Outside the Salish School of Spokane, students formed a crowded circle on a concrete patio. They ranged in age from babies to ninth graders. All of them — even the babies — held a drum.
They had gathered for their daily “greet the day” ceremony. As a teacher recited a prayer, students faced the sun and began to drum and sing.
Founded in 2009, the private, nonprofit Salish School aims to teach and revitalize four critically endangered Southern Interior Salish languages.
LaRae Wiley is the school’s cofounder and elder linguist. After studying n̓səl̓xčin̓ (Colville Salish) under a master speaker, she decided to bring the near-forgotten language back to her family and community.
“Because I was a schoolteacher, I wanted us to build a school,” she said. “Because schools are a place where people gather, and you can bring people in.”
She added: “It’s also an economic engine.”
The Salish School began as a basement immersion program for just a few kids. It now serves 58 students and has a robust adult learners’ program.
The school has far outgrown its small home on North Maple Street, according to capital campaign director Jim Dawson.
“Right now there’s not a space inside the Salish campus that can hold the entire class,” Dawson said.
The Salish School recently broke ground on a new campus, which backs up to the Spokane River, near Spokane Falls Community College.
Christopher Parkin, the Salish School’s principal, said back in 2021, Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington approached the Salish School about the then-vacant property.
“They kind of proactively reached out and said, ‘Hey, you all are interested in getting back to the river and having a place where you could have more space for your programming, maybe develop housing,’” Parkin said. “‘And we have this amazing site that we’re going to be developing.’”
Catholic Charities offered 3.5 acres to the Salish School as a form of reparations for historical abuse.
The Catholic Church was the main operator of Native American boarding schools in the U.S. Those schools regularly separated Indigenous children from their families, language and culture.
“It’s a huge reason why so many Indigenous languages in the U.S. and Canada are now critically endangered,” Dawson said.
LaRae Wiley recalls her school and community debating for a long time whether to take the land from Catholic Charities.
“It wasn’t easy because there is so much historical trauma with the boarding schools and the churches,” she said. “But we decided to work together to make this a beautiful place for future generations.”
The school accepted the land in 2023 and construction officially began this August.
Catholic Charities is working with the Salish School to develop the new campus, alongside affordable housing units that Catholic Charities will maintain. It’s one of the first such partnerships in the nation.
“Catholic Charities is hoping that other Catholic Charities around the country will take it up as an example,” Dawson said.
The new school is set to open in 2028, with capacity for more than twice the enrollment of the current school. The campus will eventually include not just a schoolhouse, but a cultural center and athletic fields.
The Salish School has raised more than $17 million to fund the new campus, which will be constructed in three phases.
LaRae Wiley never imagined she would see a new campus during her lifetime.
“We decided we were going to do a school, and as we were talking about our dream, we just laughed and said, ‘Yeah, and someday we’ll have a full-blown school with everything along the river,’” Wiley said. “And we just cracked up, because we were pie-in-the-sky dreaming.”
