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Tales of Indian boarding schools
by Bill Loftus
As a young girl, Rose Goddard attended Mary Immaculate School, a boarding school for Coeur d’Alene Indian girls that operated on the reservation at DeSmet from 1878 to 1974. See photo at left bottom. She recalled the kindness of the priests and nuns of the Sisters of Providence School.
When poverty and alcoholism made hunger a painful reality for children in the surrounding village, they knew they could find something to eat from the Mission of the Sacred Heart atop the hill.
Goddard has worked for 18 years as secretary and community outreach coordinator for Sacred Heart Mission, next to the abandoned mission school she once attended. She recalled her childhood in DeSmet for those attending UI Extension’s workshop with a mixture of humor, gratitude, and stark reality. Her gratitude for the church and for the improvements the tribal government has made in the years since is apparent.
Their camp below the mission was a close community knit together by family ties and the church. Poverty was a constant. “When you lived that way, you didn’t see anything wrong with it, and a problem we had was alcoholism. People hid it because Indians weren’t allowed to drink. People would guzzle it as soon as they got it. Our parents decided we needed to go to school to be fed. We would go to the sisters with tin cans and bring the food home and share it.”
The life of the camp revolved around families.
The homes might have six or seven mattresses arranged in one room as a reflection of that closeness. Enrolling in boarding school removed children from their homes. “At 7 years old, it was hard to see your family going someplace and be stuck here,” Goddard said. “It never works when you try to take Indian people away from their extended families.”
Catholic and tribal history since 1842
Father Tom Connolly, a Jesuit priest who has spent 30 years at DeSmet and who first worked on the Coeur d’Alene reservation 50 years ago, traced the history of the mission and the tribe’s relationship with white settlement. The tribe’s earliest connection was a vision by Circling Raven, an influential leader who in the 1600s foresaw the arrival of Black Robes or missionary priests long before Father Jean-Pierre DeSmet first met members of the tribe in 1842.
Cliff SiJohn, a tribal elder who works at the tribe’s Coeur d’Alene Casino near Worley, shared another view of the tribe’s history wih the same tour group. A Catholic, SiJohn nonetheless rejects what he views as harm inflicted by missionaries’ rigid doctrine. The zealousness of some tribal followers who joined the group Soldiers of the Sacred Heart inflicted their own wounds on tribal members and culture.
For Goddard, the tribal school and a more determined tribal government mean better days ahead. “I think we’re on the upswing again,” Goddard said, adding that she is writing a journal to record her childhood recollections for her grandchildren. “They have to know the life I lived, when a snack was grabbing a piece of deer meat from the back of the stove or a biscuit from a can.”
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