One woman’s path of faith: Indian and Catholic

“If you want to know something, ask Grandma Peggy.”
That’s how Grandma Peggy DesJarlait, a 77-year-old member of the Arikara Tribe, describes her role at the Anawim Center, the center for Native Americans sponsored by the archdiocese. DesJarlait, who was there for the beginning of the center 20 years ago, speaks to church groups, schools, at funerals and wakes, and in general tries to educate both Native Americans and others about her heritage and spirituality.

Anawim Center, said Franciscan Sister Patricia Ann Mulkey, it’s director, “is a Native American Interfaith Spiritual Center” serving about 150 Native American households, most of whose members consider themselves Catholic, “traditional” or both. It offers Mass twice a month, senior lunches, special programs and Catholic catechesis inculturated for Native Americans.

DesJarlait, also named “White Cedar Woman,” got the name “Peggy” from teachers in government schools that were established, she said, to help eradicate the Indian culture. She moved to Minneapolis during World War II, and then came to Chicago in the early 1950s with her husband, who was murdered a year later. She stayed on, raising 16 children through informal foster arrangements, getting a degree in child development and preschool education and becoming one of the leading resources on Native American heritage and culture in the city.

The Catholic New World: Tell me a little but about your life history. Where were you born?

Grandma Peggy DesJarlait: I was born on the Fort Berthold Indian reservation, 200 miles northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota. I’m from the Arikara Tribe. I was born and raised there, on that reservation, and was educated there through boarding school. I left there when I was about 17, so I’ve been off the reservation for about 60 years.



TCNW: What religion were you raised in?

GPD: I was raised traditional Indian. Also I had Christianity—when the government placed Indians on the reservation, they were to give the Indian education and religion so they would become “civilized.” So that’s what they did to us, put a lot of our kids in boarding schools and took away our language. If they spoke Indian, they would cut their hair off and punish them and all that. They tried every way to take some of our beliefs, our religion.

What I found when I left the reservation is that I was called a pagan all the time, and I really didn’t know what they meant when they said “pagan.” I was going to a Bible class in Minneapolis, and our professor used to always introduce me as a former pagan. One of the students said to me one time, “How come they call you a pagan? Are you one?” I said to him, “It all depends on what you mean.” So he started telling me, and I was very, very upset about it. I said no, we didn’t worship idols. We lived by nature. I said we respected Mother Earth. We respected Father Sky. That’s how I was educated—through nature. …

I told him my grandfather taught us kids what I know. Because sometimes when I went to Bible class (as a child), and I would answer some of their questions, and I would say, “It’s not nice to lie, it’s not nice to steal,” and the missionary would say, how do you know? Who taught you that? Do you have a Bible?”

And I would say, no, my grandfather taught us kids in the family. She said, “It can’t be that you’re grandfather knows all that.” I said, “That’s what he taught us.” So she used to say, “You’re pagan if you worship idols and the powwows are all devil worship.” I’d get really upset about it, and go back and tell my grandfather. He’d get so mad. I was just about 8 or 9 years old, but he’d say, “You go back and tell that white woman what I said.” So I’d go back and tell her what my grandfather said, and she’d say, “You go back and tell your grandfather I said this.” So I’d go back again, back and forth.

I guess that’s why I was able to put the two together, Christianity and the traditional, and I was able to speak on both, and I was able practice both after I left the reservation and came into the non-Indian world and found out there was a lot of prejudice and discrimination against the Indian.



TCNW: Were you Catholic?

GPD: I was a little bit of everything—whoever would come to the door knocking and saying, “Do you want to come to church with us? We’ll have ice cream, we’ll have cake. We’ll have chicken.” We never had all them goodies on the reservation. We ate simple—potatoes and macaroni and all that. We thought it was terrific when a big bus would pull up in front of our house. That’s how they converted a lot of Indians—through those buses.



TCNW: Were you part of the founding of the Anawim Center?

GPD: Yes. How it really started was two nuns that came from Denver. They asked around, and everybody said, “Anything you want to know, go ask Grandma Peggy. She knows everything.” They asked the elders what we needed here most, what was lacking. And we said we’d like to have a little center of our own, an Indian center, a spiritual center where we could go and have services. So the two women rented a little storefront over there on Leland. There were four of us who with the beginning of Anawim.



TCNW: Anawim is part of the archdiocese. Do you consider yourself Catholic or were you baptized Catholic?

GPD: Yes, I was baptized when I was younger. There was always a joke about that on the reservation. All the missionaries, the Catholics and the others, were always fighting to get more members, so they’d wait at the hospital when they heard someone was having a baby, and then when the baby was born they’d dash in and baptize the baby.

My mother’s first marriage was Catholic, so she had kids Catholic. Then she parted with her man. The second man was Episcopalian, so we joined the Episcopalians. The third man was Congregational, so we joined that. I was baptized so many times for sure I’ll make heaven. Everybody shopped around for somebody who could offer more. We were jumping all over.

The way I look at it now, when I speak to children and they say, “I don’t want to be Catholic. I can’t go to Catholic church,” I say we don’t talk that way. You have to believe what you want to believe. We all worship one God. There’s one God. Like me, for instance, I worship in my Indian way, I pray in my Indian language, I say the blessings, but I also take my Bible and I read my Bible and all my devotions, and on Sunday I go to Catholic church. I sort of do a little bit of everything.

I had that on the reservation, because I was pulled in all directions. It was kind of confusing until as I got older and I began to realize who I was and what I was and where I should go. Now I’m an old lady, and I think I’ve got it real good.



TCNW: Do you find that the different ways of worshipping work together?

GPD: They work all together. I don’t discriminate against any religion. … I’m convinced that I’m right. Some people will say you’re an Indian, how can you still believe in Christianity?

And I say I did all my life, ever since I was a little girl. Anawim serves a lot of Indian people. A lot of Indian people come here for Mass, we give a lot of feasts. Feasts are a big gift in Indian culture.

The main thing about Indian values is to give. We’re very generous in giving. When I leave this world, I’m not taking nothing with me. … There are many things that I still cherish as an Indian woman.

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