Catholic boarding school documents staying in Montana

Instead of transferring them to Boston Jesuits, the Catholic nuns want to ‘take steps in truth-telling’ and ‘bring some healing’ to descendants

In a significant turn of events, an array of Catholic Ursuline Boarding School documents related to the boarding school students of several Indigenous nations in Montana and Alaska will remain in Montana.

Several U-Hauls loaded with every day records, photos, ledgers, scrapbooks and other archives were originally slated to transfer to the Catholic Jesuits in Boston, Massachusetts.

Instead, The History Museum in Great Falls, Montana, successfully secured the keeping of thousands of Ursuline Academy Boarding and Day School records to the Cascade County Historical Society repository. The community building is known as the Ursuline Center now.

Records include vital historical documents of the Northern Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Nakoda, Assiniboine, Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille people, plus non-Natives who attended the Ursuline schools.

In a gigantic win for area tribes whose children attended the former Ursuline Academy starting in 1912, the stay-at-home archives allows easier access to area descendants researching their family histories during a time of colonial indoctrination of children in Montana and Alaska. Records gleaned from several small area schools are included.

“The ever-increasing need for research and documentation of our Tribal encounters and associations with others is becoming more urgent each passing year,” Steve Lozar, Confederated Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’ Oreille, said in a statement to the museum. “Having a centralized repository with access to family historical records would be of the greatest value to all who desire to learn about their extended families, religious affiliations, births, deaths and life circumstances.”

Lozar is a member of the Montana Historical Society’s Board of Trustees and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council.

The Roman Union Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province, keepers of the records, reportedly expressed relief at discovering a local professional entity willing to take on the extensive original documents with the agreement to organize and safely preserve them carefully for current and future Native generations.

“They were quite gracious,” said Kristi Scott, the museum director. “I think they were a bit relieved, honestly. I think they wanted to do the right thing with the records. They seemed to readily agree that truth-telling is very important. And because they didn’t live during the time of the missions, the best they could do to tell the truth is make the records available.”

The Catholic sisters ran innumerable government-or-church-built boarding schools. Religious organizations comprised 210 of 417 government-run schools in the United States, according to the July 2024 federal boarding school report.

The Ursuline nuns reportedly acknowledge the systemic racism and breaking down of family culture, traditions and language in a statement to Scott and in a 2023 report.

“The Roman Union Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province have long lamented the suffering caused by Native American boarding schools and the generational trauma that continues to this day with many others,” said Sister Dianne Baumunk, province provincial of the Western Province. “We continue to take a hard look at the issues of racism in our country and our part in the harm that colonialism played in our own history.”

Baumunk continued: “We’re working to make the extensive archives of our schools in Montana and Alaska available through the Cascade County Historical Society, where the archives will reside and be accessible to all. Our hope is to take steps in truth telling. That will bring some healing.”

The records pertain to students who attended several scattered, smaller boarding schools across Montana, including St. Labre, St. Xavier and St. Peter’s, the Ursuline Academy itself. In Alaska, records include the St. Mary’s Mission, orphanage and school in Akulurak on the Yukon River.

Museum staff will learn more about the Idaho and California boarding schools as the discovery process unfolds.

Two nuns of the Roman Union Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province order in Windsor, California, plus two sisters from Montana, originally visited Great Falls in 2023 to discuss the future of the archives with an unidentified tribal member looking for a relative’s boarding school history.

But when that contact did not show, Scott intervened and requested a timely appointment with the nuns.

“I spent close to four hours with the nuns having coffee, discussing the records,” said Scott.

After the Ursulines moved both the Eastern and Central Ursuline Province’s archives to Boston College, Ursuline Western Province archives were on track to join them. But the June 22, 2023 chance meeting proved fateful for entire swaths of tribal descendants in the west region seeking information.

“The significance of this collection to our neighboring tribal nations cannot be overstated,” Scott said. “For over 100 years this collection has been cared for and maintained by the Ursuline Western Province, yet was quite challenging to access. We are honored to provide a neutral ground for discovery of these archives.”

The records pertain to students who attended several smaller boarding schools across Montana, as well, plus Alaska, Idaho and California.

“They are absolutely important to Native Americans and to the nations that are here in Montana,” Scott said. “And I think just across the West, it’s a time capsule that’s been preserved at the Ursuline Center. And thankfully, instead of going to Boston, Massachusetts – that’s where they were slated to go – they’re now going to remain here in Central Montana.”

Because the nuns lack the archival training and personnel, making the records accessible proved challenging.

“And that’s where we stepped in and said, ‘Hey, that’s our job. We know how to do this. We will catalog and care for these records,’” Scott said.

The Ursulines set the move to Boston in motion, but logistics proved formidable. When Scott deftly intercepted them, an entire new history opened for tribal family members seeking information.

“It’s a huge deal,” added Scott. “I just can’t imagine how difficult it would be to get into the Jesuit repository at Boston College to do research. So it makes a lot more sense that they’re going to be centrally located here in Great Falls, and we can work with the tribes and with families who have been affected by the boarding school policy and the initiatives of the Catholic church.”

Other colonial-created boarding schools scattered across Montana that fed into the Ursuline Center archives included St. Peter’s, St. Labre, St. Xavier, St. Paul’s and St. Ignatius.

Meanwhile, Scott said her skeleton staff will care for, preserve, inventory, catalog and digitize the records in a climate-controlled environment as a long-term agreement with the Ursulines.

The goal is to make the archives available first to the tribes by January 2025, and then to the general public sometime in 2026. The museum is undergoing a major $1 million renovation to its research center, which will open Sept. 14.

“Also, because I am a historian and I am a researcher, and I know how important it is to have access to original records,” Scott said. “But then just beyond that, I’m a human, and I know that this is a dark period in American history, and instead of sweeping it under the rug, how about if we just open it up and let people make their own decisions of what was good, what was bad, or – not even that – just having the truth in front of you to read and then interpret in your own lens?”

Dateline:

MISSOULA, M.T.