Participants in the Sept. 30 watch fire in front of Gichitwaa Kateri church on the corner of 31st and Park in Minneapolis included Maka Black Elk (far right), director of boarding school truth and healing for St. Francis Mission in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and a descendant of Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk. He spoke at midnight, describing his work to promote boarding school healing. COURTESY JANICE ANDERSEN, BASILICA OF ST. MARY
As a child, Virgil Blacklance heard stories about Indian boarding schools, one of which his father attended. He recalled that after events like powwows concluded, families would often go back to their encampments and gather around fires where “the old people” would sit and visit, he said. When Blacklance and other children grew tired from playing, they’d sit and listen to their stories.
Blacklance, 56, remembers hearing his father, who died in his 90s several years ago, his uncle and “his aunties” talk about what boarding schools were like, and it was mostly negative. “They (were) … scared in a new environment they weren’t used to,” he said.
Virgil Blacklance
The children’s hair was cut and some students were sexually abused, Blacklance said. A childhood friend of his father took his own life because “he just couldn’t take the trauma,” he said.
But, his father and other schoolmates would sometimes take “little buckets” with some bread and “scurry into the woods” where the nuns and others couldn’t see them, Blacklance said. “He said that’s the only way that he kept his language,” because out of earshot of boarding school staff, the boys could speak to each other in their native tongue. Those who didn’t lost their language, he said.
Blacklance, a member of the Lower Sioux who grew up in Minnesota, serves as a spiritual adviser for Gichitwaa Kateri in Minneapolis, which includes handling “the spiritual side” of wakes for Native Americans’ loved ones, he said. He works closely with Shawn Phillips, the parish’s pastoral minister and director of the Office of Indian Ministry for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Blacklance relayed the recollections in an interview with The Catholic Spirit Sept. 30 during a 12-hour prayer and “watch fire” event at Gichitwaa Kateri in south Minneapolis. He and Phillips shared opening remarks at 6 p.m. and the gathering ended at 6 a.m. Oct. 1. It was day one of “Walking Together: Twin Cities” events that invited prayer and pilgrimage for healing from lasting harms suffered by Native Americans attending boarding schools, and their families, decades ago.
Phillips said other goals of the event included increasing understanding of what happened and how it impacted people and, as members of the local Church, “What does God want us to do?”
Peter Koenig, a parishioner of St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis, lights the watch fire outside Gichitwaa Kateri, where people prayed, sang and listened to speakers on the first day of “Walking Together: Twin Cities.” BARB UMBERGER | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
With temperatures in the 60s, partly cloudy skies and occasional raindrops, participants moved outside as a “watch fire” was lit. They prayed, sang and listened to speakers throughout the night.
“Walking Together: Twin Cities” also included a prayer service Oct. 1 at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, and a pilgrimage walk to Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis, with a closing prayer service and remarks from Archbishop Bernard Hebda. Leadership from Gichitwaa Kateri, the Basilica of St. Mary, Ascension and St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis, and San Diego-based Modern Catholic Pilgrim organized the two days.
Indian boarding schools have drawn attention in the United States and Canada since 2021, when remains of children were found buried at a former Indian residential school in Canada. Pope Francis visited Edmonton and other areas in Canada July 24-29 and issued an apology for Church involvement in boarding schools and other forms of assimilation.
The U.S. Department of the Interior in May identified 408 schools in 37 states or U.S. territories that tens of thousands of children were forced to attend from 1819 to 1969. The Indian boarding school era largely coincided with the forced removal of many tribes from ancestral lands. Dozens of federal Indian boarding schools across the U.S. were run by Catholic institutions through U.S. government contracts.
A watch fire is rooted in Catholic and native traditions, Phillips said. It is used at some Catholic parishes on Good Friday, he said. And it’s being willing to spend an hour with Jesus, as many do in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, he said.
Fire is a powerful symbol of prayer and gathering for the Ojibwe and Dakota people, Phillips said. “So American Indians can … relate to it from their spirituality, which is a little different than what the watch fire is, but we all come to a prayer with our own kind of spirituality and bring it together,” he said.
Father Stan Sledz, a retired priest of the archdiocese, spoke to the group about lamentations and led prayers around the fire in the 9 p.m. hour. He used a small flashlight as a reading light.
Calling it a great blessing to participate, Father Sledz said he has served as sacramental minister to Gichitwaa Kateri since 2017. He leads a Sunday worship service at the parish and helps with other sacraments as needed, he said.
At midnight, Maka Black Elk, director of the boarding school Healing for St. Francis Mission in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and a descendant of Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk, described his work trying to promote boarding school healing. At 3 a.m., Robert Harrman, administrative intern at Gichitwaa Kateri, discussed the work of “allies” in boarding school truth and healing efforts. And at 6 a.m., before the fire was extinguished, parishioner Gypsy LeMoine described healing circles and a path to healing through culture and tradition.
Inside the church hall, hot soup, snacks and beverages, including homemade cedar tea, were available for breaks throughout the evening and overnight hours. “Stations” were available with rosaries and the chance to make “prayer ties” that could be hung on a sweat lodge replica elsewhere in the building.
Most participants wore orange T-shirts with artwork of a large oak tree and a quote from Black Elk, who was a member of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribe: “At the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children.” The T-shirts recognized “Orange Shirt Day” Sept. 30, a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that acknowledges the impact on Indigenous communities of the country’s Indian boarding school system.
Meagan Phillips, a parishioner of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, brought her daughter Abby, 11, to the watch fire. Phillips, 44, is a teacher at Albertville Primary School and Big Woods Elementary School in St. Michael. She also serves on the American Indian Advisory Committee for the St. Michael-Albertville School District.
Kathy Hawkinson
“I’m a white Catholic teacher, so I’ve learned a lot about what a lot of white Catholic female teachers have done to Indigenous peoples through the boarding schools,” Phillips said. “Even though I was never a part of it, I feel that the only way we can make a better present and a better future is if we here today take steps in solidarity to be here with others, both physically present and also spiritually present.”
Phillips said she brought her daughter because “I think it’s important that we as a family live out our values in a very real way.”
Kathy Hawkinson, a parishioner of Ascension in Minneapolis, said she felt called to acknowledge injustices to “the native people, not just in Minnesota, but in this country.”
“I felt like there’s been so much hurt and we can’t begin to heal it if we don’t acknowledge it,” she said, “and the horrible things that were done.”
Hawkinson, 62, who spoke with The Catholic Spirit three days after the event at Gichitwaa Kateri, said the injustices included boarding schools but also behavior toward Indigenous people in general.
“I want to make sure that I don’t have (what) people refer to as unconscious bias,” she said. “I need to be aware of my own behaviors and attitudes. That’s why I wanted to be there.”
Archbishop Bernard Hebda joined the gathering late in the evening. He said it seemed important to express his solidarity with the parish as it showed its solidarity with Canadian brothers and sisters marking that country’s second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
“I found the experience to be prayerful, and appreciated the opportunity to pray around the fire as well as before the tabernacle,” Archbishop Hebda said. “I was also grateful to have the pleasure of meeting some of those who would be making the Saturday morning pilgrimage and hearing them speak of why we need to be accompanying those who continue to feel the hurt that surrounds our Church’s role in the boarding school experience.”
PILGRIMAGE WALK
About 40 people walked 2.5 miles to Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis Oct. 1 following a 9 a.m. prayer service at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. They were encouraged to pray the rosary en route, either silently or with walking companions, or to reflect on questions including “How would you feel if someone told you that it was illegal to speak your language, celebrate your holidays, etc.?” and “How can I aid the Church in walking through truth and healing?”
Archbishop Bernard Hebda delivered remarks at Cristo Rey, which included the following:
“Having met with tribal leadership here in Minnesota, and having read of similar discussions across our country, we are sadly aware of the pain and ongoing trauma that the system of government boarding schools has caused for generations of families,” he said. “Nor should we forget our role in the government’s plan to erase the cultural identity of the American Indian students sent to Clontarf (then part of the Archdiocese of St. Paul), depriving them of their rich cultural and linguistic heritage.
“We pray that our American Indian brothers and sisters might allow us to humbly walk with them on a common journey of confronting this history, in a way that with God’s grace might bring some healing to wounds and open a path to some reconciliation,” Archbishop Hebda said.
“Let us not be afraid to confront our involvement in this sad chapter in our history, and let us look for other opportunities for prayer and encounter, always remembering to pray for the healing that only the Lord can bring,” he said.
Resources for learning more about efforts to bring healing from the impact Indian boarding schools had on Native Americans include the Minneapolis-based National American Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition website: boardingschoolhealing.org.
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