Captain Pratt's School Summary

The schools were overcrowded, students were malnourished, and “the federal government neglected to provide Native children with even the most basic necessities in the schools where they resided.” (32) This chapter also discussed the assimilation process. “Government schools taught students to be ashamed of their names, their tribal languages, and even family surnames derived from tribal language.” (29) The next chapters speak of the homesickness many students felt because of the assimilation policies keeping children from returning home on breaks and of the diseases that spread rapidly throughout the schools such as tuberculosis and trachoma. Through the use of letters between students and parents, Child paints a portrait of the emotional hardships families faced from being separated with little

“There’s a distinction between an education and school. Education is what Native people have been doing for their children since the beginning of time. School has been what has been imposed on people from outside” (Garland). This thought from Garland’s article “In remote Alaskan villages, teachers struggle to make school meaningful,” eloquently lays out how many Alaska natives regard the operation of collecting knowledge. Remarkably, Garland’s notion also offers great insight as to why the U.S. education system seems to fail Alaska natives altogether. It is this “distinction” (Garland), between education and school that seems to actively disconnect the ancestral cultural values of Alaska natives from the mainstream education system in this country. An impression of this broken connection appears in Kleinfeld’s The Teacher who Came to Rivertown. Here, Bob Perthall and his family move to Rivertown, Alaska, a remote village of 75 people. Accepting the position of teacher/principal, Perthall’s good intentions collide with subsistence, alcoholism, hardship, long-held customs and personal crisis. At schools end, the people of Rivertown finds no surprise in Perthall’s ending defeat. However, what really concerns us about the “teaching case,” is Perthall’s lack of preparedness for the students and culture of Rivertown, ultimately continuing the cycle of an ineffective school.

Pratt then turned his attention to native children. He saw the example of the Hampton Institute for Negroes, which taught children industrial skills. He concluded that to transform natives, one had to start with the children. In 1879, the government consented to Pratt’s request. He went to Dakota Territory to find students for his new Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Pratt determined the only way to change them was "assimilation through total immersion." The school was established in an abandoned army post. The children wore military uniforms and cut their hair. In the first few years, the children suffered epidemics of cholera, influenza, and tuberculosis. As a result, they made a cemetery on the school.

Taking away Native American children’s language caused many challenges at home. Many children were confused, homesick, as well as resentful. Many of the children attending these boarding schools did not understand why their parents sent them to boarding school. For many it was because family members were, “sick then. He don’t want to take care of a little one so he pushed me to school” (Burich 5). Many children would not understand why they were being sent to these schools, especially since the schools were changing their worlds

In 1876, residential schools became an obligation to every Indian kid. They were forced to say their last goodbyes to their families. Over 150 000 students were forced to attend these poorly built and equipped

Indian Boarding Schools, which began in the late 1870’s, were started to transition Native Americans from their traditional cultures and transform them into American citizens. By the 1900’s, there were 147 day schools on and off reservations in the Great Plains. Day schools were first built before the government decided that the children needed to be removed from their Indian lifestyle in order for total assimilation to occur. The first off-reservation boarding schools appeared around 1884 in the Great Plains. By 1890, 25 federal off-reservation and 43 on-reservation boarding schools were operating nationally. Many Indian families chose to send their children to boarding schools because there were no other schools available. After $45 million had been spent and 20,000 Indian children had been put into schools, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Jones put emphasis on the importance of utilizing existing boarding and day schools more effectively. Jones declared that the Indian children had shown little evidence of assimilation and introduced the idea for a hierarchy of schools in order to “provide the greatest opportunity for assimilating the best students with the greatest potential for surviving in the white world” (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, par.8).

The Native American children were educated at Carlisle in order to make a “better” transition into society for post-bellum America. Carlisle was located in Pennsylvania and was a reform school for Native American children. “Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and moves them out into your communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have (Paul Prucha 68).” The Native Americans didn’t have the liberty to live on their land as they were before the whites arrived; “By 1979, my people were no longer free, but were confined on reservations under the rule of agents (Standing Bear 69-71).” The Native American children such as Luther Standing Bear were taken from their families, land, and tradition to be reformed into a civilized American. Luther Standing Bear recalls his time at Carlisle; “The task before us was not only that of accepting new ideas and adopting new manners, but physical changes and discomfort had to be borne un complainingly until the body adjusted itself to new tastes and habits (Standing Bear 69-71).” The Native American children’s names, attire, religion, and diet were changed to that of the white Americans. “…the change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness was too much, and in three years nearly one half of the children from the Plains were dead… (Standing Bear

In the Indigenous community, when the community is faced with a trauma, it takes seven generations for the community to heal (Trimble, 2015). People may underestimate how oppressed and how much suffering the Indigenous communities had to struggle with, and continue to struggle with these issues today. We may underestimate how severe the situation is because many of us were not taught much about the impact of colonization on the Indigenous communities in school. There are many myths people may have concerning Indigenous life experiences, particularly schooling. To address these myths, I would begin by giving a brief history of residential schools. I would then analyze how residential schools have impacted the indigenous community and how they continue to affect them today. I would also mention the current issues children on reserves are facing today regarding school. Lastly, I would mention some of the progress that has been made. I will use the work of Sefa Dei to demonstrate the importance of community in education regarding the Indigenous people.

Since learning about the Indian boarding schools, I have mixed feelings about Richard Henry Pratt and his intentions of changing Native American lives. Although in some ways Pratt changed White peoples view of Native Americans for the better, he was not taking the feelings of Native Americans into consideration. It seems that Pratt thought he was doing them justice by teaching them English and how to work as “civilized” people. He had hopes of helping Native Americans by training them to achieve higher and better things in life. Sadly this was not the case instead he was forcing them to reluctantly change themselves. Beginning in 1875, numerous Native Americans were sent away from their homelands to live in exile at Fort Marion in St. Augustine,

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

Soon children were removed from their homes and placed in Indian Boarding Schools some of which were off the reservations. The goals of the boarding schools, which were run by the religious orders that were being paid by the government for the purpose of assimilating the young Indian population and desecrating their culture, were to Christianize Native Americans in hopes that they would accept our capitalistic system. “Kill the Indian…Save the Man”.

After reading Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools by Ward Churchill, I have come to realization of some matters. First of all, while your goal might had been to civilize the Indians by teaching them English, manners, and change their whole appearance, the outcome was totally different. Your goal might have been successful to you, in the end you got what you wanted: to kill the Indian and Save the Man. But also, you stole those kid’s identities by taking them away from their families. You traumatized them, and making them go through so many forms of abuse. “Kill the Indian, save the men” or like U.S. Indian Commissioner William A. Jones said in 1903, the goal was to “exterminate the

Throughout the history of the Native Americans, no one has suffered more because of the white man’s atrocity than the children of the Indians. Most of them, if not all, were taken away from their reservation to live in a boarding school. Whether they liked it or not, they were to follow and obey the school’s rules and regulations even though they deemed it unforgiving. In her poem, “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways,” Louise Erdrich meticulously depicted the sufferings of the Indian children at a boarding school created just for them to better assimilate with the white man’s culture. The speaker of the poem and the imagery used to describe this wonderful heart-warming literature made it possible to convey the real existence of the pain

Captain Richard Henry, who was famous for found the Carlisle Industrial Indian School. This school was the Boarding School for the Indian students, and intent to changed the Native students value and culture as the White American way. Although he knew this action would destroy the Indian culture, he still insisted his motto “ Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Actually, this boarding school did not tech too much the White Americans culture. Instead, the school taught more hard work, which intended to cultivate more cheap labor for the White people. Base on the lecture we learnt, these schools taught the men mechanical and farming skills and the women homemaking and domestic skills (Davis lecture 2.3) Obviously, the essence of Carlisle Industrial

Children were taken away from their homes and told everything they knew was wrong. They were sent to boarding schools to change their culture. These boarding schools were run by the United States government. The government's goal was to civilize Native Americans. They sent children to these schools against their will. Native American children were educated like Americans and they had to change their native ways to be more like whites (Cayton 266). Teachers abused their students and beat their native ways out of them. They were not allowed to see their families so they would try to escape, but their attempts were unsuccessful. The United States government’s Boarding Schools of the mid-late 1800s irreparably changed Native American culture.