Superior General Visits South Dakota

Listening, learning, and affirming Jesuit commitment to the Lakota

From August 14 to August 17, Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, visited the Lakota people of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations where Jesuits have worked in partnership with the Oglala and Sicangu tribes for 135 years. As part of an active schedule, he met with hundreds of people, including tribal leaders, staff, students, and members of Jesuit parishes.

Father Sosa routinely visits Jesuits and ministries around the world. While in western South Dakota, he sought to affirm the Jesuits’ commitment to the Lakota, learn from and about them, and visit sites of cultural and historical significance. Accompanying him were Jesuit Frs. Douglas Marcouiller, general assistant for the United States and Canada; Claudio Paul, general assistant for Latin America; Karl Kiser, provincial of the Midwest Province; and Brian Paulson, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. Father Joseph Daoust, SJ, superior of the De Smet Jesuit Community in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, served as organizer and host for much of the event.

Father Sosa’s time in South Dakota included many listening sessions and activities. He spoke with tribal leaders and “was moved as they spoke of past hurts and future hopes.” After spending time visiting classrooms and conversing with students and teachers, viewing an art show at the Red Cloud Heritage Center, and other engagements, Fr. Sosa said he was “inspired by the changes in the educational and pastoral ministries at Red Cloud and St. Francis over the past several decades, changes that flow from a renewed appreciation of the richness of the Lakota culture.”

One evening, Fr. Sosa spoke to an audience at Red Cloud Indian School, one of two former boarding schools in South Dakota that were administered by the Jesuits. (A recent report shows the state had 30 boarding schools at which federal government policy forced European-American cultural assimilation for Native children who were taken from their families and placed in the schools.)

“I am a simple Jesuit who wants to walk with Jesus, poor and humble, and with others like you who seek the reign of Wakȟá Tȟáŋka [God], whether in Christian or in traditional Lakota ways,” Fr. Sosa said. “As Jesuits walk with others the pathway to God, as we walk with those whom others have pushed aside, as we accompany the young, as we collaborate in care for our common home, we … want a truly intercultural encounter in which each one knows his own culture with its strengths and weaknesses and, from that identity, encounters and is enriched by the other.”

“It has been many years since Chief Red Cloud and Chief Spotted Tail first called the Black Robes to the Pine Ridge and the Rosebud Reservations,” Fr. Sosa added. “Since then, we Jesuits have been privileged to walk many miles with the Lakota, and I hope that we will walk many more miles with you. We Jesuits have learned and continue to learn much from you about courage and compassion, about respect and resilience, about strength and generosity, about demanding that civil governments defend the poor and the vulnerable instead of oppressing them.”

“But when we look back over the road that we have traveled, we see that Jesuits also took some very wrong turns, especially by accepting the American government’s oppressive educational regulations that took children from their families, from their language, and from their culture,” Fr. Sosa continued. “On behalf of the Society of Jesus, I apologize for the ways in which St. Francis and Holy Rosary Missions and boarding schools were for decades complicit in the U.S. government’s reprehensible assimilation policies, trying to eradicate your culture. I ask for your forgiveness for that and for any other abuses that any of you or your ancestors suffered. I also want to express the support of the Jesuits for the Truth and Healing process that is now underway.”

As one sign of that commitment, Fr. Sosa shared a meal and spoke with several of the people involved in the initiative, including executive director Makȟá Akáŋ Nažíŋ Black Elk, assistant director Billy Critchley-Menor, SJ, and Tashina Rama, member and Red Cloud executive vice president.

Makȟá Black Elk said, “Having the Father General here in Lakota country was moving. I know that there were elders in the room who wanted and needed to hear his apology. It kindled my heart to know that they received that. Personally, I felt affirmed and hopeful about the future. Tears came as Fr. Sosa read aloud a blessing directly from Pope Francis addressed to our community. I felt truly known as a Lakota when he emphasized the gift of relationship [and] said, ‘Your culture so beautifully teaches the world.’”

In another session, Fr. Sosa met with three former boarders and members of the Community Advisory Council for Truth and Healing – one of whom is Cecelia Fire Thunder (born Cecelia Apple), nurse, community health planner, and the first woman elected president of the Oglala Lakota Tribe.

“It was important to me that Fr. Sosa acknowledged what happened,” she said. “In his words, I felt recognition that the Church, in the part they played in the long history of colonization, hurt people. And by traveling from the Vatican to speak with us personally, he showed he wanted to listen and be accountable. That’s significant because when you tell someone your story, it helps you release what you’re carrying. It’s also significant that he did not determine, but asked what will help us heal. I expressed the need for resources for the schools to enhance existing programs for language revitalization and cultural teaching—because our language and culture connect us with who we are and where we come from, and that’s what the boarding school system tried to remove.”

Father Sosa promised to share what he learned during his visit with Pope Francis and to take to him demands from leadership of both the Oglala and Sicangu tribes for the Catholic Church to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery (a document guiding Catholic and Christian occupation of the Americas handed down in the 1400s).