St. Bonaventure Indian School
Catholic school in New Mexico, United States
St. Bonaventure Indian School is a Catholic K-8 school in Thoreau, New Mexico. It is under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gallup, and from 1986 to 2001 had high school classes.
It is also known as Kateri Tekakwitha Academy, or Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Academy.
History
Douglas McNeill (died 2018), a member of the Catholic clergy active in the area in the 1970s, saw an image of a child in poverty in the region and felt inspiration to establish a school.
St. Bonaventure School started as a preschool in 1980. McNeill received assistance from the Gallup Head Start organization, which arranged school meals. An elementary and high school were added, with the former receiving accreditation in 1985 and the latter added in 1986, with accreditation for that coming the following year. From 1986 to 1989 enrollment increased by almost 200%.
The public source identifies “St. Bonaventure Indian School” as catholic school in New Mexico, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bonaventure, Indian and School.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110612763. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2001, 2018 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “St. Bonaventure Indian School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.