Background
The founding of St. Labre Indian School in 1884 was one of the first efforts to care for Native Americans who had been displaced as a result of homesteading. George Yoakum, a former soldier who had been stationed near Miles City, Montana, recognized the hard times experienced by the Northern Cheyenne. He contacted John Brondel, Bishop of Helena, and told him of Native American people who were roaming the Tongue River Valley without homes or land—a reservation had not yet been set aside as their land. Land was purchased by the Bishop, and on March 29, 1884, St. Labre Indian School, named for St. Benedict Joseph Labre, became a reality. [1]
The school is located in Ashland, Montana, a primarily white community which did not exist at the time of the founding of the school. Ashland has a K to 8th grade school serving its residents available to the students at St. Labre School. St. Labre offers a Catholic education as well as a curriculum similar to other Rosebud County schools. St. Labre also has a high school while the public school ends at eighth grade. Ashland Elementary students often continue their education at Colstrip High which is an hour commute.
The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, and the Northern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese. The tribes merged in the early 19th century.
Ashland is a census-designated place (CDP) in Rosebud County, Montana, United States. The population was 464 at the 2000 census. Ashland is immediately east of the boundary of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation and also along the Tongue River. It is the location of the St. Labre Indian Catholic High School, established in 1884 as a boarding school by a Catholic mission to the Cheyenne.
Lame Deer is a census-designated place (CDP) in Rosebud County, Montana, United States. The community is named after Miniconjou Lakota chief Lame Deer, who was killed by the U.S. Army in 1877 under a flag of truce south of the town. It was the site of a trading post from the late 1870s.
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation are a federally recognized tribe in the U.S. state of Montana. The government includes members of several Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d'Oreilles tribes and is centered on the Flathead Indian Reservation.
The Bad River LaPointe Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians or Bad River Tribe for short are a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people. The tribe had 6,945 members as of 2010. The Bad River Reservation is located on the south shore of Lake Superior and has a land area of about 193.11 square miles (500.15 km2) in northern Wisconsin, straddling Ashland and Iron counties. Odanah, the administrative and cultural center, is located five miles (8.0 km) east of the town of Ashland on U.S. Highway 2. The reservation population was 1,545 in 2020. Most of the reservation is managed as undeveloped forest and wetland, providing a habitat for wild rice and other natural resources.
The Gros Ventre, also known as the Aaniiih, A'aninin, Haaninin, Atsina, and White Clay, are a historically Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe located in north central Montana. Today the Gros Ventre people are enrolled in the Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Fort Belknap Reservation of Montana, a federally recognized tribe with 3,682 enrolled members, that also includes Assiniboine people or Nakoda people, the Gros Ventre's historical enemies. The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is in the northernmost part of Montana, just south of the small town of Harlem, Montana. Chiefs: The Belly Government Council
The Wind River Indian Reservation, in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Wyoming, is shared by two Native American tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho. Roughly 60 mi (97 km) east to west by 50 mi (80 km) north to south, the Indian reservation is located in the Wind River Basin, and includes portions of the Wind River Range, Owl Creek Mountains, and Absaroka Range.
White Buffalo was a chief of the Northern Cheyenne. He was born in Montana Territory to the Northern Cheyenne tribe but was forced with most of his tribe to remove to Indian Territory. He lived most of his life on the Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation in Indian Territory and then Oklahoma. He graduated in 1884 as one of the early attendees of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of 249 students from his tribe to attend that school over the years of its operation.
The Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation is the federally recognized Northern Cheyenne tribe. Located in southeastern Montana, the reservation is approximately 690 square miles (1,800 km2) in size and home to approximately 6,000 Cheyenne people. The tribal and government headquarters are located in Lame Deer, also the home of the annual Northern Cheyenne pow wow.
The Diocese of Great Falls–Billings is one of two Catholic dioceses in the U.S. state of Montana in the United States. The diocese was established in 1904, and formerly constituted the eastern half of the Diocese of Helena. The see was originally located only in the city of Great Falls, Montana, from which the diocese drew its original name. In 1980, the diocese's name was changed to reflect its new co-see in the city of Billings, Montana.
The Fort Peck Indian Reservation is located near Fort Peck, Montana, in the northeast part of the state. It is the home of several federally recognized bands of Assiniboine, Nakota, Lakota, and Dakota peoples of Native Americans.
The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is shared by two Native American tribes, the A'aninin and the Nakoda (Assiniboine). The reservation covers 1,014 sq mi (2,630 km2), and is located in north-central Montana. The total area includes the main portion of their homeland and off-reservation trust land. The tribes reported 2,851 enrolled members in 2010. The capital and largest community is Fort Belknap Agency, at the reservation's north end, just south of the city of Harlem, Montana, across the Milk River.
Chief Dull Knife College is a public tribal land-grant community college on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana. It is an open-admission college with about 141 students. On average, more than half of its graduates move on to four-year colleges.
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into European American culture. In the process, these schools denigrated Native American culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The missionaries were often approved by the federal government to start both missions and schools on reservations, especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries especially, the government paid religious orders to provide basic education to Native American children on reservations, and later established its own schools on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) also founded additional off-reservation boarding schools based on the assimilation model. These sometimes drew children from a variety of tribes. In addition, religious orders established off-reservation schools.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are a united, federally recognized tribe of Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne people in western Oklahoma.
Eagle Butte School District 20-1, is a school district with its headquarters in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. The district covers sections of Ziebach County and Dewey County.
St. Joseph's Indian School is an American Indian boarding school, run by the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart just outside the city of Chamberlain, South Dakota, on the east side of the Missouri River. The school is located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, but it is operated by a religious institute of pontifical right that is independent of the diocese. The school is within two hours of three reservations of the Lakota people: the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, the Lower Brule Indian Reservation and the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, whose children comprise the majority of students at the school. The Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center is located on the campus and is owned by the school.
Viola Hatch was a Native American activist, founding member of the National Indian Youth Council, and former Tribal Chair of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. She successfully sued the Canton, Oklahoma schools regarding the right of students to obtain an education.
Northern Cheyenne Tribal School (NCTS) is a tribally controlled K-12 school in Busby, Montana. It is affiliated with the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE).
Marie Elena Brady Sanchez, was an American Cheyenne, Chief Judge of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, a human rights activist for indigenous people and a linguist.
