
The Salish School of Spokane and Catholic Charities Eastern Washington have joined together to build a new campus tailored to the school's needs, including expanded classroom spaces and a cultural and recreation center on land near the Spokane River gifted by Catholic Charities.
"As we look at the genocide that Native Americans have faced in this country and on top of the boarding schools, right, it's a hard history," says LaRae Wiley, founder and executive director of the Salish School. "I think working to create some type of healing is a good thing."
Wiley founded the school 15 years ago as an at-home daycare with a budget of $70,000. At the time, it was the only Indigenous school in Washington and the nation's only full-time immersion school not on a reservation. As a second language, she speaks nslxcin, Colville-Okanagan Salish, which only has two known surviving elders in the U.S. who grew up speaking it as their first language.
Her grandmother was one of the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children who were forced into boarding schools that changed their names to English ones, cut their hair, prevented them from speaking Indigenous languages and often abused them.
More than 50 burial sites for children who never went home were found alongside some of the 408 schools supported by the U.S. government, according to a 2022 federal study. Many of these boarding schools were also supported by the Catholic church.
Brea Desautel, the Salish School's early childhood education and assistance program director, says she's been asked how she feels about the organization having a relationship with Catholic Charities.
"This is not an erasure or not like, 'All is well now,'" Desautel says. "This is just us acknowledging a gift from someone that is hopefully realizing that this is the right thing to do."
It is expected that building the school will cost around $10.7 million. Construction is set to start in February 2026 and is expected to take about two years.
The two groups celebrated the gift of more than 2 acres near the Spokane River (valued around $500,000) on May 21. The campus site is bordered by a bend in the Spokane River and Three Island Park, which includes more than 30 acres of protected pine forests, near Spokane Falls Community College.
River Family Haven, a Catholic Charities housing development neighboring the school, will be built at the same time to lower costs. Altogether, the projects are estimated to cost $32 million.
RESPECT, CARE, SHARE
If the Board of Directors approves it, Desautel could soon be the school's co-executive director, along with Kim Richards, currently the assistant director of early childhood education and community advancement. Wiley may move to a position on the board and as an elder, though the school's internal non-hierarchical operations most likely won't change much.
The two were chosen by their community to seek the role, much in the way that the ylmixm, or "chief" would have been asked to serve their people. Richards clarifies that the role was often one of service leadership, rather than the anglicized version that views it as a monarchy or hierarchy.
"I feel very honored to be considered [for] co-executive director," Desautel says.
A lot of work remains to be done. The Salish School needs to raise the final $3 million of the $10.7 million for the new campus. The staff is constantly working to translate more books into Salish, adding to more than 700 in their library. All while balancing the rest of their job, including helping kids from ages 1 to 3 in its Language Nests, a program that starts the language immersion process early.
"I call it the 'Auntie School,' because everybody's an Auntie here, like we're all responsible for each other," Richards says.
Richards enjoys the comfortability, respect and support that comes with a tight-knit community. There is a Salish saying, "ku hanwix, ku txtnwix, ku kunwix," which translates as "We respect each other, we take care of each other, we share with each other."
The Salish School works hard to provide that.
Almost 100% of its students, who range from preschool to eighth grade, read at or above grade level in English, except for a few transfer students. They have close to a 100% high school graduation rate for kids who went through their program. Their middle school class is doing a tissue sampling project for the University of Idaho, capturing crayfish, taking samples and sending them off to be tested for lead and mercury pollution.
"Our kiddos are growing up in a safe and loving and accountable place," Richards says. "We have really high expectations for them and their behavior, but we also give them that support so that they can get there."
That support extends to parents. The Salish School has adult learning programs in the evenings, during which free child care is provided. All students' parents are required to attend at least 60 hours per year.
"You tell me a school anywhere where the parents have to do 60 hours of fill-in-the-blank, anything," says Christopher Parkin, Wiley's husband, the school's principal and its grants and business manager. "And yet we have this core set of 30-some families who make that, who believe in this."
The word that Parkin uses most while discussing the growth of the Salish School is "miraculous," though he clarifies that "to have a miracle you have to be working hard all the time."

A RIVER (ALMOST) RUNS THROUGH IT
The hard work has paid off in the partnership for the new 2-acre campus, which will be owned outright by the Salish School. The project took a lot of discussion with Catholic Charities, including several meetings and community events in which Indigenous people were able to share the hurt their families have felt.
"Frankly, the biggest reservation on my end is that I didn't want to screw it up," says Jonathan Mallahan, who leads the housing program for Catholic Charities Eastern Washington. "I feel a great responsibility for how many times trust has been broken, how many times decisions have been made that are not collaborative but one-sided in the history of the Catholic community and the Salish peoples."
The organization is building River Family Haven next to the land gifted for the school. That project will include 72 units of housing available to those who make 60% or less of the area's median income. The $24 million project will make use of tax credits, which requires the ownership to stay with Catholic Charities for 15 years. Once that time frame is up, the Salish School of Spokane has the first right of refusal to the land.
"We obviously have the capacity and expertise in the world of development that a small school is not going to have, and we want to bring that to bear," Mallahan says. "We're trying to do it in a way that is very respectful and deferential to the Salish School leading this process."
Catholic Charities is not an evangelical organization. Mallahan says its team members are motivated by their own faith, but do not find others' faith relevant to their work. In this case, he says they are trying to move forward in a different way than their predecessors without erasing the harm that was caused.
"You have to allow people to come to the table," Richards says. "You have to allow people to step up. And you have to give them the space and the grace to be able to learn and to ask the difficult questions so that you can give them difficult answers." ♦