Land gift for school opens path to healing

By Mary Stamp

Chris Parkin and LaRae Wiley, who started the Spokane Salish School (SSOS) in 2010 as a language immersion preschool, envision the Salish language and culture being part of the fabric of civic life in Spokane.

Not only do they want people to learn the sounds, words and concepts, but they also hope people will know what camas taste like and how to live cultural values of respect, sharing and caring.

LaRae's vision of having a Salish village along the banks of the Spokane River is coming about through Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington (CCEW) giving SSOS two acres for a new school and community center. The land was once part of the Sisters of the Holy Names Convent grounds.

Adjacent are 30 acres protected by the Conservation Futures Program, where students can learn about wildlife and native plants.

The Salish School of Spokane (SSOS) now has about $3 million to raise beyond $7.7 million already committed toward the $10.7 million estimated cost for the new school. They expect to break ground in 2026 and open the new school in 2028.

How did it come about?

In 2021, Rob McCann of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington (CCEW) invited Salish School of Spokane to help integrate indigenous language and culture in Gonzaga Haven, a CCEW affordable housing complex where 60 percent of units would be for Native Americans.

While hesitant because of Catholic complicity in assimilation, SSOS leaders realized Rob was genuinely reaching out to bring healing.

Rob said CCEW wanted to help the Salish School of Spokane create a Salish village on the Spokane River related to River Haven, a planned 72-unit permanent supportive housing development.

In addition to the gift of land, CCEW has pledged that after the 15-year Low-Income Housing Tax Credit investor period, they will transfer the $23 million River Haven housing to the Salish School "at no cost for eternity."

"It's a tremendous act of restorative justice and is a national model for partnering with BIPOC groups," said LaRae. "We look at what it means to accept, forgive and heal. We need to open our hearts and minds and to readjust our thinking to bring healing."

The present campus has no room to grow. The new school will have eight classrooms and a community center for cultural events, recreation and art with a capacity for 125 kids, so SSOS can again include high schoolers.

LaRae, the co-founder and former executive director, and Chris, the principal, and are doing presentations on the project. LaRae, who continues as a board member and the elder linguist, is recovering from a brain injury from falls in 2018 and 2023.

Brea Desautel of the Colville Confederated Tribe and Kim Richards, an Eastern Washington University instructor, are now co-executive directors.

Chris and LaRae tell groups about revitalizing the Salish language and culture, which were repressed by systems that grew out of colonization. For example, only in 1983 did it become legal to teach Native American languages in schools.

Chris said there are 29 distinct Salish languages across Washington, Idaho, Montana, the Oregon Coast and Southern and Central British Columbia.

"All are critically endangered because of colonization, genocide, assimilation, tribal termination and white nationalism," he said, noting that half of the world's 7,000 languages are headed for extinction. "Language is the foundation of human cultural identity."

The last first speakers of Coeur d'Alene and Wenatchi languages have died. There are six surviving first speakers of the Kalispel language and three of Spokane.

For the Colville Okanogan language taught at the Salish School of Spokane, there are two surviving speakers among the Colville Confederated Tribes and about 25 in the Okanagan Valley of B.C.

"With the SSOS, there are now 50 new speakers. I am one," said Chris. "Our family has three generations of Salish speakers—us, our children and grandchildren."

Before COVID, the school also taught Spokane, Kalispel and Coeur d'Alene Salish languages but has focused on Colville-Okanagan Salish since then.

At the Salish School, one- and two-year-olds in day care, three- and four-year-olds in an ECEAP preschool, K-2, grades three to five and a sixth-to eighth-grade class are immersed in n̓səl̓̓xčin̓ (Colville Salish), creating new Salish first language speakers.

English-speaking parents are required to spend 60 hours to learn Salish.

The 27 adults teaching Salish language and culture learn while being mentored and supervised on the job.

The Salish School, a nonprofit K-8 private immersion school, teaches all subjects in n̓səl̓xčin̓—chemistry, math, music and history—plus art, piano, powwow drumming and dancing, cross country, soccer and equestrianism.

"We invest in the kids and their families. The kids also read at grade level in English," Chris said. "We want to open doors for them to follow their dreams—be it to go to Harvard or to live on the land," said Chris.

LaRae and Chris are also adapting the Salish Language Revitalization program they developed to teach Salish into an Indigenous Language Fluency Transfer System to teach other Indigenous languages. They are now working with more than 30 Indigenous communities in Alaska, California, New Mexico and Australia.

Chris, who grew up in Deer Park, met LaRae, who grew up near Cheney, at Western Washington University. They married in 1984 and completed studies by 1989 at Eastern Washington University—Chris in Spanish and LaRae in history, music and social studies.

Before starting SSOS, Chris taught high school and college Spanish at Bridgeport, Wenatchee, Spokane (Gonzaga Prep) and Wellpinit. LaRae taught social studies, history and music at middle and high schools in Bridgeport, Wenatchee and later in Chewelah.

In 1999, LaRae began performing music, publishing a CD as a singer-songwriter of contemporary Native American music—first in English and then in Salish.

She started volunteering to teach in the Spokane Tribe's language program. In 2003, she started an apprenticeship in Colville Salish. She and Chris began team teaching Salish in Wellpinit, creating Salish books and recordings with fluent Spokane elder Ann McCrea.

They then created lesson books at the Omak Language Office with Sarah Peterson, an elder fluent in Colville Salish. With their children in college, they moved to live with Sarah at her home in the Similkameen Valley in British Columbia north of Oroville. From 2005 to 2007, they learned Salish from her and began making Salish textbooks. They continued to work with her from 2007 to 2021 once they returned to Spokane to care for their granddaughter, Mireya, while their daughter, Dania, studied to be a nurse practitioner.

They spoke Salish to Mireya in their grandma-grandpa daycare, while Chris also helped the Kalispel Tribe develop a Salish curriculum.

"Kalispel and Colville Salish are related, but distinct languages, like Spanish and Italian," he said.

In October 2009, they started the nonprofit Salish School of Spokane, with Mireya, LaRae's sister's child and two other children. LaRae taught four girls from six months to four years old.

With fiscal sponsorship from the Potlatch Fund, they rented a house on Cedar St. and opened it as a childcare center in September 2010 with six children.

In 2012, with a three-year grant from the Administration for Native Americans for $250,000, they hired four full-time language trainees to teach 12 children and rented their current campus at 4125 N. Maple St. Chris became program coordinator.

They doubled enrollment to 24 in 2013, 50 in 2015 and 70 by the time COVID hit, when the school served children from age one to grade 12 and 49 employees. During COVID, they cut to 32 children from three years old to sixth grade, in part by graduating eighth graders to high schools. Older students came to language classes. Now there are 50 children in grades one to eight, 34 full- and part-time staff and 26 adults in the intensive Salish program.

Mireya graduated in 2025 from North Central High School.

While 60 percent of students are Southern Interior Salish, other families represent Native tribes from around the West who want to be part of the movement to revitalize indigenous languages.

SSOS has an extensive curriculum as LaRae and Chris continue to translate and publish books for reading, science, math and algebra in Salish. There are more than 700 Salish Word of the Day videos on YouTube and Facebook.

For information, call 325-2018 or email info@salishschoolofspokane.org.