Jesuits to return 525 acres of South Dakota land to Rosebud Sioux

The letters are casual, even chatty, from officials of St. Francis Mission, on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota, to Catholic Church superiors. The mission ran one of many boarding schools to which Native American parents were required to send their children from the late 1800s until the 1970s, when most of the institutions were closed down or transferred to tribal control.

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What ex-students describe as rampant sexual abuse in South Dakota's half-dozen boarding schools occurred against a backdrop of extreme violence. "I'll never forget my sister's screams as the nuns beat her with a shovel after a pair of scissors went missing," said Mary Jane Wanna Drum, 64, who attended a Catholic institution in Sisseton, South Dakota, for the children of her tribe, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.

Izzy Zephier, 62, a Yankton Sioux tribal member, recalled a Sunday-evening ritual at St. Paul's Indian Mission. "Those who'd tried to run away were stripped, lined up, and given 40 lashes each with a thick rubber strap," he said.

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Native parents faced severe penalties, including jail time, if they did not send their children to the boarding schools. However, Zephier said, as a young teen he came upon an unexpected escape route: "School had just let out for the day, and I realized I'd forgotten a couple of books. I ran back into the building, where I found that a priest had a girl on the floor. She was fighting and screaming, 'let me go.' When the priest saw me, he got up and backhanded me hard. I hit him back and yelled to the girl, 'run, get out of here!' I hit the priest five times and knocked him down. The girl took off. The next day, I was expelled."