Diocese of Fond du Lac Returns Land to Indians

Episcopal News Service. January 19, 1995 [95008]

Owanah P. Anderson, Staff Officer for Indian ministries

Just before Christmas, an ancient gift was returned. It was a gift first given more than 150 years ago when the Oneida Indian Nation, newly removed to the dense forests of Wisconsin from its ancestral homeland in Central New York, gave the young Protestant Episcopal Church land on which to build a mission.

The mission, the American church's first ministry among native peoples, survived and prospered. Through it filed a colorful cast of characters that included the first Oneida Episcopal priest (who was also the last hereditary Oneida chief), and another clergyman who claimed to be the lost dauphin of France.

Known today as Church of the Holy Apostles in the Diocese of Fond du Lac, the church that grew out of that mission lists the names of 2,000 baptized Oneidas on its roster, making it not only the oldest, but also the largest Indian congregation in the Episcopal Church.

On December 19, 1994, the church returned to the Oneida Nation two acres of land and a building called the Parish House located across a road from its main building.

Set on a ridge overlooking the rural landscape of the Oneida reservation near Green Bay, Holy Apostles' century-old limestone gothic church building once was the center of a lively compound. There had been a hospital. A school, operated by the Sisters of the Holy Nativity, once educated generations of young Oneidas, and a highly acclaimed Oneida brass band once practiced in the parish hall.

But now, while the congregation has continued to meet in the stone church, the parish house has not been used for some time and has fallen into disrepair.

The historic agreement in which the Oneida tribe agreed to underwrite extensive renovation of the parish house and make it available for use by the wider community concluded six years of negotiations between the tribe and the diocese, which held title to the property. Holy Apostles' wardens and congregation had wanted to restore the property to the Oneida community even before the Indian advocacy movement of the Quincentennial Year (1992) challenged churches to return property no longer used for the purposes for which they were conveyed.

"I am happy that I can bring this negotiation to a conclusion," said Bishop Russell E. Jacobus of the Diocese of Fond du Lac. "The agreement is simply returning the land back to the Oneida Nation so that the community center (Parish Hall) can be rebuilt and re-established and the history brought back."

Of the original 70-plus acres conveyed to the mission, approximately one half is still held by the diocese. In 1975 a 10-acre tract was restored to the Oneidas and is used as the Oneida Nation ballpark.