Catholic-Operated Native Boarding Schools in the United States pre-1970

NEW Website :  https://ctah.archivistsacwr.org/

Compiled
by a group of archivists, historians, and concerned Catholics, the List
of Catholic-operated Native Boarding Schools in the United States,
pre-1978, represents the first and most comprehensive source for
information on Native boarding schools that were overseen or staffed by
the Catholic Church before 1978. Our motivation for assembling this data
was to provide a resource to help boarding school survivors, their
descendants, Tribal Nations, and the Church itself navigate the history
of Catholic involvement with Native boarding schools.

The
list has two primary objectives: first, to identify all
Catholic-operated boarding schools designated specifically to educate
Native American and Alaska Native children in the United States, and
second, to identify all Catholic entities that were involved in the
operation of each school. We are under no pretense that our list is
complete. We have done our best to offer the most accurate information
possible, but we also anticipate future revisions as additional
information is obtained.

 

By
bringing together basic information about Catholic-run Native boarding
schools and the various Catholic institutions involved in their
operation, the list responds to the clear request from Tribal Nations
for access to archival records in Catholic repositories. Families and
communities of boarding school survivors and their descendants deserve
prioritized access to information regarding their own histories. The
Catholic Church also has an obligation to understand the scope of its
own role in this history. Making basic facts about the history of
Catholic institutional involvement in the boarding schools more
transparent aids in that understanding and facilitates identification of
possible sources of archival records as one preliminary step to support
information access.

Our
goal is for Tribal Nations, families, and individuals to be able to use
the list to locate records for schools that members of their
communities attended. Our hope is that Catholic institutional archives
and Tribal Nations will build relationships to increase understanding
about records for Catholic-operated Native boarding schools and further
develop the historical record. 

 

Email Contact: https://ctah.archivistsacwr.org/contact/