Initiative for Native Nation Relations
Embracing Repair: Seeking truth and healing for the Church's role in Native boarding schools
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
3-13-2025
Abstract
In March 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the "Doctrine of Discovery" - a political policy based on papal documents that was used to justify the violent colonization of the Americas and 500 years of land theft, genocide, and the forced assimilation of children through boarding schools. And yet, while apologies are necessary, alone they are insufficient. Hear about the ways that a small but growing movement of people within the Catholic Church are working to repair the harms of colonization through research, relationship, repatriation, and land return.
Brenna Cussen Anglada is a founding member of Catholic Truth and Healing: a collaborative group of archivists, historians, concerned Catholics, and tribal members who, over the course of two years, compiled and refined a list of 87 Catholic-Operated Native Boarding Schools in the United States and who are dedicated to facilitating transparency and access to Catholic archival and burial records regarding the Catholic operation of Native boarding schools. She most recently worked with Land Justice Futures as the Coordinator of the Focus Communities Program, a growing movement of communities of Catholic women religious working for racial and ecological healing through building land justice into their property plans. Brenna is a founding member of Saint Isidore Catholic Worker Farm in Southwest Wisconsin, the homelands of the Ho-Chunk, Meskwaki, and Sauk.
Streaming Media
Recommended Citation
Gordon, Theodor and Cussen Anglada, Brenna, "Embracing Repair: Seeking truth and healing for the Church's role in Native boarding schools" (2025). Initiative for Native Nation Relations. 6.
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/mccarthy_center_innr/6
