Master Plan for Renovation and Construction

Since August, 2007 St. Michael Indian School has been engaged in a comprehensive planning process to implement a facilities and infrastructure rehabilitation. Though the planning process is long term, the major physical rehabilitation activities could commence in as little as a year from now. SMIS is inviting its supporters from throughout the country to contribute their design ideas, physical resources and money to this enterprise. For those of you who have not visited the campus, below is a schematic of the campus layout along with pictures taken during the 2007-2008 academic year.

The high school was completed in 1950. It currently has a bit more than 12,000 square feet of classroom, library and laboratory floor space.		A statue of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha stands in the middle of a memorial prayer garden.
This is the Student Chapel that was constructed in 1926.		The Main Building, to the left, with the adjoining Kateri Hall to the right.

The Main Building was constructed in 1902, and houses kindergarten through third grades, the cafeteria, Sisters chapel, and convent. This picture shows only the west side of the Main Building, which was added in 1918. The Main Building now stands three stories high and contains 44,000 square feet of floor space. The Kateri Building, joined to the Main Building on the right side of the picture contains a bit less than 6,000 square feet of staff apartments on two floors.

Preliminary estimates for window repair, security improvements, heating system alterations, landscaping, and plumbing and electrical updates are projected to cost well over a million dollars. Other remodeling may involve reconfiguration of some classroom space. Some classrooms are overcrowded, and additional space is needed for media centers. Fortunately, the existing buildings contain underutilized space to meet at least some of these demands.

Staff and student surveys were conducted recently, and parent surveys were distributed shortly before Xmas 2007. The first public (community) meeting is tentatively scheduled for late January or early February, 2008. Please feel free to send SMIS your own suggestions if you have opinions about the campus rehabilitation and possible construction of a new gymnasium. No funding has as yet been secured for these projects. SMIS is hopeful that you will be of assistance in this regard, as well. Please consider making a donation and designate campus renovation project.

Description of Kateri Tekakwitha and her patronage:

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as the Lily of the Mohawks and recognized as patroness of ecology and the environment, is especially revered at St. Michael Indian School. Kateri is the Algonquin equivalent of her Christian name, Catherine, and Tekakwitha is her traditional Algonquin name meaning The One Who Walks Groping for Her Way.

The Algonquin name depicts her tragic childhood; orphaned, physically scarred and partially blinded due to a smallpox epidemic that swept her village when she was four years old. She was subsequently adopted by two aunts and an uncle, and was raised as a traditional Indian girl until her eighteenth year.

At that time she became attracted to a Catholic chapel that had been recently established in her village, recalling the religious stories that her Catholic mother had told her as a small child. Against the wishes of her people, she was baptized Kateri at the age of 22, and soon thereafter trekked 200 miles through the wilderness to the Catholic mission of St. Francis Xavier, near Montreal.

Though illiterate, Kateri pursued a life of prayer and penitential practices. She taught the young about Jesus and helped those who were poor and sick. Her favorite devotion was to fashion crosses out of sticks and leave them throughout the forest. At the age of 23 she took a vow of perpetual virginity, and hoped to start a convent for Native American sisters. Her own health had never been good, and it deteriorated rapidly due in part to the penances she inflicted on herself. Her short and beautiful life ended at the age of 24.

Moments after dying, her scarred and disfigured face miraculously cleared and became beautiful. This transformation was witnessed by two Jesuits as well as a large number of people crowded into her room. The Catholic Church declared Kateri venerable in 1943, and, in 1980, she was the first Native American to be beatified.