Taking Charge, Making Change Native People and the Transition of Education from Stephan Mission to Crow Creek Tribal School

Robert W. Galler

ISBN 10: 1496239814 / ISBN 13: 9781496239815

Published by University of Nebraska Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 1392676858

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Taking Charge, Making Change Native People and the Transition of Education from Stephan Mission to Crow Creek Tribal School
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1496239814
• ISBN 13: 9781496239815
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Taking Charge, Making Change gives voice to generations of Native people—from Crow Creek, Lower Brule, and other reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota—who shaped a school originally designed to foster Catholicism and assimilation. Local initiatives and collaboration transformed the Catholic Stephan Mission boarding school into the Crow Creek Tribal School, which now features both tribal traditions and American educational programs.

Through archival research and interviews with parents, graduates, teachers, and staff at Crow Creek and the surrounding community, Robert W. Galler Jr. places Native students at the heart of the narrative, demonstrating multifaceted family connections at a nineteenth-century, on-reservation religious school that evolved into a tribally run institution in the 1970s. He shows numerous ways that community members worked with Catholic leaders and ultimately transformed their mindsets and educational approaches over nearly a century. While recognizing the many challenges and tragedies that Native students endured, Galler highlights the creativity, collaborations, and contributions of the students and graduates to their communities.

Taking Charge, Making Change shows how individuals and families helped to found the school, maintain enrollment, secure funding, and influence school policies. Its graduates went on to serve with distinction in the U.S. military, earn advanced degrees after college, join and lead tribal councils in North and South Dakota, help their communities push back against federal policies, and continue to run their own education system.

About the Author

Robert W. Galler Jr. is a professor of history at St. Cloud State University.