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            Untangling religion from ceremony and rituals is challenging.
            Rick and Elsie Ground are parents dismayed that spiritual ceremonies cannot be taught in public school. Rick, whose graying hair is tied in two long braids, attended college in Missoula after becoming disabled in an accident. He spends part of many days teaching groups about Blackfeet culture. Elsie is an elementary education instructor at Blackfeet Community College and was once a Blackfeet language instructor. The Grounds strive to keep customs alive, and Elsie even won an award for her efforts to maintain Blackfeet cultural integrity.
            Their 15-year-old daughter, Amorette, attends De La Salle.
            The family is both Catholic and traditional. Rick Ground explains that Catholicism mirrors the Blackfeet faith.  “I am the Sun, the Moon and the Morning Star,” he says, referring to the Creator.  “It’s all in the Bible.” 
            The family is part of the Crazy Dog Society, a traditional war society with roots in Blackfeet culture. They also keep a sacred beaver bundle, a medicinal package handed down in families, opened when the ice breaks every spring.
            And they smudge. Smudging is a purification ceremony that includes burning of herbs. “Thank the west for night, wind, snow, the glaciers,” Ground will say as he thanks the Creator and four directions as sweetgrass, sage or sweet pine are burned.
            Amorette was inducted into the Crazy Dog Society as a baby. Now, she’s an 8th grader at De La Salle, whom the family calls a “protector” of the beaver bundle.
            Her formal Blackfeet education began when she was 4 and was sent to the newly opened Nizipuhwahsin Center,the Blackfeet language immersion school. Although the center is steeped in tradition, the Grounds felt Amorette was learning the language, but not basics like math and English.
            Amorette attended Napi Elementary until the middle of 6th grade. She kept getting in trouble with the teachers and fighting, so Elsie pulled her out to home school her. 
            Girls were “kind of picking on her, bullying,” says Elsie.
            When Amorette attended the middle school, she disagreed with her Blackfeet language teachers.  Discipline problems continued, and the Grounds pulled her out again. 
            But the parents insist that at the heart of the decisions was the lack of Blackfeet spirituality in education.
            “Not being able to pray in class” was the problem, says Elsie. “They don’t offer the Creator or God.”
            When Amorette was in the 4th grade, the new Catholic private school opened on the reservation. Her parents submitted Amorette’s application to De La Salle, but each year their daughter was on a waiting list. Last summer, entering 8th grade, she got a spot.
            De La Salle is the first private Catholic school on the reservation in more than 50 years.
            Jesuits brought Catholicism to the Blackfeet in the early 19th century.
            Even today parallels exist between Catholic and Blackfeet beliefs.
            “The host, use of holy water, Ash Wednesday, burning of incense,” notes Ben Horn, a Browning native in his first year as counselor at De La Salle. “It’s eerie how similar it is. The Blackfeet have been able to grasp the faith as they have despite the history.”
            Elsie Ground’s family attended the Holy Family Mission School.  In the 1880s, the mission school there took children from their families and made them give up everything Blackfeet, Rick Ground says.
            Only in the last 30 years could Blackfeet perform rituals like smudging, he says, recalling a period when people placed blankets over the windows of their home to hide their ceremonies.
            Now “they’re allowing sweetgrass in the church,” he says.
As did other Indian missionary schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, St. Peter’s and Holy Family Mission boarding schools focused on assimilation.
Catholic education on the reservation has changed.
            “(De La Salle) tries to implement any pieces of culture that they can,” says Horn.
            Brother Paul Ackerman, a Christian Brother, leads De La Salle. The school is not tuition driven – a year costs $6,500, but the school asks parents for at least $400 – and works for an at-risk population.
            The Blackfeet Reservation makes up most of Glacier County, the 35th poorest county in the nation, and has a 70 percent unemployment rate.  The Blackfeet Youth Development group estimates that one in three people is addicted to drugs and alcohol. The dropout rate is 65 percent.  Only 37 percent of Blackfeet adults have a high school diploma, according to tribal statistics.
            De La Salle began in 2001 with a 5th grade and added a year each time the class advanced. It’s expanded from 18 students to a school of 57 students, 5th through 8th grades.
            “I think we have a reputation now,” Ackerman says. “Getting established in a small town, you’re either from here or you don’t count.”
            De La Salle is careful to integrate Blackfeet customs.
            “Many parents have told me that the culture of the Blackfeet is in such need,” says Jeb Meyers, the principal.  “We do whatever we can.”
Students have made hand drums and painted a winter count, a traditional pictorial calendar, on plywood made to look like a buffalo hide.  In April De La Salle hosted a fundraiser, at which the students performed two plays: “The Big Decision: Agreement of 1896” and “Napi Stories.” “The Big Decision” chronicles the Blackfeet losing their sacred land, Glacier National Park, in a sham deal with the federal government. “Napi Stories” brought Blackfeet legends to life – Napi is a Christ figure who learned from the Creator and taught people how to live and love.
            As a private school, De La Salle has no restrictions on cultural spirituality.
            Every morning begins with an assembly to pray, say the Pledge of Allegiance and listen to the Blackfeet flag song, the tribe’s national anthem.  They pray using Blackfeet words and, on Fridays, 5th, 6th and 7th graders smudge. “In each class at the end of the day, they do a prayer circle,” says Horn. Modeled after the Blackfeet talking circle, in the ceremony students pass around a talking stick and resolve issues. And every Thursday they celebrate Mass, often singing a Blackfeet song in both languages.
            But De La Salle tries to offer more than that. It’s the order that prompts most parents to send their children there. While some are deeply religious, it’s the discipline and safety many want. 

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