Kimberly Schmidt raises a point about historical precision (“Quest Continues to Identify Students at Indian Schools Run by Mennonites,” May), and while accuracy matters for documentation, we would push back on the framing that connections must be numerous or sustained to be “deep.” For our Indigenous siblings, even one connection carries profound weight: One Mennonite missionary helping transport a child to Carlisle. One Mennonite farmer housing a Native child through the Outing Program. One Mennonite teacher participating in a system designed to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Each represents a point where Mennonites participated in cultural erasure, or worse — and each left marks on families, communities and descendants who carry that history today. While that participation may, or may not, have physically involved many Mennonites, there were likely those behind the scenes in communities who were complicit. 

The question of whether Mennonite
in­volvement was “deep” or “limited” is,
in some ways, a question asked from the
in­­stitutional side — concerned with docu­mentation and degrees of culpability. From
the perspective of the communities affect­-
ed, “deep” or “limited” may mean some­thing completely different. Depth isn’t measured only by the number of staff positions filled or the volume of archival evidence. It’s also measured by impact. A single child removed from their family, their language forbidden, their hair cut, their name changed — that is deep. If Men­-
nonites participated in any part of that
system, even at the margins, they partici­pated in something deep.

We shouldn’t use gaps in what has been documented as a reason to minimize. The absence of records often reflects whose stories were deemed worth preserving — and whose were not. It means that there is likely much more we don’t know and that much of the experience of our Indigenous communities has been passed down orally and not in ledgers. Just because it’s not in writing, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The work of repair doesn’t require proving Mennonites were central players in the boarding school system. It requires honest reckoning with whatever role they did play, however partial, and walking alongside those still living with the consequences.

Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Michelle Armster, Susan Hart, Sue Park-Hur

Mennonite Church USA
SACRED Project members

In The History of the General Conference of the Mennonites of North America (1898), H.P. Krehbiel describes mission schools for Indian children as an outgrowth of mis­-
sion work for Indian adults. Krehbiel re­-
cords the sincere spiritual grounding of those who sought to convert Indian chil­dren and adults, given the assumptions about the need to assimilate them into the
White so­cial order (“Reckon­ing with Cul­tural Erasure,” Editorial, May). The harsh evan­gelical view of Indian ways and beliefs is re­vealed far more in the description of
mission work with adults than with children.
In the 1980s, our church in Des Moines was involved in resettling Tai Dam refugees. We used the best information we had, but our effort may one day be considered as colonial as the 1898 version Krehbiel described.

Glenn R. Baughman, Des Moines, Iowa