St. Joseph's Indian School

Every year, approximately 200 students live and learn on the campus of St. Joseph’s Indian School. We clothe them, supply them with virtually limitless educational resources, and nourish their bodies with healthy foods and their souls with teachings of Lakota culture and a faith in Jesus Christ.

Those are basic needs every child receives. However, each student arrives with specific needs, too. Rarely is there a common baseline to which we can measure success equally from child to child. Some students have behavioral obstacles to overcome. Some have health factors needing immediate attention. While others arrive fairly healthy and educated.

The impact of St. Joseph’s for each of these students will look different. The level of success will look different.

But no matter where a child may fall in that spectrum, we begin where all things start — the beginning. Their beginning. We begin by planting seeds, supplying tools and giving hope and encouragement that they can become something great because all that greatness already lives inside of them. They just have to recognize it for it to burst forth.

And they do. Continue reading “How St. Joseph’s Helped Prepare a Budding Astrophysicist”

Sometimes a few words can send a big message.

When parents and guardians bring their children to St. Joseph’s Indian School at the start of every school year, we have pillowcases and pens ready.

Pillowcases and pens? Seems like a strange combination, right? Continue reading “When a Pillow Means so Much More”

There’s a well-versed subject living in the library. His name is Bruce. Bruce spends his day in quarantine, but remains busy writing the third grade class at St. Joseph’s Indian School many, many letters. It’s quite amazing, actually, given the fact that Bruce doesn’t have any fingers …

He has fins … and a tail … and 300 pearly white teeth … Continue reading “There’s a Talking Shark in the Library!”

The sun was still asleep when St. Joseph’s Indian School students and staff rose on a chilly November morning. The grass was covered in frosted crystals, and breath from the group exhaled as clouds into the cool autumn air.

They had all risen early for one special purpose: for it was the day of the buffalo harvest. Continue reading “The Buffalo: Sacrificing Itself for the Benefit of Others”

Despite the muddy circumstances 2020 brought upon the world, you helped bring so much joy to approximately 200 Lakota (Sioux) boys and girls. Surely we faced challenges, but so many other successes took place.

Take a look as we highlight some of the great things you helped make possible at St. Joseph’s Indian School during 2020 … Continue reading “St. Joseph’s 2020 Year in Review”

“I’m scared my grandma is going to die,” a young boy tells his St. Joseph’s Indian School counselor.

It’s a sentence spoken by too many students at our school. While this boy worries about his grandmother, another is anxious about his mother, her father, her aunts, uncles and cousins. Continue reading “Finding Resilience during Troubling Times”

The following is a guest blog written by Erin, a St. Joseph’s Indian School Family Service Counselor.

As the leaves begin to change and then blow away in the bitter winds of fall, people start to decorate for Thanksgiving and prepare to celebrate all that they are thankful for. This Thanksgiving may look very different for many families as travel restrictions, quarantines and COVID-19 precautions hinder many from gathering in the traditional sense. Continue reading “‘The season of thankfulness supersedes a single holiday’”

If you were to call someone on the phone, the most common response you’d expect to hear upon their answer is, “Hello, this is [insert name].”

But Jacob Lacota is not your typical 22-year-old. He answers the phone a bit differently … Continue reading “The Motivated, the Dedicated: St. Joseph’s Alum Proves Hard Work Goes a Long Way”

As one of our Family Service Counselors, Nicole, puts it: one of the hardest things about the pandemic is not being able to keep in touch with those you love. At least not as much, or in the same way, as you might have done before. Continue reading “Showing People We Care, Even from a Distance”

You live and you learn — that’s how the saying goes. But what happens when you’re actually expected to live and learn in the same square footage every day? What sort of challenges does that present? Continue reading “Logging on: How St. Joseph’s is Managing Distance Learning”