What hides in the records from WA Catholic Native boarding schools? Tribes may soon find out

The Catholic Church has started reviewing records of its boarding schools for Native students, a spokesperson for Catholic bishops in Washington state said. This comes after increasing calls for greater transparency and accountability from the Catholic Church.

Catholic missions ran many of the boarding schools in the Pacific Northwest, and they still have records of who passed through those schools, including here in Washington.

Helen McClenahan is the chief communication officer for the Archdiocese of Seattle, one of three major dioceses in Washington state. The Seattle archdiocese manages the church in Western Washington.

McClenahan said the Archdiocese of Seattle does not speak on behalf of the Vatican, but there has been a statewide approach to address what happened at Native boarding schools. McClenahan said the decision came after Washington bishops discussed the discovery of mass graves of Indigenous children found in a Canadian boarding schools in 2021.

“Through these conversations, the bishops engaged with the bishops in Spokane and Yakima to take a more comprehensive look at the Native American experience historically,” she said.