebrate this opportunity for the people of Navajoland to host a pilgrimage with our Indigenous and Anglican siblings from around the globe,” Rowe said in the statement provided to ENS. “May this be a time of fruitful exchange and reflection as you celebrate the new Missionary Diocese of Navajoland – and a source of great encouragement for Indigenous leadership in the church.”

The pilgrimage begins Aug. 1 at Good Shepherd Mission in Fort Defiance, Arizona. Other early stops will include the Navajo Nation Museum in nearby Window Rock and Canyon de Chelly National Monument and Spider Rock, a sacred landmark in Navajo history and culture.

Other stops will include St. Christopher’s Mission in Bluff, Utah, and Episcopal congregations in the Farmington, New Mexico, area, as well as the diocese’s Hozho Wellness Center. Each day, pilgrims will be served community meals of local staples, such as lamb stew, fry bread and Navajo tacos. Their travels will conclude Aug. 9 with a stop west of Navajo Nation near Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Santuario de Chimayó, where they will be led in prayer by Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez, a New Mexico native and president of the Anglican Communion Compass Rose Society.

Tamihere and Eaton also have scheduled time for talking circles, where participants can “vision together” by sharing stories, ministries and Indigenous knowledge, Eaton said.

“I look forward to meeting up with them and helping them to see firsthand the culture and spirituality of the Navajo people,” Eaton told ENS.

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

A pole barn structure rises at Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Parmelee, South Dakota, and will become the new church building when it is finished, replacing a historic church that was destroyed in a 2023 fire. Photo: Diocese of South Dakota

[Episcopal News Service] A small South Dakota congregation whose church was destroyed by fire two years ago is rebuilding this summer – with support from two similarly named congregations on opposite ends of the United States.

Holy Innocents Episcopal Church was established in the Rosebud Reservation community of Parmelee in 1890. When the original wood structure succumbed in October 2023 to a fire, likely set by an arsonist, the news caught the attention of two other Holy Innocents congregations, in Lahaina, Hawai’i, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Holy Innocents in Lahaina also was the victim of a catastrophe that year; its church building was destroyed by the August 2023 Maui fire. Leaders of both churches began conversations about their losses. They exchanged artifacts from each church and promised to pray for each other.

“Losing a church to fire, especially a historic church that served as an anchor for a community, is especially painful,” the Rev. Lauren Stanley, South Dakota’s canon to the ordinary, said in an online story. Given that both were Indigenous congregations, it was natural that they “reached out to each other in our grief,” she said.

At the time, Zollie Stone Moran, senior warden at the church in Parmelee, expressed her congregation’s desire to rebuild: “As a community, we will get it done.”

Holy Innocents in Lahaina also plans to rebuild. Like many Maui institutions devastated by the 2023 fire, it has benefited from the generous outpouring of donations to assist local relief efforts. The congregation anticipates a long path toward rebuilding in the coming years. In the meantime, it has been worshipping temporarily in a United Methodist church.

Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Parmelee, South Dakota, dating to 1890, was destroyed by fire in October 2023. Photo: Lauren Stanley, via Facebook

The rebuilding project in South Dakota has taken time as well. Since the fire, the congregation and diocese have secured insurance payments from Church Insurance Corp., along with donations from across the United States and as far away as England. The congregation also has a supportive fundraising partner in Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Atlanta.

“We reached out because there are precious few Holy Innocents’ Episcopal churches” in the United States, the Rev. Bill Murray, rector of Holy Innocents in Atlanta, said in the diocese’s article about the project. “To see two locations that share the name burn in the same year was eye opening.”

Parmelee is located west of the city of Mission in the northwest corner of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, about a half hour from the Nebraska state line. The church there was established 135 years ago when the area reportedly was a ration station for the Sicangu, the ancestors of today’s Rosebud Sioux.

The congregation, ranging from about five to 25 worshippers on Sundays, has hired a contractor for its rebuilding project, and in May, the foundation was poured for the new church in Parmelee. Last month, a steel pole barn kit arrived, and the contractor began assembling it to form the church’s structure next to an existing guild hall that was not destroyed by the fire.

Based on the current timeline, the congregation hopes to celebrate the new church building on Aug. 22 with a consecration ceremony.

“For seven generations Holy Innocents has stood on this hill, and we’re going to have it for seven more,” Stanley said.

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

Warren Hawk speaks last weekend at the 153rd Niobrara Convocation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Photo: Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission, via Facebook

[Episcopal News Service] Indigenous Episcopalians in South Dakota, inspired by Navajo Episcopalians’ recent creation of their own missionary diocese, are taking steps to explore the possibilities and challenges of forming their dozens of South Dakota congregations into an independent diocese.

On June 28, at an annual Indigenous gathering known as the Niobrara Convocation, members voted to begin researching the concept. Indigenous leaders, with the backing of South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts, plan to form an exploratory committee with two members from each of the diocese’s eight mission areas that serve Native American reservations in the state.

The goal, as it was for the missionary diocese known as Navajoland, would be to achieve greater self-determination, including the calling of their own bishop. Like Navajoland, Indigenous Episcopalians with deep roots in the Dakotas have ties to The Episcopal Church dating back generations. At the same time, church leaders acknowledge that the two contexts are very different, and they caution that any such successful effort in South Dakota would first require a major investment of time, research, deliberation and preparation.

“There’s been talk of it off and on through the years and what that would look like,” Warren Hawk, the outgoing Niobrara itancan, or convocation chair, told Episcopal News Service this week. The first step, approved last weekend, was “just to take a look at it.”

Hawk had raised the idea with Folts earlier last week while they were attending a meeting of Executive Council, of which both are members. Executive Council is The Episcopal Church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention.

Executive Council had just voted to accept the constitution for the newly created Missionary Diocese of Navajoland. The new missionary diocese includes congregations in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that formerly were part of a mission area created by The Episcopal Church in 1977 to serve Navajo Nation communities.

During Executive Council’s discussions, Hawk mentioned there had been “whispers” in South Dakota for many years about whether Indigenous congregations there also should pursue self-determination, but no formal steps had been taken toward forming a new diocese.

Folts invited Hawk to draft an exploratory proposal for presentation at the 153rd annual Niobrara Convocation, held June 26-29 in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, and hosted by the Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission.

Folts told ENS that in his June 28 speech to Niobrara attendees he encouraged them to engage with the idea, and “let’s start turning this into open conversation and dialogue.” Navajo Episcopalians had worked long and hard to achieve missionary diocese status, which has been celebrated churchwide. Doing the same in South Dakota wouldn’t be easy, Folts said, but he sensed many Episcopalians in his diocese had a passion for trying.

“Let this year be a year of research and conversation,” he said.

The Diocese of South Dakota has more than 50 Indigenous congregations spread across its eight mission areas: Cheyenne River, Mni Sose, Pine Ridge, Rosebud East, Rosebud West, Santee Yankton, Sisseton and Standing Rock. Those mission areas and congregations form the core of the Niobrara Convocation, also known as the Niobrara Deanery. The convocation and the Diocese of South Dakota have roots in the Missionary District of Niobrara, founded by the church in 1871 in the Dakota Territory.

In 1883, Niobrara was incorporated into the Missionary District of South Dakota, which became the Diocese of South Dakota in 1971. (South Dakota achieved statehood in 1889.)

Niobrara has continued to serve as a unifying convocation, primarily for Episcopalians of Lakota, Dakota and Nakota heritage, also known collectively as the Sioux, Oceti Sakowin or people of the Seven Council Fires. Typically hosted by a different South Dakota church each year, Niobrara’s annual June gatherings also bring together some members from outside the Diocese of South Dakota.

Potential challenges to elevating Niobrara to a missionary diocese include canonical requirements, administrative structure, financial viability and clergy deployment, as well as the question of whether and how to accommodate members outside South Dakota.

Folts also said that if the research and discernment process eventually produced a formal proposal to separate Niobrara from the Diocese of South Dakota, the plan likely would need the approval of a large majority of both the Niobrara congregations and those remaining in the South Dakota diocese.

Navajoland, by contrast, did not need direct approval from the dioceses of Arizona, Rio Grande or Utah, because it already was established separately as a churchwide mission whose bishop had been appointed by the House of Bishops. The Episcopal Church’s 81st General Convention authorized Navajoland to form a missionary diocese in 2024, and its creation was finalized last month by Executive Council’s vote.

Despite the challenges in South Dakota, Hawk said he and other Niobrara members are excited to study the concept.

“It’s really just to look into the possibilities of it,” Hawk told ENS. “I’m hopeful that it would happen, but there’s a lot to consider, the organizational aspect of it, how it would proceed, capabilities.”

Whatever the outcome, he thinks the conversations will spark renewed interest in planning for The Episcopal Church’s future in South Dakota’s Indigenous communities. “All of this is in essence to encourage a lot of our church membership to get back involved with our mission churches,” he said.

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