Indigenous boarding school research groups merge as Truth, Justice and Healing Commission

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church is entering a new phase of reckoning with its historic complicity in the federal Indigenous boarding school system, as two church committees that had been examining that history have merged into the new Truth, Justice and Healing Commission on Native Schools.

The consolidated commission was formed at a meeting in early November in Phoenix, Arizona, by consensus of the two bodies, one created by General Convention and the other by Executive Council. The two already had been coordinating their schedules. Now, as a unified body, members are planning the next steps in what has been a multiyear effort with significant churchwide support.

Starting in 2026, the commission will prioritize connecting with tribal leaders and tribal historic preservation officers, “to gain their guidance on how these different phases of work need to be conducted,” Leora Tadgerson, co-chair of the new commission and a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community, told Episcopal News Service by email. “We understand that each community may have their own individual process, and we are dedicated to honoring each.”

The newly combined commission is taking shape in the months since South Dakota Bishop Jonathan Folts, a commission member, issued an apology in August to the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe for his diocese’s past involvement in church-run boarding schools. Those schools were established starting in the 1800s to assimilate Indigenous children into white society at the expense of their Native American identities, languages and cultures.

Boarding school students endured a wide spectrum of experiences. Some were forced to attend the schools, run by the federal government and Christian denominations, while other families voluntarily sent their children to receive what often was the only education available. In some cases, they faced a nightmare of mistreatment, abuse and even death far from home. Other boarding school survivors recall no physical abuse but still experience trauma from the family separation and deprivation of their culture and identity.

Churchwide leaders began committing The Episcopal Church to reckoning with that past in 2021 after hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered at boarding schools in Canada. At the time, the U.S. government launched an investigation into similar sites in the United States, a decision welcomed by The Episcopal Church’s presiding officers.

“These acts of cultural genocide sought to erase these children’s identities as God’s beloved children,” then-Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said in a joint statement in July 2021 with the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, then the House of Deputies president. “We condemn these practices and we mourn the intergenerational trauma that cascades from them. We have heard with sorrow stories of how this history has harmed the families of many Indigenous Episcopalians.”

They also pledged to “make right relationships with our Indigenous siblings an important focus” of the 80th General Convention in July 2022, and in advance of that meeting, they created a working group to consider how the church should address the harms caused by its past complicity with colonialism, white supremacy and racist systems.

That working group produced an extensive list of recommendations, including to “conduct a comprehensive and complete investigation of the church’s ownership and operation of Episcopal-run Indigenous boarding schools.”

Among the resolutions proposed by the working group was A127, which was adopted by bishops and deputies at the 80th General Convention. It called for the creation of “a fact-finding commission to conduct research” into the church’s ties to Indigenous boarding schools. The churchwide budget for 2023-24 set aside an initial $225,000 for that work.

Separately, Executive Council, the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, created a related committee to gather historical information, share stories with the wider church and advocate for justice toward Indigenous people. Tadgerson was chair of that committee.

The membership of those two bodies was announced in May 2023, and Executive Council voted at a subsequent meeting to authorize an additional $2 million for Indigenous boarding school research.

Since then, the two bodies have identified The Episcopal Church’s involvement in at least 34 of the 526 known boarding schools in the United States. Some of that history was detailed in a June 2024 panel discussion convened during the 81st General Convention.

Tadgerson told ENS that because the two groups already were working together through subcommittee work, they voted to merge at their Nov. 6-8 meeting in Phoenix, which House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris attended.

As one body, “we have reorganized into five main working groups. Each of these will come together to report exciting new findings and pose questions with the main body monthly, to continue the sacred work,” said Tadgerson, who serves as director of reparations and justice for the Diocese of Northern Michigan. Pearl Chanar of the Diocese of Alaska, an Athabaskan tribal member and a boarding school survivor, is the other commission co-chair.

Tadgerson added that specific future tasks will include engagement with diocesan leaders, providing funding for collaborative research with tribes, developing policies for tribal data sovereignty and recruiting more people to help with the commission’s work.

Tadgerson said the commission is grateful for the support of Ayala Harris and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe. “They continue to lean in, learn and advocate for the tribes to lead,” she said.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.