Jenny Bordeaux-Black Bear (left) with members of the St. Francis Mission Youth Group and a caretaker during a December, 2024 blanket drive. The group delivered blankets and homemade cookies to elders in the community. (Below): Jenny Bordeaux-Black Bear.
Being Lakota Catholic
Through St. Francis Mission, Jenny Bordeaux- Black Bear shares her faith and culture with the children of Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota
By Tom Drexler
Tom Drexler, a graduate of Marquette University High School and Creighton University, is the regional advancement director for the Midwest Jesuits in Wisconsin and the Twin Cities.
For more than 10 years, Jenny Bordeaux- Black Bear has taught both the Catholic faith and the Lakota culture to hundreds of children on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. She was born and raised there herself, and now, as director of religious education at St. Francis Mission, she shares her passions with future generations.
“This is my task,” she says. “When I was little, I always wanted to be a teacher. I wasn’t sure what kind of teacher, but I knew I wanted to be a teacher.”
Through the years, she prayed, asking God what was in store for her. She worked as a secretary at the St. Francis Mission radio station and even volunteered as a DJ. She also worked as a certifier/lactation counselor in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. But in 2013, Fr. John Hatcher, SJ, asked if she would take on the role of director of religious education for St. Francis Mission.
“I am grateful that I can teach our people and help bring people back to the Church,” says Bordeaux-Black Bear, who holds a master’s degree in education from Sinte Gleska University.
This year alone, she has provided religious education to 268 children at Sapa Un Jesuit Academy and three public schools. She teaches all formation classes, including those for baptism, first communion and confirmation. She also coordinates a youth group for kids from 11 to 18.
She has always been active in her parish, a lifestyle she learned early from the many Jesuits and religious women in her life. Today, two priests work at St. Francis Mission— Jesuit Fathers Jim Lafontaine and Edmund Yainao—along with Deacon Ben Black Bear Jr. (who is her father-in-law), one religious sister and two lay ministers, including herself.
She credits her mother and maternal grandmother for her Catholic faith. Her grandmother, a sun dancer and pipe carrier, practiced traditional Lakota ways, faithfully attended Mass and was a strong advocate of saying the rosary. The two women showed Bordeaux-Black Bear that she did not have to be Lakota or Catholic. “It’s okay to be both,” she often reminds her students.
Circumstances on the reservation create challenges for anyone working in religious education. Many families are confronted with poverty and addiction—and many have connections to Rosebud’s former boarding school, where instances of trauma and abuse turned some people away from the Church. But Bordeaux-Black Bear addresses the issue with lessons in both Catholicism and Lakota culture, particularly how the Lakota values of respect, generosity, prayer, compassion, wisdom, humility and truthfulness can also be drawn from the Gospels.
“I think the family should be the first teacher of faith, but often we seem to be,” she says. “We teach them to pray with the hope that these kids will go home to inspire their parents and family to be engaged Catholics.”
Since 2013, many people at St. Francis Mission have grown in their faith, not just because of carefully planned classroom lessons or engaging youth group activities, but because of the example set by a single teacher, Jenny Bordeaux-Black Bear, a Lakota Catholic.
