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 Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term Nadowessi, can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o and the Tsétsėhéstȧhese ; the tribes merged in the early 19th century. 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 language belongs to the Algonquian language family.
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.
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The Gros Ventre, also known as the A'aninin, Atsina, or White Clay, are a historically Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe located in northcentral 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 7,000 members, also including the Assiniboine people.
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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 and a Plains tribe.
The Diocese of Great Falls–Billings is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in eastern Montana in the United States.
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.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are a united, federally recognized tribe of Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne people in western Oklahoma.
Clara Mae White Hip Nomee was an American politician and tribal leader who served as the Chairwoman of the Crow Tribe of Montana for five-terms from 1990 to 2000. Nomee was the first woman to hold the chairmanship of the Crow Tribe.
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, located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls and named after Saint Joseph, 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.
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