American Indian Catholics celebrate faith, culture

November is National American Indian Heritage Month


When participating in traditional American Indian dances and ceremonies, Jolene Schonchin always wears a cross and a medal of Mary on her regalia.

“I have been a Catholic my entire life,” Schonchin said. “We cook traditional Native American meals when we celebrate a saint’s feast day and we sing church hymns in our Comanche language.”

Schonchin, a member of the Comanche Nation, attends Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Lawton with her family. She and other American Indian Catholics share both a complex history with the Catholic Church and a faith that is woven into their tribal culture.

“As a Native American Catholic, the biggest challenge is defending my faith and the Church to fellow Native Americans who have not forgotten or forgiven the Church’s history with Native Americans, especially in regard to missionary and boarding schools,” Schonchin said. “Although atrocities did happen, forgiveness is the first step in healing. Those individuals who committed those brutalities have to answer to God, and he is just. Holding on to the hatred and grudges that were committed only breeds bad thoughts and actions, and that is not what God is about.”

Although not all boarding schools were Catholic or filled with negative experiences, that era touches generations of some American Indian families, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

Geneva Woomavoyah Navarro recalled when her grandfather, Tuinupu, went to a government boarding school, Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, and did not speak or understand English. As soon as he arrived, they cut his hair. He didn’t know what was happening when they cut his hair or why they did it.

“He was worried that someone died because the Comanche custom was to cut your hair when someone died. So, he left and walked back home to Apache,” Navarro said. “Later, when he married and had a family, the Catholics wanted his children to attend Saint Patrick’s Mission School, which was a boarding school. He felt like this religion was special and did not think it would be like the government boarding school he ran away from. Little did he know it was very similar. Several of his children, James, Eva and Ester attended Saint Patrick’s Mission when they were small children. James would tell of the nuns hitting him with a ruler on his hands when he spoke his language to his cousin who could not speak English.”

Navarro, a member of the Comanche Nation, went to Fort Sill Indian School and then Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kan. After Haskell, she attended nursing school at Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Oklahoma City, where she became a registered nurse. While at Haskell, she had to choose a religion.

“I told them I was in the Peyote religion and they said I had to choose a white man religion,” she said. She chose Catholicism and said she did not really think about the history of American Indians and the Church.

“I wanted to belong to the Catholic Church, because I believed in God and wanted to belong to the Church that believed in God. I attended the Comanche Reformed Church for a while because the Comanche’s would sing hymns in the Comanche language, but I went back to the Catholic Church because I felt more comfortable. I took religious classes at the Catholic church and enjoyed learning what they taught, the people and the overall community, especially at Anadarko and Lawton.”

Today, Navarro, who is 94, lives in Albuquerque with her daughter, attends Our Lady of Annunciation Catholic Church and continues to teach the Comanche language.

Father Michael Carson, assistant director of Native American affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the most important part of reconciliation and healing is the art of listening.

“Reconciliation and healing is a dialogue of understanding and empathy. People and native communities heal in different ways. These ways are based not only on culture, but on individual experiences. Not only does the Church listen to the narratives of historical trauma, but it also works to learn from the past to direct the future of Christ’s ministry,” said Father Carson, who is of Choctaw ancestry.

Not all tribes had a negative experience with the Church.

Tammy Fugate Baldauff, a member of the Osage Nation, said her knowledge of the Osages and the Church is mostly amicable and respectful. She is a cradle Catholic, born in Pawhuska. Her mother is Osage and Catholic, and, for a few years, her mother attended a Catholic all girls boarding school in Paola, Kan., run by the Ursuline Sisters. Her maternal grandparents were both American Indian and Catholic.

“First, I want to acknowledge the history of profound pain, suffering and injustice that American Indians endured at the hands of men from the federal government and Christian missionaries, not just the Catholic Church. Whether it be for land or trying to save our souls by taking the Indian out of us, it was wrong,” Baldauff said. “I pray for healing and reconciliation for all those affected by any tragedy or trauma that may have been inflicted by men, especially in the name of God. While it is important to know our history, God doesn’t want us to live in the past and bitterly dwell on evils. Through many prayers and the grace of God, we must learn to forgive and live in the present, understanding that a path to peace can be difficult.”

Baldauff also is of Sac-n-Fox, Absentee Shawnee, Kaw and Citizen Band Potawatomi ancestry. She attends Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Skiatook. While living in Houston, she began a Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Prayer Circle to bring together other American Indians in the area.

Father Brian Buettner, vocations director for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, said the past 400 years has changed his tribe in both positive and negative ways, but to try to erase the spiritual growth, inspired and led by the Catholic Church, would be a huge loss to their history and their future.

“I am a proud member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation,” Father Buettner said. “The forceful removal of Native American tribes, like my own tribe, left lasting wounds. However, it is important to note that the families being displaced were not alone. Priests and missionaries were right there with them, suffering with them, encouraging them, and like Moses, spiritually led them to the Lord. It is clear that the faith of my tribe was important to them because everywhere they settled, they built a Catholic church.”

“I might not even be here today if it were not for the priests walking by their side, encouraging them to raise their eyes from their immediate suffering, and to embrace the broken body of Jesus Christ upon the cross with hope rather than despair.”

Father Buettner said the Citizen Potawatomi Nation was largely Catholic after French missionaries and fur traders evangelized and eventually married into the tribe near the Great Lakes area. They were eventually relocated to Kansas and then Shawnee. It was there that they donated land to build their first Catholic church in Konawa and later Saint Gregory’s Abbey in Shawnee.

In New Mexico, each pueblo celebrates a feast day each year to honor their patron saint. In Oklahoma there are 39 tribal nations and the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City established the American Indian Catholic Outreach.

“I believe God created Native Americans with a perceptive sense of spirituality in creation and nature, and so helped prepare us for the coming of His Son, Jesus and His Church,” Baldauff said. “There is a common bond of natural law and ceremony within these spiritualties given by our creator to help us practice both if we so choose. They are not mutually exclusive as long as we give honor and glory to the One True Creator.”

According to the 2019 USCCB report, “Two Rivers; A Report on Catholic Native American Culture and Ministry,” in 2010 some 536,600 U.S. residents self-identifying as American Indian or Alaskan Native were estimated to be Catholic, representing about 18.3 percent of the 2.9 million people of this race and ethnicity in the country. Accounting for population growth from 2010 to 2015, 0.9 percent of U.S. Catholics are estimated to be American Indian or Native Alaskan amounting to a population of more than 708,000.

“The Roman Catholic Church encompasses all cultures and peoples. There are universal truths that we all share. Those truths are adapted in a culturally responsive way, so everyone can be welcomed and every culture appreciated in our common Baptismal call to evangelize,” Father Carson said.

Father Carson said the Church reaches out to American Indians by listening to American Indian Catholic leaders on how to plan and direct American Indian ministry together with the bishops. The Church reaches out to non-Catholic American Indians by being in tune with the issues and concerns of the wider American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

“Through the grace of God, I embraced and lived both my native heritage and Catholic faith both on and off the reservation. When I look back at the history of each, it is a story of suffering in the United States, sometimes at the hand of each other but both fought, struggled and survived,” Baldauff said. “I’m proud and thankful to be an American Indian Catholic. Just look at Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk and the LaFlorida Martyrs to name a few holy American Indians who loved, embraced and practiced the Catholic faith with heroic virtue. These are my heroes who help strengthen my faith as I pray for their intercession on this short path of life.”

Dana Attocknie is the managing editor of the Sooner Catholic.