1. - With the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Dehonian presence in South Dakota, the US Province has lived an important moment in its history. The solemn celebration took place in the parish Church of St. Mary, at Lower Brule, the afternoon of September 15, 1998. A second celebration, simpler but no less meaningful, was held in the parish Church of All Saints, at Eagle Butte, on the morning of September 17th.
Many people participated, and the presence of students from the ESL (English as a Second Language) program gave the ceremonies an international character. There were about 20 students (S.C.J.s, those from the diocesan and those from other religious institutes) from the English course at Hales Corners. Their homelands were Indonesia, Cameroon, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Italy, Spain and Portugal. There were three General Councilors: Fathers Umberto Chiarello, Ryszard Mis and Tom Cassidy. The specially invited guests were the Provincial Superior of the German Province, Fr Agostino Hulsman and Fr. Edwin Rombach. Also present were those people from the US Province who had carried out their ministry in South Dakota. Due to the airline strike, the representatives from Canada and some of the other US religious were not able to come. The motto for the celebration was "We the Congregation".
Fr. John Czyzynski, US Provincial Superior, presided over the solemn eucharistic celebration. In his homily he spoke about the connection which existed between Fr. Hulsman, the current German Provincial Superior, as well as Msgr. Woster, the current representative of the Bishop of Rapid City, and the people who set up the S.C.J. mission in South Dakota: the German Provincial and the Diocesan Bishop of 75 years ago.
He made us aware of the fact that from the very beginning those first 5 German missionaries had planned for the opening of a seminary in order to prepare other missionaries. They were already planning with a view towards the foundation of a future religious Province in the U.S.A. Since the solemn celebration of the 75th anniversary jubilee took place at the same time as the feast of Mary of the Sorrows, he linked the birth and the development of the US Province to the sufferings and the trials of the missionaries and of the Indian people: both at the beginning and in times that followed.
In his speech Fr. Chiarello brought greetings and good wishes from the Superior General and associated this Dehonian presence to the policies of Fr. Dehon himself. He pointed out that in the period immediately after the war Fr. Dehon had wanted to give an area for apostolic work to the German missionaries who had been expelled from Cameroon, thus opening new missionary perspectives to the religious of that nation.
United in this prayer of thanksgiving were the People of God: made up mostly of Indian (Native American) Catholics. There were also a few families of Americans. The Native Americans expressed their participation with ancient Indian rhythms; for the Offertory and the "Our Father" three girls, all wearing their traditional costumes, accompanied us with Indian sign language.
Later that evening all of the clergy, and all of the People of God who had celebrated the Eucharist, took part in the social dinner. In his opening talk, Fr. Hulsmann recalled the two things which typified the arrival of the first German fathers in America: the economic aid which they received from the U.S.A., and their great missionary spirit. He mentioned the fact that Fr. Mathias Fohrman was originally sent to the U.S.A. to collect funds for his own Province, but had been immediately appointed to the Lower Brule Mission. An Indian woman at the dinner, who was from among the group of old people, offered the German Provincial a typical Indian blanket: a quilt with an Indian star embroidered on it. The gift was a sign of gratitude from the Lakota Indians and was presented in remembrance of the first German missionaries who came to South Dakota.
The entertainment, with Indian songs and dances, came later. The evening was animated by an Indian singer/songwriter, Paul LaRoche1
, who used modern arrangements to interpret the traditional songs, melodies, rhythms and music of the ancient Indians. He and his small orchestra accompanied various dancers. There was a group of Indians - children and young people, adults and old people - all dressed in traditional costumes, all bringing to life once again those ancient gestures and movements whose enigmatic meanings are beginning to be lost in the culture of today.
On September 17th, with morning prayer and a votive Mass of thanksgiving, the same anniversary was also commemorated by the religious at Eagle Butte. The celebrant, Fr. Thomas Westhoven, using ritual Indian signs to express the characteristic spirituality of the Cheyenne people, addressed the prayer of Creation to the six directions. He established that the Creator is the Great Spirit whose breath gives life to the world; we listen to his voice in the wind. He faced North and prayed to the Great Spirit of love; he then turned to the East and greeted Jesus Star of the morning and the rising sun; turned to the South he prayed to the Creator who sends the hot wind that heats the cold; turned to the West he invoked the Great Spirit who is the giver of life. Lastly, with his eyes turned upwards, he invoked the Great Father of Heaven and, with his eyes turned towards the ground, he prayed to the Great Mother Earth. This prayer, which finds it expressions in the spirituality of the Cheyenne people, can be considered a worthy closing to the celebrations of this 75th anniversary jubilee.
2. - The Dehonian presence in South Dakota is a result of Fr. Dehon's policy in the period immediately after the 1918 war. At the end of the First World War he was very worried about the negative effects which the war had brought to our religious communities, above all to those who had been directly involved in the war. We have evidence of this in his immediate post war Circular Letter (Circ. Lett. of January 4, 1918). And in any case, Father Dehon was someone who knew how to make the misadventures of the war produce a good end.
The German missionaries had been expelled from Cameroon, Msgr. Philippe reminded us, and Fr. Dehon set about finding a new mission for them; it is thus that he kept alive the missionary spirit of the German Province.
At the request of the Bishop of Lead (South Dakota), Fr. Mathias Fohrman reached Lower Brule on Palm Sunday 1923.
In March 1919, Fr. Guglielmo Zicke, one of the missionaries expelled from Cameroon, reached Spain. After a period of serious consideration he chose the monastery of the Crucifix at Puente La Reina. There, on December 27, 1919, with three other missionaries - Fathers Corrado Schuster, Francesco Baumeister and Lorenzo Foxius - he celebrated the Holy Mass, recalling the name day of Father Dehon. This marked the beginning of the foundation of the future Spanish Province.
In the same year, on November 28, 1923, Fr. Demont, with two other priests and one brother, started the mission of Aliwal North in South Africa.
The following year, in September 1924, Father Dehon sent two priests and one Dutch brother to Palembang in Sumatra.
A man of faith, as was Fr. Dehon, knew how to perceive God's plan even in times of misfortune.
In particular, in the first twenty years of the mission of South Dakota the following people arrived:
In December 1919 Fr. Mathias Fohrman, a Luxemburger from the German Province, came to the United States to collect money for his Province and for the building of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Rome. After coming to an agreement with the Bishop of the diocese of Lead (South Dakota), Msgr. John J. Lawler, who had asked the S.C.J.s for help with pastoral care and with the foundation of a school for the children of the Cheyenne River Reservation, he started the mission among the Sioux, along the banks of the Missouri, in the Church of St. Mary at Lower Brule.
In 1923 the German Fathers, John Emonts and Charles Prantauer, who had studied English in Washington DC, started to work more to the Northwest in the Cheyenne River Reservation.
In 1924, on November 11th, the first five German fathers (present in South Dakota [Fohrman, Emonts and Prantauer] and in Illinois [Hogebach and Charles Keilmann]) made a decision which would be fundamental regarding the future of the S.C.J.s in America: to build a school for Indian children, to open a missionary seminary for future members of the Congregation, and to found a religious Province in the United States.
In 1926 Fr. Joseph Speyer came to Lower Brule; in 1933 Fr. John Hackman joined him; in 1939 Fr. Zicke arrived.
Among the religious brethren who came to South Dakota from Germany, we would like to mention: Franz, Conrad, Mathias, Longinus, Clemens, Fidelis, Aloysius, Quirinus.
They dedicated themselves to evangelization and catechisis; to building churches, chapels and residences for the missionaries; and they opened St. Joseph's Indian School for Indian children.
3. - Three experiences to point out:
- The Pastoral Team. For several years now the missionary ministry in Lower Brule has no longer been conducted by a single priest looking after a single parish. A Pastoral Team was created which consisted of two priests (Fr. Yvon Sheehy and Fr. Jim Walter), one religious brother (Br. Duane Lemke), as well as several sisters and members of the laity. As a group they are all responsible for the pastoral care of the six parishes of two Indian reserves.
This Pastoral Team enjoys moments of community life to pray together, to grow together in faith, to listen to each other, to exchange experiences and to spend moments of joy in each other's company.
In its ministry the Team aims to develop the leadership of the laity, to improve the liturgical quality of prayer, to promote strong family bonds, to insure the respect of human rights, and to challenge individuals to achieve their full self-realization.
- At Eagle Butte, on the initiative of our fathers, and taking advantage of an opportunity provided by President Carter during his presidency, they are building a peoples' village: consisting of small and comfortable houses for the Cheyenne population.
- St. Joseph's Indian School, established by Fr. Hogebach, is situated on the banks of the Missouri River in Chamberlain. The first courses were taught there in September 1927; there were 53 Indian children and 2 female teachers. It is a boarding school for Indian boys and girls (Lakota Sioux), conceived as a home away from home, in so far as it creates a family environment. In the school the children are taught about their ancient traditions and the Indian culture. The museum, Akta Lakota Museum, is dedicated to preserving and handing down the inheritance and the culture of the Lakota Sioux Indians.
4. - On the journey heading towards South Dakota the changing panorama is impressive. From the green and woody countryside of Wisconsin and Minnesota, rich with its cultivation of maize and soya, to the desolate, steppe-like plains of Dakota, without trees and without cultivation. It is possible to travel for miles and miles without seeing a tree, without coming across a cultivated field, without seeing buffalos on the prairies. This is the region of the "high plains". It is a land which does not provide sufficient grass even for those rare herds of cattle which can occasionally be seen. For those of us who, during adolescence, had read stories and novels about the Sioux, the Cheyenne and the Apache, it was a real disillusion to enter the Sioux Indian Reservation or the Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Those who were hoping to enter an Indian village full of cabins, inhabited by Sioux warriors, by squaws and girls with long braids, by horses in their corrals and dogs keeping guard, had to be satisfied with the poor village of Lower Brule, with shabby, ill-kept shacks surrounded by filth, by a few stray dogs and some car wrecks. This is the village of an Indian Reserve. It is inhabited by people whose somatic traits are those of the Indios, but who wear blue jeans, cowboy shirts and baseball caps. They wander around with Pepsi or Coca Cola cans, eating bags of potato chips or popcorn. They chew gum.
If you want to see an "Indian" you have to attend a solemn ceremony, when they wear traditional clothes and perform some religious rites; or you have to go to the theater when an Indian plays the part of an Indian; or you have to go to a museum where there are reconstructions of the life and traditional customs of the Indian.
If South Dakota is an arid land, the Indian Reservation is even more arid. The cultivable areas, full of greenery and trees, are "reserved" for the white population. The arid terrain is left for the Indians: the so-called "Indian Reservation". On this terrain even the herds find it difficult to keep themselves fed.
The Indian Reservation does not come under the wing of the State of Dakota. The people are autonomous within the State; they depend directly on Washington DC, on the Federal Government. The government pays the Indian families a subsidy, as compensation for the land stolen from them by the whites during their conquest of the far west. This subsidy is sufficient for survival, but it keeps the Indian in a state of idleness, dedicated to alcohol and to gambling in the Casino. Every Indian Reservation has its Casino. Most of them, women included, spend part of their time gambling, throwing away the subsidy they have received. This is the policy set up by the American Government, with the aim of making the "Indian race" disappear; the memory of General Custer's bitter defeat still exists.
And nevertheless, because of its instinct of self-preservation, as well as for the policy of human promotion put into practice by the Church, the Indian race still survives. If our S.C.J. fathers had been satisfied solely by their religious ministry, and were guilty of inculcating a false sense of "resignation" to the situation, they would have become accomplices of the policy of the government. But, from the very beginning, the reason why our German fathers founded the school for Indian children was to raise their cultural level; they preserved and handed down the traditional culture of the people, so that this population would not lose its ancient roots which were so filled with spirituality, with the sense of both mystery and the divine.
The American religious, successors of the first German fathers, have wed religious ministry and human promotion. In a poor environment and with a sober lifestyle they proclaim the Gospel to the poor, healing their cultural wounds. This is a truly missionary activity.
1 . Paul LaRoche, a registered member of the Sioux Tribe of Lower Brule in South Dakota, has already composed and published various traditional Indian songs and melodies, accompanying himself on the piano, on the guitar, and with various typical Indian instruments.
Among his compositions: "Lakota Piano": piano melodies with traditional Indian Rhythms. "Red Nativity": Christmas melodies arranged with contemporary Indian Music. "We the People": a collection of traditional and contemporary music of various Indian tribes. a
After the death of his adoptive parents he discovered that he belonged to a people who were rich in spirituality and culture. It was in the field of music that he started the search for his ancient origins. It is worth mentioning that his interest in this music has given him the opportunity to appear in several television transmissions, both regional and national. By communicating a message of peace, unification and reconciliation he aims, through his music, to be a positive role model for young Indians (Native Americans).