In 1898 the Chamberlain Indian School was founded by the federal government in the town of that name in South Dakota, on the east bank of the Missouri River.

[6] The facility was sold to the Catholic Church, as represented by Thomas O'Gorman, bishop of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

[8] In the early 1920s, some parents on the Lakota reservations expressed interest in gaining additional educational opportunities for their school-age children.

Priests of the Sacred Heart (referred to as the Dehonians) established a mission in the area in 1923, and worked to organize a school.

[9] They found they needed to have the school operation based in Chamberlain in order to have a reliable water supply from the Missouri River.

Hogebach had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1923, where he first joined four other Catholic priests for training in Washington, DC, for missions in South Dakota.

[2] Hogebach served as the school's first superior and conducted missionary work among the Lakota for ten years before being transferred to the community house in Ste.

[2] In 1927 Hogebach cited Roman Catholic priest Father Edward J. Flanagan's orphanage Boys Town as his model for the school.

[10] Through the early- to mid-20th century, federal policy required Native American children to be educated toward assimilation, primarily in Indian boarding schools.

During the mid to late 20th century, Native Americans organized to regain more sovereignty over their lands and families, with the right to educate their children near home and in their own cultures.

[9] In January 2020, Mary Farrow of the Catholic News Agency responded to reporting of past practices and assimilation pressures by Priests of the Sacred Heart and Franciscan Sisters who served at the school.

The school conducts considerable tutoring, has small class sizes, and provides individualized attention to aid students.

[22] They also operate a thrift store that collects and distributes donated items to the Eagle Butte, Wanblee, Okreek, Fort Thompson, Martin, Kyle, Allen, Mission, and Potato Creek communities.

When it was refurbished in 1985, the school commissioned stained glass windows from artist Ron Zeilinger to represent seven sacred rites in Lakota practice: vision seeking, purification by use of a sweat lodge, the Sun Dance, keeping of the soul, and others.

[25] Behind the altar hangs a tapestry known as the Indian Christ, adapted from a painting of that name by nationally recognized artist Oscar Howe (Crow Creek Sioux).

[27] None of the Priests of the Sacred Heart at the school have been Native American, according to Leonard Pease, Vice Chairman of the Crow Creek Sioux.

[28] The school's president Michael Tyrell said that as of 2014, nine percent of the staff were Native Americans; that staffing includes teachers, counselors, house parents, custodians, residential training, accounting, and family outreach.

Other religious organizations that operated Indian mission schools in the territory of the Diocese of Sioux Falls have also been sued for alleged abuse that occurred at these places.

[31][32] Prosecuting the cases has in some instances been difficult as decades have passed since some of the alleged abuses occurred and some of the named perpetrators have died.

[33] In regards to the school's attorney creating the bill to protect his client's interests, Representative Steve Hickey (District 9), said, "I consider how this went down to be scandalous and shameful.

Recognizing that it may take decades for survivors of child abuse to come forward, other states have loosened statutes of limitation related to these crimes.

As attorney Vito De La Cruz notes, "All tribes have criminal child-sex-abuse statutes, but this is the first civil one and allows plaintiffs whose cases have been dismissed in other jurisdictions to file in tribal court".

[36] In January 2012 the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that it would hear the lawsuit against Priests of the Sacred Heart for alleged abuses at St. Joseph's and not apply HB1104 retroactively to their cases.

In a 2015 interview for the National Catholic Reporter, Zigmund Hollow Horn of the Cheyenne River Lakota told Vinnie Rotandaro of being abused during his eight years at the St.

[40] Native American leaders complained that the school's solicitations could be classified as "poverty porn" and that they stressed only the social ills of Indian country.

[38] In 2014 the school's attorney reportedly told Indian Country Today that they would end use of such student letters in fundraising.

[29] But in 2017, the school reportedly made $51 million from donors, and the next year continued to mail out thousands of so-called student letters seeking charitable donations.