Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Sue Ernster was recently featured in CNN’s 5 Good Things podcast on Dec. 13, and in a Religion Unplugged piece regarding the transfer of the Marywood property in Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin.
On the Dec. 13 episode of CNN's 5 Good Things podcast, Sister Sue Ernster reflects on FSPA's decision to return land along Trout Lake in Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin, to its original caretakers, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.
FSPA has a long history with the Lac du Flambeau, as children from the tribe attended St. Mary’s Indian Board School, a school FSPA administered from 1883 to 1969. At that time, many federal Indian boarding schools, including St. Mary, participated in the United States government’s assimilation policies, attempting to erase Native American cultures.
In the CNN podcast, Sister Sue shares, "It's part of our repairing our complicity in the trauma that has occurred." Listen to her segment here (4:50 minute mark).
"Restoring Tribal lands is, in so many ways, restoring the conditions for a people to breathe again — to return to the places that have shaped their spirit, their governance, their relationship to the holy." — Chelsea Langston Bombino.
The Religion Unplugged article looks at two places side by side: Oak Flat in Arizona and the Marywood property in Wisconsin. The piece explores what justice looks like when land, people and the sacred are held together.Oak Flat is a sacred site now at risk from a multinational mining company. Whereas Marywood shows a different approach to land transitions. Sister Sue shares, “We hope to model, especially for Catholic religious congregations, that it is possible to pursue alternatives to conventional land transitions.”