Government Boarding School Case Study

People know about the conflict between the Indian's cultures and the settler's cultures during the westward expansion. Many people know the fierce battles and melees between the Indians and the settlers that were born from this cultural conflict. In spite of this, many people may not know about the systematic and deliberate means employed by the U.S. government to permanently rid their new land of the Indians who had lived their own lives peacefully for many years. There are many strong and chilling reasons and causes as to why the settlers started all of this perplexity in the first place. There was also a very strong and threatening impact on the Native Americans

The next day, at around 8AM, Brenda and Siegfried were already on I-80, on the way to the boarding school closest to their location, located within the Archdiocese of Omaha’s jurisdiction. St. Matthew was its name, and it was located about a few miles away from Omaha city limits. It was an all-boys boarding school, which took in boys from grades 7-12. Founded at the end of the Korean War, it was literally the only boarding school for miles.

Our Spirits Don’t Speak English provides insight into Indian boarding schools in the United States. Children of Indian tribes were mandated by the U.S. government to attend boarding schools. The purpose of these schools were to educate Indians in Western ways and language; thus, making these children “civilized.” From a trauma lens, children of these boarding schools could be viewed as victims. Indian children were forcibly removed from their homes and stripped of their Native American identity. Upon arrival, Indian children were forced to cut their hair in the Western fashion and were only allowed to wear European-style clothing.

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 act also funded boarding schools that designed to replace Native American culture with American culture within the school system. Family and cultural ties almost diminished because of the boarding schools. Children were even punished for speaking their native tongue or practicing anything dealing with Native American rituals

“America remembers what it did to its Black slaves and is sorry. America remembers what happened to the Jews in Europe and says "never again." America refuses to remember what it has done to Native people, it wants to forget the lies and the slaughter.” (“Reservation Boarding Schools”). From 1878- 1978, Native American children were taken from their families and homes to boarding schools that stripped them of everything they were raised to believe. Schools today do not teach much on the topic of Native American boarding schools, so students either know nothing about them or very little.

The Indian students would come in contact with American diseases, and resulted in passing away and were buried at the school. Others couldn’t “cope with the severe stress of separation from their families and

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”.

Indian Residential Schools were a network of boarding schools that were run conjunctionally by the Canadian government under the administration of the church. Residential schools were founded in 1867 and lasted up until the late 1990’s. There were about 130 schools with around 150,000 children. The purpose of these schools was to “kill the Indian in the child;” Indian children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in these boarding schools where they were forced to assimilate to the settler Canadian culture. Children were subject to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and as a result, mortality rates were as high as 35 to 60

The Indian Act was first proposed in 1876. The Indian Act was mainly used as a way for the federal government to control aspects of Native American lives. During the 1880’s the federal government told Indian families that if they wanted their children to have an education, it was to be done under them. These institutions would be known as Residential Schools. Residential Schools were not good for the Native Americans due to the education being taught was there to “take away” the Indian within the children, in other words, to make them act like they are not Indian.

Indian boarding schools were established in the late 1800s as a way to assimilate Native Americans into the dominate society. The idea is that if an American Indian can farm, communicate with English, and rid themselves of their traditional ways then they can seek the America dream. A great deal of policies have been passed to gear Native Americans towards non-Native ways, but the practice that had a profound effect was the focus on Native American children. Indian boarding schools were develop by the federal government and religious organizations to assimilate the Native American children into the dominate culture (Brave Heart, Yellow Horse, & DeBruyn,

Which meant that the government conntored the inidan life aspect such as their freedom,peace,mother land and their rights. in 1920 a law was discoverd that all Indian child must attend Residential schools and it was illegal if they attend a different school.And if parents didn't sent thier child to Residential school they were charged are jailed and the parents were never told were thier child were brought too or if they would came back home. In most cases students were not allowed to write a letter to thier family or have visit becase the Europeans golas was to makes the student's forget thier cuture and tradintianl, also spritital belifes.Which leaded parents to be depressed and addictaion of alcohol which led to death. When a family memebr diead the students weren't allowed to go to the funere

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.

Residential school refers to a boarding school system setup for Aboriginal children that operated from the 1880s until the late twentieth century education. This system was put in place to “kill the Indian in the child” ( Loppie et al., 2013, p. 6; Miller, 2004, p. 35) While at these boarding schools, they were not permitted to speak their language or practice anything of their culture. These schools were run by religious men and woman. The children were only educated up to grade five level, and only to become work as general laborers in factories or in the home. The focus of their education was to have them, assimilate into ‘Euro-Canadian’ culture, were ultimately this was cultural genocide. Moreover, reports of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse are well documented from survivors of residential schools. Moreover, there were cases of medical experiments being conducted on children. Many children died at residential schools due to maltreatment (FNHA, n.d., para. 22; UBC, 2004, para. 1-3).

In these boarding school’s students were devoted to their academic. Most classes consisted of fourteen boys and four girls. In addition to school boys were taught blacksmith, shoemaking, carpeting, and wagon making. Girls practice housekeeping and students were only allowed to speak English only. Students were punished if they spoke their own languages. The end goal was to eradicate all of the Indian culture, but “away from the disapproving eyes of the agents and teachers, they passed on their languages, histories, and traditional arts and medicine to younger generations.” (American A Concise History pg.490)The goal of the reforms was to use education as a tool to convert native Americans to Christianity, so agents and missionaries created off-reservation schools. These school were designed to integrate the Indian populations into general society through education. The choices seemed simple and stark to the reformer movement either kill all the Indians or assimilate them into white civilization through education.