Jesuit and Lakota: Graduation at Red Cloud

The annual observance of back-to-school rites is underway at the 62 Jesuit high schools in the United States — notebooks have been purchased, iPad apps downloaded, Masses of the Holy Spirit celebrated. At the Jesuit high school on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, these rituals have been faithfully marked, but so too have others: an Inipi or “sweat lodge” ceremony and invocations to Tunkashila, the Great Spirit, for a successful school year.