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April 12, 2023, Suttons Bay, Michigan – Sister Susan Gardner, OP, was recently invited to serve on the national Catholic Native Boarding School Accountability and Healing Project (AHP) and on its Listening, Learning, and Education Subcommittee. The project’s goal is to bring about healing and accountability with Native American Catholics in response to the Church’s sin of attempting to eradicate the culture and language of Indigenous children through boarding schools.
Last month, the subcommittee offered two webinars to educate people in the United States about the boarding schools: “Native Boarding Schools: Learning from History to Promote Healing” and “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma and Resilience in First Nations Communities.”
Sister Susan’s service on the committee is the latest aspect of her many years of ministry with Indigenous Americans. She served with First Nations peoples in the Archdiocese of Keewatin-le Pas – encompassing parts of the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. She currently ministers at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, which includes numerous Native American parishioners, in Suttons Bay, Michigan, and as the Director of the Native American Apostolate for the Diocese of Gaylord, Michigan.
Sister Susan said the AHP Committee is made up of people from across the United States: Indigenous people, single and married people, women religious, and priests. The goal of the subcommittee, she said, is to “educate the Catholics in the pews” who never heard of Catholic institutions such as boarding schools for Native American children. In the videos, she said, “we try to emphasize how really horrible it was.”
Boarding schools for Native American children were instituted by the U.S. government about 150 years ago in an effort to teach the ways of the new U.S. culture and to eradicate the students’ own culture and language. The schools were run by religious groups, including the Catholic Church in the United States.
The injustice of the boarding schools was brought forward in the subcommittee’s first video by Father Michael Carson, Assistant Director for Native American Affairs Committee on Multicultural Diversity in the Church for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He called the Church’s role in boarding schools a sin, Sister Susan said. “Our sin was that the Church has taught from the beginning of time that it’s the parents’ responsibility to teach the children – and we pulled the children from their homes,” Father Michael said in the video. “We should never have allowed that to happen or the abuse to happen. It was racist.”
Sister Susan emphasized that the children who attended the schools – and their parents – suffered trauma from the experience. In the subcommittee’s second video, she said, presenter Amy Bombay, MA, PhD, spoke of how trauma is handed down from one generation to the next. “Children who went to the school didn’t have a parenting model – they didn’t know how to love,” Sister Susan explained. “If they smiled or waved to their sisters or brothers [while at the boarding school], they were punished. It broke down all the family ties. When they became parents, they didn’t know how to love their children.”
Sister Susan noted that many of her parishioners were affected by Holy Childhood of Jesus, a boarding school in Harbor Springs, Michigan, open from 1829 to 1983. The suffering that the children endured still affects some former students today. She recounted a recent incident in which a funeral was held at the school. One woman could not go to the hall for the funeral luncheon because of the painful memories. “That was where the children were punished so severely,” she said.
Sister Susan is enthusiastic about the Gaylord Diocese’s upcoming approach to healing people wounded by the boarding schools. On Saturday, May 20, 2023, her parish will host a ritual to return the names of the children who attended Holy Childhood of Jesus back to their families. “Children’s names were taken from them when they went to the boarding school,” she said.
Invitations to the Giving Back the Names ceremony were sent to the Tribal Councils of six tribes. “Five tribes responded with total gratitude and can’t wait to come,” Sister Susan said. “We’ll be in a circle with each group to say we’re doing this because we’re deeply sorry for what happened and we want to hear their stories.”
During the ceremony, “each set of names [listed in a large book] will be smudged,” following a common indigenous ritual in which herbs such as sage are burned and used to cleanse an object or space, Sister Susan said. Bishop Jeffrey Walsh of the Diocese of Gaylord will present the book of names from each tribe to the Tribal Chairperson, who will be invited to speak.
While the Giving Back the Names ceremony is a new approach – Sister Susan believes that the Diocese of Gaylord is the first to hold this ceremony – many other Catholic groups that have been involved in boarding schools have sought reconciliation as well. Communities of women religious, for example, are apologizing to the communities whose members were taught in the boarding schools they ran.
While Sister Susan and members of the Healing and Reconciliation Project are working with Indigenous people to acknowledge the sins of the past, she and her subcommittee are also working with the public to make more people aware of the boarding schools and the suffering they brought about.
“My hope is that we continue to reach people,” Sister Susan said. She most often hears the argument that most of the boarding schools were in place a long time ago and don’t need to be discussed. “My response is usually that the Holocaust happened a long time ago and yet we do not doubt the stories of the Jewish people,” she said. Just as the Holocaust was a trauma for the Jewish people, so are Native Americans still traumatized by the boarding schools.
“The message I want to give is to please listen with open hearts and minds to anything [Native Americans] say, because healing can only happen when we listen and understand and believe,” Sister Susan said. “I just hope that healing can really begin and make a difference.”
Read more about Catholic involvement in boarding schools in this article from The National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Project.
April 5, 2023, Mining, Pampanga, Philippines – With great joy and a sense of celebration, Sister Meliza Arquillano, OP, professed her Final (Perpetual) Vows on March 17, 2023, to Sister Elise D. García, OP, Prioress of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, in a neighborhood chapel in the barangay (neighborhood) of Mining, Pampanga, the Philippines.
Two young friends of Sister Meliza present a basket of fruit during the Offertory.
Celebrating with her were the Sisters of the Our Lady of Remedies Mission Chapter, based in Pampanga; two formal witnesses: Sister Jenny Fajardo, OP, Formation Director, and Sister Maria Yolanda Manapsal, OP, Chapter Prioress; her family and friends; and people has ministered with.
Also attending were four Adrian Dominican Sisters from the United States: Sister Elise; Sister Lorraine Réaume, OP, Vicaress and General Councilor; Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, former Prioress; and Sister Frances Nadolny, OP, former Administrator and General Councilor. Presiding at the Mass was Dominican Father Eugenio Cabillon, OP.
Left: Sister Meliza Arquillano, OP, with her immediate family; Right: Sisters Leizel Tedria, OP, left, and Marifi Lugtu, OP, right, both temporary professed Sisters, with Sister Meliza
“Final profession for me is the beginning of a life-long commitment to God, a covenant to fully commit myself to God’s mission and to follow the footsteps of Christ, fulfilling the God-given passions of my heart,” Sister Meliza said. “The Profession of Vows Liturgy is a blessing given by God, that I received with reverence and full responsibility. It is a divine celebration that sealed my promise with God, in witness of the public – whom I will serve until my last breath.”
Sister Meliza, the youngest of four and the only daughter of German Dominguez, Sr. and Leonila Arquillano, was born in the Philippines but met the Adrian Dominican Sisters while working as a machine operator in Taiwan while attending St. Joseph the Worker parish, where Sister Victoria Changcoco, OP, ministered. Sister Meliza later befriended Sister Maribeth Manguil, OP.
“The Sisters became good friends to us migrant workers and helped us seek a deeper meaning in our life,” Sister Meliza said. She came to know the Sisters better while helping them at the diocesan center and felt the call to religious life, entering the Congregation in 2013.
During her formation, Sister Meliza’s ministries have included service as Assistant to the Treasurer of Dominican School of Angeles City in Mining and as pastoral minister to the Aetas, the indigenous peoples of the Philippines, as well as to other people in need of a supportive presence.
The Rite of Profession involved a formal examination of Sister Meliza by Sister Elise as to her resolve to grow in the love of God and neighbor and to be joined to the Adrian Dominican Congregation by perpetual profession. After the formal testimony of Sister Meliza’s readiness for Final Profession by Sister Yolanda, Sister Meliza lay prostrate as the assembly sang the Litany of Saints.
Left: Sister Meliza Arquillano, OP, lies prostrate as the assembly sings the Litany of Saints; Right: Prioress Elise D. García, OP, presents the blessed profession ring to Sister Meliza Arquillano, OP, signifying her lifelong commitment to Jesus Christ as a fully professed Adrian Dominican Sister
Sister Meliza then addressed Sister Elise, vowing obedience to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Dominic, and Sister Elise and her lawful successors, “according to the Rule of St. Augustine and the Constitution of the Sisters of St. Dominic of the Most Holy Rosary until death.” The Rite continued with the blessing and presentation of Sister Meliza’s profession ring as a sign of her fidelity to Jesus, and with the signing of the formal profession documents.
On behalf of the Dominican family and especially the Adrian Dominican Congregation, Sister Elise affirmed Sister Meliza’s perpetual profession. “We joyfully congratulate you and pray that God continues to inspire you to enter each day with a generous heart, in order to serve the call to seek truth, make peace, and reverence life,” she said. The Adrian Dominican Sisters in the assembly responded by promising Sister Meliza the “loving and grateful support of the community” and welcoming her into “the full and responsible participation in this life.”
Left: Sister Elise D. García, OP, Prioress of the Congregation, calls forward Sister Meliza Arquillano, OP, for the Rite of Final Profession; Center: Father Eugene Cabillon serves as presider at the Eucharistic Liturgy for Sister Meliza Arquillano’s Final Profession; Right: Sister Yolanda Manapsal, OP, Chapter Prioress of Our Lady of Remedies Mission Chapter, testifies as to the readiness of Sister Meliza Arquillano, OP, to profess her final vows
Sister Meliza is the first Adrian Dominican Sister whose vows Sister Elise received since she took office in October 2022. “It was very touching to receive Meliza’s final profession of vows in that lovely neighborhood chapel, the pews filled with her Sisters and family,” she said. “She beautifully witnessed her desire to respond to God’s call with a great clarity of heart and joyful spirit.”
For feature photo at top: Prioress Elise D. García, OP, receives the Final Profession of Vows of Sister Meliza Arquillano. Also present are formal witnesses Sister Jenny Fajardo, OP, Formation Director, left, and Sister Yolanda Manapsal, OP, Chapter Prioress, second from right.