Indian Boarding School Research Paper

American Indians underwent several different eras of federal policy, each one varying on where the government stands when dealing with American Indians. One era of federal policy in particular is referred to as the “Allotment and Assimilation Era”, characterized by the policies regarding allotment of land and the process adapting American Indian children to an Anglo-Saxon society. While both aspects of the Allotment and Assimilation Era had a tremendous effect on American Indians, forcibly enrolling American Indian children into boarding schools, in an effort to “civilise” them, not only had a greater impact on tribal communities at the time, but it also had the most significant lasting legacy.

During America’s Gilded Age, a drastic change in the west transpired. While many Native Americans had already endured profound changes, their freedom was about to become nearly extinct. It was a time in which they called the Second Industrial Revolution. There was an ample amount of natural resources and a development in the market for manufactured goods. Railroad companies flourished and alas, Indian removal was imperative in obtaining land for laborers and miners (Foner, Give Me Liberty!, p.477). As Americans wanted to take their land, they also wanted to strip Native Americans of their culture. The federal government strived in trying to civilize them, so The Bureau of Indian Affairs created boarding schools all over the west in the 1870s. These schools were for Native American children of all ages. The goal was complete “assimilation” (Mabalon, 9/9/15). The children were forced to dress differently, they gained new names, and they were isolated from any cultural influence. It was as though they were forced to give up tradition. It caused them to start having hatred towards their culture and to be ashamed of themselves. Native Americans lost their values and their freedom almost completely. They were essentially being taught how to be white capitalists. (Mabalon, 9/9/15). It wasn’t until after a long, painful struggle and resistance that they finally gained citizenship for all in 1924. Even then, there was still a great way to go until the Native Americans were able to

When the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) became enacted, it granted the Native American people many rights to themselves as well as their land. They were pretty much granted custody of their land (Imagine a custody battle over a child in which the land is the child and the Native peoples were the mother. The mother finally won.). Upon replacing the Dawes Act, the IRA authorizes for the Native Reservation to be given rightful

Indigenous peoples of the United States have been persecuted against since the birth of the nation. As years progressed, the Indians were stripped of their identity and exposed to the realities of the American lifestyle—a lifestyle that failed to coincide with the traditions and culture they possessed years prior to the influx of Americans into western territory. As desire for this territory increased due to economic ventures, and the ultimate desire to expand due to Manifest Destiny, measures needed to be taken to ensure the land was to be in full possession of the government. Thus, the Dawes Act was enacted in 1887, which allotted new lands to Indians in exchange for American citizenship. While its promise could be construed as a generous gesture by the government, the act in reality was nothing but a gesture; it was a burden. Therefore, the Dawes Act of 1887, along with other attempts of Indian assimilation, threatened family ties and culture, stripped them of sacred lands, and proved that citizenship came with a fatal denunciation of their culture.

Passed in 1887, the General Allotment Act, or the Dawes Act, allotted, or parceled, portions of Native American reservations into individual and family hands. The authority of allotment was granted to the President of the United States.

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

The Dawes Act was passed in 1890 with the intent of giving up tribal lands to individual Native Americans along with Americans that were not Native Americans. There was hope that this act would lead to the two groups being able to live side by

Yesterday’s class was not only alarming but new information. It took me a day to process the impact of the Indian boarding school. The American felt so entitled and obligated to convert and oppression others to conform. They displaced thousand and even possibly millions of native Americans from the homes, culture, trade, etc. in order to make them the American idea of successful. The Native American’s were self sustaining and independent and successful in their own way, American ideals and trade were not needed. Only after Americans had destroyed the land and forced Native American on reserves did they begin to need American skills and even then those American skills contradicted their culture. If they really just wanted to help and make Indians

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,

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, my grandmother, like thousands of other Native children, was forced into boarding school. Those boarding schools were established in the United States as a way to educate Native children according to Euro-American standards (CITATION). It is without a doubt that the assimilation of Native American children led to the loss of their culture and tradition, as they were required to change their appearance, forbidden to speak their native tongue, and forced to replace their traditional names with European-American names (CITATION).

However, boarding schools steadily increased in enrollment from 3,598 to 21,568 students due to parents hoping education would offer a better life for their children, students wanting to escape reservations, and those who went unknowingly. With the increase in Indian student population came an increase in spending to $2,936,080 in 1900. Despite these numbers, the assimilation-through-education experiment failed to destroy Indian culture. Instead of returning as agents of cultural change, Indian children returned with valuable knowledge of the white world and a new sense of collective Indian identity creating a stronger Indian civil rights front. This was because the boarding schools served as a mechanism to bring Indians of different tribes together for the first time in many cases. Other Indian students left boarding school with no cultural identity; they were too white for Indian communities and too Indian for American communities. These students had little success once they left boarding

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

The Mount Pleasant Center opened in 1891 when the United States Congress directed than an Indian Industrial School be established in Isabella County. In the late 1800s, the U.S. government established many boarding schools throughout the country with the intention of assimilate Native Americans into the predominant European American culture with education as a secondary goal. The Methodist Episcopal Church was another big part of boarding schools as they were contracted with the Federal Government until the late 1880s to assimilate Native children to white culture. The assimilation of Native Americans had begun in the late nineteenth century with the idea of stamping out the culture of the Native Americans. At this point, small parcels of unproductive land were set up as reservations for help rid the public of the “Indian Problem,” which was often addressed through federal policies and acts of violence. Religion, namely that of Christianity, was a key foundation for Native resistance as accepting Christianity and becoming “civilized” meant the discontinuance of traditional ceremonial practices. Adopting this “civilized life” meant that the Native Americans could become American citizens. Attending a boarding school was thought to “civilize” Native children “by eradicating their own language and culture and substituting the English language.” The attitudes at these boarding schools changed in response to political and cultural trends in the United States, but the initial

Upon the arrival of the Europeans in the US and their attempt to overtake land from the Native Americans, various movements took place. One of them was the establishment of boarding schools for Native American children’s. They claimed to offer modern English education for better future, as opposed to their cultural schools. Children were forcefully taken away from their families to boarding schools where they were forced to cut their hair, pick an English name and even forced to convert to Christianity. Since, Native children were not familiar with English language; they had trouble understanding the norms and what was being taught. Children often showed resistance when they were asked to give up their local practices and lifestyle. Some practices instilled fear American Indian children as they had deep meanings in their culture. Like cutting hair was a symbol for death and mourning. Some