Essay On Boarding Schools For Native Americans

Boarding School Seasons by Brenda J. Child offers a look into the boarding school experiences of many American Indian students. Child favors unpublished sources such as letters to give an uncensored inside look into boarding school experiences. However, she also includes other sources such as school newspapers, oral history collections, photographs, biographies, United States government publications, and annual reports. Government boarding schools were created to help the American government gain more control over Indians and to push the Natives to adopt the white ways of life such as language, skill, and education. While integration was the ultimate objective, Child sets out “to show that even with the challenges of cultural assimilation and a devastating land policy, American Indian people, even children, placed limits on assimilation and also defined and shaped the boarding school era.” (viii) The boarding schools designed to tear American Indian families apart did not succeed in isolating children from their tribes, but created bonds and

In the 1870s, the U.S. government enacted a policy of assimilation of Native Americans, to Americanize them. Their goal was to turn them into white men. Schools were an important part of facilitating their goal. In 1879, Richard Henry Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School. It was the first school in which Native American children were culturally exposed to American ideology. The idea for the boarding school first came through treatment of Cheyenne warriors. In the 1860s, Americans were in the midst of a major western migration. Settlers were moving into the western region, pushing natives off lands, and in some cases, killing livestock. Warriors then took revenge on settlers and soldiers. General Sherman called for “the

In the late 1800s, Captain Richard Henry Pratt set out to “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”(A Plea to “Citizenize” Indians). The goal to erase Indian cultures and replace it with white American culture was sought to be achieved through boarding schools. Pratt was the creator of the first Indian boarding school: Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. These government-funded boarding schools would take children from their homes on reservation, often for them to not see their family again until they are grown(lecture). Pratt’s goal was to eliminate the Indian culture and incorporate the Indian people into the more “civilized”(Marr) American culture. This meant forcing the Indian students to speak only English and to give up all cultural traditions, religions, names and take up Christianity and American sounding names. Students were put into these boarding schools with little or no contact with their families for “eight to nine months of the year” (Marr). These schools operated with minimal funds, so the education was very insufficient. It was clear from the beginning; the actual goal was not to give quality education for the Native American children but to get rid of the Indian culture.

The boarding schools “educators suppressed tribal languages and cultural practices and sought to replace them with English, Christianity, athletic activities, and a ritual calendar intended to further patriotic citizenship” (Davis 20). Not only had the boarding schools taken away Native American culture, they were forcing the Native Americans into a different culture. The language was quite challenging to learn, especially to the older students. Learning a new language is much harder at an older age, and while being bilingual is vey helpful, these Native Americans were not allowed to speak their Native language. A Native American girl stated she, “remembers another little girl making a mistake in her use of English and being ridiculed for it. ... The English language was difficult to learn” (Vizenor 102). These Native Americans were learning a brand new language, being stripped from theirs, and they would be picked on if they did not have perfect English right away. Many chose to keep quite so they would not make mistakes.

Current American society is constantly affected by events from the past, but sometimes what society thinks is in the past is not so far behind. The way Native Americans were treated historically continually plays a part in current American society. Due to the racism and stereotypes carried throughout society the Native American cultural circle is constantly under fire.

How Boarding Schools Came To Be In American history, many things have affected Native American life and one of the biggest ones was boarding schools being created. Boarding schools may not seem like a very big deal but has affected a large part of Native American life. In the time prior to these schools being created, the American government's main issue was finding a place to move Native Americans to, since their homelands were now under the control of the government. Eventually, the tens of thousands of native americans were put onto designated lands called reservations and attended boarding schools.

Boarding schools were an issue that plagued both Native Americans and Inupiats. As conveyed by the writings of Mary Crow Dog and other Native American figures, we see how the effects of such schools were devastating to the native population. Boarding schools wiped Natives of their language and culture, teaching young children to be ashamed of what makes them unique. Pupils would return from their long stays at boarding schools, unable to speak to their own family, resulting in an isolation between themselves and their community. Over the years, generations would eventually lose most of what makes them native and, for the most part, their culture slowly faded away. It seems that the Inupiat people faced a similar fate. Inupiat children were forced to learn by Western standards, eventually forgetting their crucial survival skills, language, religion and other unique aspects of their culture. However, we are exposed to a more positive outlook towards boarding schools in the book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, where William Hensley says he enjoyed his boarding school

The Indian Civilization Fund Act of 1819 was the policy that sparked the idea of a Native American boarding school in the mind of General Pratt in 1875. These boarding schools had negative effects and positive

Through the years minority groups have long endured repression, poverty, and discrimination. A prime example of such a group is the Native Americans. They had their own land and fundamental way of life stripped from them almost unceasingly for decades. Although they were the real “natives” of the land, they were driven off by the government and coerced to assimilate to the white man’s way. Unfortunately, the persecution of the Natives was primarily based on the prevalent greed for money and power. This past impeded the Native American’s preservation of their culture as many were obviated of the right to speak the native language and dress in traditional clothing. Because of this cultural expulsion, among other

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”.

The Indian boarding schools had many goals; however, the primary goal was to completely obliterate the culture of indigenous people. This process was done through small goals. The Indians didn’t have many options. The only options that they were given were either to be killed or to assimilate into white civilization through Indian boarding schools. Richard Pratt, a former military man is a prime example of implementing Indian boarding schools. Indian children were taking from their home reservations to attend off-reservation boarding schools. The goals of the boarding school were to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Indians attending boarding schools were going through an assimilation process. The long-term goal was to leave with a white man’s image or with white ways. This was achieved through Indians being forced to cut their hair, wearing military uniforms, learning English, new religion (ex: Christianity). Through this process, many children forgot what their birth given name was. It was not uncommon for children to return back to their reservation with no recollection of who they are “" 'Your name's not Billy. Your name's 'TAH-rruhm,' " she told him (Bear, Charla). The white Anglo-Saxons goal was to erase anything associated with Indian culture because in their minds they viewed Indians as savages. The white people in charge of running these boarding schools went to extreme lengths to achieve erasure. These short-term goals were very traumatizing for the children

The entire goal of the boarding school was to take a massive amount of an entire Native American generation, and change their overall outlook on life by educating them in the western way instead of allowing them to grow up in their Native households. In the end you will be left with a mass amount of civilized Native Americans, and not many of their generation will be able to keep the Native American way of life alive because they do not know much about it. This is a very effective tactic used by the settlers. It serves to kidnap an entire generation of Native Americans, and turn them into westernized peoples, who can be easily placed infiltrate a Native American community.

In 1820, the United States made plans for a large scale system of boarding and day schools Noriega, 377). These schools were given the mission to, "instruct its students in 'letters, labor and mechanical arts, and morals and Christianity;' 'training many Indian leaders'" Noriega, 378). In the case of boarding schools, Native American children would be forcibly stripped from their homes as early as five years old. They would then live sequestered from their families and cultures until the age of seventeen or eighteen (Noriega, 381). <br><br>In 1886, it was decided, by the United States federal government that Native American tribal groups would no longer be treated as 'indigenous national governments.' The decision was made, not by the conjoint efforts of the Native American tribes and Congress; but, by the "powers that be" the United States Legal System. This self-ordained power allowed Congress to pass a variety of other laws, directed towards, assimilating, Native Americans, so that they would become a part of "mainstream white America" (Robbins, 90)<br><br>By this time the United States Government, had been funding over a dozen distinct agencies, to provide mandatory 'education' to all native children aged six through sixteen. Enrollment was enforced through leverage given by the 1887 General Allotment Act, which made Natives dependent on the Government for

In the article “Taking the Indian out of the Indian: U.S. Policies of Ethnocide through Education”, Donald Grinde informs us about how white European settlers and early Americans discriminated against Native Americans through the education system. I learned that the U.S built boarding schools specifically for Native Americans, tried to erase Native American history and traditions, and how they later on tried to “civilize” them by having them conform to their Eurocentric standards. A while back I had read on the internet that the U.S. had built many boarding schools specifically for Native American children. The things that I read seemed terrible and kind of surreal. Now that I have read Grinde’s article I can now confirm to myself that it was accurate.

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.