Native American Boarding Schools

With waves of the American population moving westward, government attempted to assimilate, or integrate, Native Americans into American society. Their goal was for Native Americans to live and behave like white Americans, and for them “to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community” (Doc 9). Children were sent to boarding schools where they were given new clothes and haircuts, and taught English, Christianity, and American ways of life (Doc 13). While many Americans believed this would be good for the Native Americans, it effectively destroyed their culture and identity. By forcing them to learn English, they were unable to communicate the concepts, beliefs, and ideas their languages were based on. Americans did not consider the fact that English could not substitute for Native languages, because they are based on different realities, histories, and cultures (Doc 3). Assimilation turned the lives of Native Americans upside-down, forcing them to give up ideas and beliefs they had been practicing their whole lives, without any say. Slowly, Native American culture and lifestyle faded until it was nearly

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.

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).

During Westward Expansion, white settlers saw the Indians as a hindrance to civilization. Therefore the mindset of settlers were to convert Native Americans into white culture. To begin assimilating, the government should, “cease to recognize the Indians as political bodies,” adult male Indians should become a citizen to the government, Indian children shall be taken away and “be trained in industrial schools,” and Indians should be, “placed in the same position before the law.” Assimilating Indians wasn’t a simple teaching of a new culture instead, it was brutal. The boarding schools were merciless towards the Indians, mainly because they wanted to force Indians to drop their culture. Native Americans were obligated to change and lost their

The Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, PA became the first boarding school for Native American children in 1879. Here deculturalization methods were employed. From this methodology and perspective, the patronizing term cultural deprivation has come to imply that a group is without culture altogether (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 176). One of the perceived deficiencies of Native Americans was their propensity to share which caused the European Americans to label them as socialists which was anathema to the dominant group’s philosophy. Richard Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle School, sought to instill individualism and self responsibility in order to break Indians from a socialist style of sharing.

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

By the late 1800s, most of them lived in reservation camps being forced to change their way of life. Nomadic by nature, Native Americans also lost their means of survival as hunting grounds were severely restricted. Additionally, plots of land that were allocated to them from the Dawes Act were not fertile enough for farming. Native Americans also lacked the knowledge and resources needed to properly irrigate the land for produce. They were also forced to become more civilized (Americanized) by learning English and abandoning their religion and ancient practices. In addition, young children were taken away from their homes and sent to “schools” often forced to dress in American clothes (Life on the

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

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” That was the motto of government established boarding schools for Native Americans on the western frontier. These schools were a cruel and dehumanizing attempt at assimilating native culture with that of the European white man. By enrolling Native American children in these schools, they were susceptible to new diseases brought from Europe, such as tuberculosis and the flu, which the natives had never encountered and resulted fatal. Little Indian boys who prided themselves in their long hair were forced to cut it off and exchanged their given names for “white” names. Since Indian children were forced to speak only English, some schools went so far as to punish whomever spoke in their native language. These schools had good intentions, they offered nursing, education, and more opportunities to grow in the new society than the Indians would otherwise ever receive, yet that gift was not requested by the native peoples. By killing off Native Americans, making them resign aspects of their culture, and forcing them to switch to the European language, government boarding schools completely replaced the culture of Indians by means of cruel and dehumanizing procedures.

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.

Indian Boarding schools were the best way to convert people and their beliefs that potentially disrupted the way of the manifest destiny. These schools would take young Indian children and assimilate them to the Anglo American way of life. The highest priority of these Indian schools were to teach the Indian youth reading and writing the Mathematics, English language, history, science, and the arts hopefully encouraging the “self-directing power of thought.” Religious education and training in Christianity was taught. Political structure, institutions, and principles of a democratic society were part of the citizenship training. All this effort was to eliminate all trace of the Indian culture.

selves, basically not allowed to do anything that is not of the Westerner way of life and if they didn’t they would be severely punished. Knowing that native people connect a lot with nature and spirits. We could see that the boarding school social construction came between them so that they couldn’t continue to connect with those two important aspects of their culture. Especially talking with the spirits because of what? The spirits couldn’t understand English. We can see that the boarding school really took a toll on these innocent native people. But, yet, Pratt stated that the boarding school was built and organized to help the natives. But was it really build to help them? Or was it just built to create an unbalance between whites and natives?

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.

In the late nineteenth century, the effort to ‘civilize” native Americans entailed removing children from their families and placing them in boarding schools where they were forced to adopt European culture. They were forbidden to speak their traditional language and were forced to abandon their religious beliefs in favour of Christianity.

Efforts to 'civilize' the Native Americans through the use of schooling began in 1819 and continued until the late 1920's. The first schools were the result of Christian missionaries' efforts to gain converts. English was the only language spoken in these schools, and the Native American culture was looked upon poorly. Some earlier efforts were made to adapt to Native American culture, including the development of a written Cherokee language. This knowledge, however, was used to impart Anglo-Protestant values and religion (Spring 18-21).