Boarding school leads to the convent

When Sr. Jane Miller describes herself, she says she has two identities. She is both a "Menominee Indian woman" and a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

As a woman religious, she said her ministry is working as support staff at St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis. As a Menominee, she is active with Native American events and organizations in the St. Louis area.

Sr. Jane grew up in Keshena. Her father was a Menominee; her mother, was a member of the Oneida Tribe in Brown County.

As a student at the boarding school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph, she rose early to attend daily Mass with the Sisters. The students "kept strict silence from the moment of rising until the bell rang at 8:30 a.m. for school."

After a sister spoke to the students about vocations, Sr. Jane began thinking about entering the convent. Her role model was the sister who worked as school cook. "I thought she was very sweet. She was very kind and gentle. I just wanted to be like her."

After graduating from eighth grade in 1953, she decided to go to the order's motherhouse in St. Louis to try the convent for two weeks. "If I didn't like it, I would come back," she laughed. She has stayed for 47 years.

Sr. Jane has worked with the elderly and with children as a licensed practical nurse. She was a housemother for emotionally disturbed boys when she decided to give St. Joseph Institute a try. She has been there 25 years "doing a lot of little things that help the boarding program." These range from working as purchaser to laundress.

St. Joseph is an internationally known school serving hearing-impaired students ranging in age from infant to middle school. The 45 boarders come from all over the world including Africa, the Middle East and Asia. There are 40 day students.

Sr. Jane said she "didn't really think about being Native American when I first joined the convent," perhaps because she was the only Native American in her group of postulants. "The Indian background faded into the white community," she said.

Several years later, as she became more aware of her heritage, she felt "like a fish out of water." She expressed her concerns at a community meeting.

As a result, "the community began to think about Native American culture and other cultures," she said. Other communities have done likewise.

"Now there's room that I can be as native as I want to be," Sr. Jane said.

She talked briefly about Native American spirituality which she finds compatible with being Catholic. She learned it from her father, she said, especially his "respect for little things in nature."

She remembered the day he went out to the garage to get his ladder. When he found a bird's nest on it, he told her mother that he would buy a new one so he could leave the nest undisturbed.

Her father taught her to worship the Great Spirit through nature. He told her to go to the woods alone when she was feeling bad because she would find peace there.

"I pray better outside sitting in the woods than I do in church," Sr. Jane said. "I like to listen to nature sounds."

She described other lessons she has learned from Native American spirituality.

-- Native Americans are thankful. "They thank God for whatever they have, even though it is something small," said.

-- They have a sense of humility, which she describes as a "sense of growing toward more. We're never perfect."

Sr. Jane believes she is developing her father's respect for nature. She is learning to do that by her involvement in Native American groups and events, such as St. Louis area pow-wows, where she has been asked several times to offer the opening prayers.

For 20 years, she has attended Tekawitha Conferences, an international organization of Native Americans and people who work with or are interested in them. It is under the protection of Blessed Kateri Tekawitha.

After such meetings, Sr. Jane said she has a "new sense of who I really am. I am more in touch with my native heritage."