To Christianize and civilize. These were the goals U.S. Mennonites set for their “foreign” missions in the 1880s and ’90s. Who were these “foreigners”? They were, in fact, near neighbors: Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho ­people in Oklahoma and Kansas.

It seemed obvious to 19th-century Mennonites that Christianity and White culture went hand in hand, says Lois Barrett in The Vision and the Reality (Faith & Life, 1983). This belief bore bitter fruit that Mennonites have lately begun to confront. In the past few years, this reckoning has focused on the tragic legacy of Indian residential schools. Their impact lives on in generational trauma.

From 1881 to 1901, Mennonites played a direct role in the U.S. government’s effort to erase Native American culture by forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools. Mennonites operated two schools in Oklahoma Territory and one at Halstead, Kan. Mennonites also were involved with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which closed in 1918.

These residential schools were among more than 400 in the United States, about half run by the federal government and the others by various Christian denominations. Believing Indigenous ways were “heathen,” they tried to destroy Native identity. Some call this cultural genocide.

White Mennonites have begun to ask: How shall we atone for our ancestors’ involvement in the government’s project to “kill the Indian and save the man,” as Carlisle school founder Richard Henry Pratt infamously described it?

An act of healing happened last fall when Mennonites took part in the repatriation of 16 Cheyenne and Arapaho children — students at Carlisle, buried in Pennsylvania — to a tribal cemetery in Concho, Okla. Susan Hart, the pastor of Koinonia Indian Mennonite Church in Clinton, Okla., and a member of the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board, mobilized church members to create handmade symbolic gifts for each child. Allegheny Mennonite Conference of MC USA and other donors raised funds for traditional regalia for the reburial.

Ongoing reparative efforts include MC USA’s Project SACRED (Solidarity, Acknowledgment, Collaboration, Recognition, Education, Dignity), which seeks to address the physical, mental and spiritual trauma resulting from Mennonite-run residential schools in the United States.

Reckoning continues in Canada as well. In Ontario, Indigenous survivors of residential schools run by Mennonites from 1962 to 1991 gathered in March to tell their stories and begin their healing journeys.

Researchers aim to support healing by uncovering the extent of Mennonite complicity in the U.S. government’s colonizing agenda. As historian Kimberly D. Schmidt writes in the May AW, a clearer picture of Mennonite involvement at Carlisle is beginning to emerge. But a lack of good records has hindered research on the three Mennonite schools. Halstead school records were destroyed in a 1914 fire.

Since 2022, when the U.S. Department of the Interior released a report documenting the harms caused by Native boarding schools across the country, media reports have described their brutal methods. One cited “renaming children with English names, cutting their hair, prohibiting the use of Native languages and religions, extensive military drills and manual labor. Abuse was commonplace, including the use of solitary confinement and the withholding of food.”

It is unclear to what extent the Mennonite schools used such methods, Schmidt says. Mennonite research published within the past 50 years does not describe abuse. This does not mean it didn’t happen. Any forced assimilation in language, hairstyle, clothing and behavior could be considered abusive and traumatizing.

It is possible to decry the Mennonite missionaries’ actions without condemning the missionaries. As people of their time, they never questioned the appropriateness of imposing their culture on others. They thought they were in the vanguard of progress. Ironically, says James C. Juhnke in A People of Mission (Faith & Life, 1979), the missionaries were fascinated by Native culture even as they looked forward to its destruction.

While it is painful to face this history, integrity and justice require it. Tangible acts of solidarity with Indigenous people are needed. In an article in the May AW, Jon Jantz of North Newton, Kan., drawing from his experience at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, suggests financial reparations. Project SACRED, endorsed by Mennonite Central Committee as well as MC USA, is a worthy recipient. Pastor Susan Hart says checks can be made to Koinonia Indian Mennonite Church, with Project SACRED in the subject line, and sent to the church at 10348 N 2270 Road, Clinton, OK 73601.