Graduation Speech : Indian Boarding School

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

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 Child favors unpublished sources such as letters to give an uncensored inside look into boarding school experiences.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 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.

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).

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 first government boarding school for Indians was located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and established in 1879. Founded by Richard Pratt, a former frontier Indian fighter, the school was an attempt at assimilating their culture to that of the white man’s, rather than killing

“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 Native American Indian Boarding School was an institution designed by missionaries to "assimilate" the Native American children to adopt American culture. Assimilation was intended to strip young children of everything they knew of their own culture and replace it with what the white man saw fit ultimately because they were threatened by the native people they had suppressed. As far as being successful, the schools did separate the children from their parents and tribe therefore weakening the tribes legacy for the future. The objective was to enfeeble the natives into submission. Concurrently, the public was told the children were being properly educated. Studies in English, business economics and etiquette was the publicized curriculum.

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,

The Boarding Schools were initially settled by religious missionaries in an attempt to provide education to Indians, particularly in the west, where there were lighter populations and lacking resources. The American Government paid religious groups, typically Christians, to implement education to Indian youths on reservations. In 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the first official Indian boarding school in America, was established. This school began an effort now considered a cultural genocide, where young indians were removed from their tribes and families, and were inserted into boarding schools for a minimum of three years.

Instead they were filled with loneliness, disrespect and pain. These schools were founded on the premise of “education” by an Army office named Richard Pratt. Richard Pratt is known for saying "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one," Pratt said. "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." (Bear, 2008) “The intent of these boarding schools were to erase and replace, to completely transform people, inside and out. "Language, religion, family structure, economics, the way you make a living, the way you express emotion, everything," (Lomawaima, 2008) These people were forced to become everything the white people wanted them to be. They were forced to forget. Their hair was cut, they were bathed in kerosene, they were beaten, they were stripped of their Native names, they were treated as if they didn’t matter. They were treated as if they weren’t human. But for many, federal schools were the only option as public school were closed to Natives due to racism. In these schools, the curriculum focused mostly on carpentry for boys and housekeeping for

The purpose of Indian boarding schools like Carlisle Indian Industrial School claimed to take young Native American children and educate them and transform them into proper citizens of the United States. However, the reality falls far short of the expectations of the wealthy reformers who fought for the schools to improve the lives of the Native Americans. Filled with good intention the Indian boarding schools of the 19th century failed more students than it helped. Graduates from boarding schools suffered prejudice from white Americans and were ill suited for life on the reservations after years living in a different culture. Lost between two worlds neither, Indian nor American the students of the Indian boarding schools were victims of the good intentions

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.

High school is supposed to be the place where you have fun and a time in your life you’re supposed to enjoy. Movies often trick you into believing that high school is an amazing time in your life and there is nothing but parties and fun. In Bring it on, they portrayed the fun and exciting part of high school cheer-leading, however they intentionally leave out the tough times high school students’ face in school and in their practices. In other popular movies, such as High School Musical the students have no pressures other than the next basketball game. In reality, this doesn 't happen. The constant pressure is affected by the grade level you are in. In high school, students can be classified based on the pressures that are faced in each grade level into the categories of freshman, sophomores/juniors, and seniors. I am here to help you make your high school experience less stressful.

English class seemed to be the most dreadful to take within school. Writing essays for most of my grade in a class is not what I was looking forward too. When I entered college I knew that it would be one of many challenging classes I would have to take. Starting from the lowest English class to moving on up, the writing assignments became longer and more thought out. The time came when I got into this class that I knew more work was going to have to be put into essays and thus brought out what I had not seen before in my work progress.