Indian Boarding Schools Essay

The first residential school opened in Canada in the 1830’s and closed in 1996, these schools were made for indigenous children. The children did not leave at free will they were “forcibly taken from families — sometimes at gunpoint — and flew them to remote locations they could not escape — sometimes in tiny handcuffs — where they were submitted to a program” (Staniforth). When the children arrived they were stripped of their clothing, cut their hair and given European clothes and the “European look”. They were not allowed to speak in their own language or practice their traditions, aboriginal culture and spiritual beliefs were seen as unequal and thought that the children should learn the ways of Euro-Canadians and only speak English or French. They forced these children to practice a catholic faith and attend church, if these rules amongst many others were not obeyed they would experience severe consequences. The consequences ranged anywhere from being physically, mentally, emotionally and even sexually abused. The schools were ridden with pests, illness, lice and were overpopulated, children were even experimented on to see the effects of malnutrition. The lack of funding for these systems caused them to use children as labourers and said that it “built character”(Staniforth). The education was very limited and the girls were

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.

After Davin had wrote his report on “Industrial Schools for Indians and half breeds” (Hanson, 2006) children were forced to attend these schools. Parents who resigned the participation of there children were sent to prison. This was the beginning of the “sixties scoop” where children were literally scooped up from their aboriginal villages and placed in a residential school. Life in residential schools was not as easy as children thought, students were to dispose of all origins and culture, and become catholic. The schools way of eliminating culture was to cut the hair of all students and to dress in a uniform. Children were also not allowed to speak in any languages besides English unless they wanted to be severely punished. Students would learn jobs that were typically sexist for woman and men; woman being taught domestic, household jobs, while men were taught the trades regardless of what they wanted to become (Hanson, 2006). Students would only reach an education of grade 5 before they were released back to their homes, leaving most students traumatized only to enter another educational

Indian Residential Schools has been a major contributing factor towards the mistreatment and decreased standard of living for the First Nations people of Canada. Originally founded in the 1840’s and the last to close in 1996 the goal of Residential Schools was to assimilate First Nations people into Canadian society. The assimilation process consisted of the forced attendance (by Canadian law) for every Native, Metis, and Inuit child to attend the “boarding” schools. Residential Schools were ran by Christian, Catholic, and Anglican churches, the schools were also funded by the Canadian government’s Indian Affairs. Treatment students received while attending the schools was unbearable for the young children. After being taken and

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).

These schools were created for the reason of teaching Aboriginal children the Canadian language and culture in the hope that they will become assimilated into it. Every Aboriginal child under the age of 16 will be forcibly removed from their homes and put into residential schools. Often if children spoke their own language or practiced their own cultural traditions they were punished physically and verbally. They would be abused and many students would deal with emotional damage for the rest of their lives. The death and disease factors also had a large impact on the Indian children, at least 4000 Aboriginal children died from tuberculosis and the spanish influenza. By the 1940s and 1950s, residential schools have restricted nutrients and dental care for multiple students creating an unhealthy lifestyle (The Canadian Encyclopedia "Residential Schools."The Canadian Encyclopedia. October 10, 2012. Accessed July 7,

The Indian Residential Schools were boarding schools that forced students to leave their families and homes in order to go and continue their education elsewhere. They were formulated with the partnership of the United Churches along with the Government. (Laing,2013:53). The Government and the Churches put these schools in place in order to separate the children from their family and cultural customs and values. The goal was to isolate the children from what they are used to in order to “kill the Indian in the child” and have them pick up the new Euro- Canadian culture and values along with the English Language. In addition to being taken away from their families, the

From 1863 to 1996, many Indigenous child were forced to attend residential schools, where they were separated from their families and culture and experienced neglect, abuse and trauma (Bombay, Matheson, & Anisman, 2011, p.367). This essay will explore the history and purpose of residential schools, how it impacted Indigenous children and families at the time of the events, and how to this day it still affects them. Indigenous Residential Schools impacted the First Peoples of Canada physically, mentally and emotionally which resulted in their loss of identity, culture, spirituality, and traditions in the past and present.

After the holiday was over, it was hard for her to get back to the institutional life in residential school. There was strict discipline at the school. For example, there were certain times of the day when students had to adhere to the rules of the bell: to get up in the morning, to go to chapel, to go to eat, to go to the classroom, to signify playtime and recess, and to go to bed. In addition, each of the students had chores to do. Everyone had to clean the school. When the principal came to the school, the students had to know how to set a table properly with damask table cloths. When the students did not follow the rules, they would be punished brutally. Some of the penalties led students in the school to dead. There were also a lot of health problems in residential schools due to the large number of students. (2011, 2)

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.

Indian Horse, written by Richard Wagamese tells the life story of a man named Saul Indian Horse and he describes his many years at residential school and how they affected his life. From the 1870s to the mid-1990s Indian residential schools were put in place to “civilize” the Indian child; the primary goal of residential schools was to take the Indian out of the child. Richard Wagamese’s, Indian Horse sheds light on the different horrors that aboriginal children were forced to endure while at residential school. Aboriginal children were severely physically abused, psychologically abused, and girls as well as boys were forced to perform physically demanding and often dangerous tasks during their time at these institutions

In 1930, 39% of Native American youth attended boarding school (Manson, Beals, Dick, and Duclos, 1989). One alarming piece of evidence, is that there were actually more Native American boarding schools than reported because not all of them received federal funding. These boarding schools were often filled with students who had been taken against their will (Russel, Barsh, and Trosper, 1995). People would often take Native American children out of their homes because they felt like the children were being abused or neglected because they were not being taught they white way of living (Yuan, Duran, Walters, Pearson, & Evan-Campbell, 2014). Many of these children were taken out of their homes without sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect.

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

In the government boarding schools, the American Indian children were children were not treated well. They were not feed with good meals that were having the nutrients that they needed for their good health and physical wellbeing. In addition to that they were treated in a military style. If one students did something “wrong” they were given hard punishment that were sometime harming them physically and mentally. In the afternoon, their classes were on vocational training classes. One could imaging the trauma a child who is subjected to those harmful treatments can have in his/her life.

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.