The Indian Boarding Schools

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 Child favors unpublished sources such as letters to give an uncensored inside look into boarding school experiences.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

Pratt then turned his attention to native children. He saw the example of the Hampton Institute for Negroes, which taught children industrial skills. He concluded that to transform natives, one had to start with the children. In 1879, the government consented to Pratt’s request. He went to Dakota Territory to find students for his new Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Pratt determined the only way to change them was "assimilation through total immersion." The school was established in an abandoned army post. The children wore military uniforms and cut their hair. In the first few years, the children suffered epidemics of cholera, influenza, and tuberculosis. As a result, they made a cemetery on the school.

Taking away Native American children’s language caused many challenges at home. Many children were confused, homesick, as well as resentful. Many of the children attending these boarding schools did not understand why their parents sent them to boarding school. For many it was because family members were, “sick then. He don’t want to take care of a little one so he pushed me to school” (Burich 5). Many children would not understand why they were being sent to these schools, especially since the schools were changing their worlds

The purpose of residential schools enforced from 1920 to 1996 under the Indian act was to “kill the Indian in the child” (Hanson, 2006). The system was brought into North American by Europeans and Catholics and was majorly run by nuns. The Europeans believed that aboriginal people needed to become more civilized, influencing them with their culture. This is when Nicholas Flood Davin, who was studying industrial school systems in the United states at the time recommended that Canadian aboriginal children needed to be taught through “aggressive civilization” (Hanson, 2006). Davin believed that to take the Indian out of the child it had to

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).

The Native American children were educated at Carlisle in order to make a “better” transition into society for post-bellum America. Carlisle was located in Pennsylvania and was a reform school for Native American children. “Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and moves them out into your communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have (Paul Prucha 68).” The Native Americans didn’t have the liberty to live on their land as they were before the whites arrived; “By 1979, my people were no longer free, but were confined on reservations under the rule of agents (Standing Bear 69-71).” The Native American children such as Luther Standing Bear were taken from their families, land, and tradition to be reformed into a civilized American. Luther Standing Bear recalls his time at Carlisle; “The task before us was not only that of accepting new ideas and adopting new manners, but physical changes and discomfort had to be borne un complainingly until the body adjusted itself to new tastes and habits (Standing Bear 69-71).” The Native American children’s names, attire, religion, and diet were changed to that of the white Americans. “…the change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness was too much, and in three years nearly one half of the children from the Plains were dead… (Standing Bear

First Nation children were forced to attend Indian residential schools dating back to the 1870’s and spanned many decades with the final school closing in 1996. These educational institutions were government funded and church run by Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, United and Anglican denominations (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, n.d.). There were 139 schools where more than 150 000 First Nations children attended. The children of these schools were mentally, physically, emotionally and sexually abused. There were a multitude of accounts of being strapped and needles piercing children’s tongues for speaking their native language. After a sentencing in British Columbia court of a supervisor of a residential school, Supreme Court Justice Hogarth called Arthur Plint a “sexual terrorist” it was also noted that “as far as the victims were concerned, the Indian residential school system was nothing more than institutionalized pedophilia” (First Nations Studies Program, 2009). In 1920 it became mandatory for every Native child to attend a residential school. It was illegal to attend any other main stream educational facility (First Nations Studies Program, 2009). The abuse that the victims suffered during their attendance at the residential school far from concluded at that point. It is evident that it has had an intergenerational effect culturally and psychologically and has caused an incredible loss of family dynamic.

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

At Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, Lt. Richard Pratt worked closely with Indians and had a certain respect for the Indians. Pratt advocated to General Sheridan to reform the Indians. Pratt had them moved by train to St. Augustine, Florida. At Ft. Marion, Florida the Indians underwent an experiment to change them. The Indians were dressed in army uniforms and had their hair cut to resemble the white man’s image. The purpose was to assimilate the Indians and wash out an resemblance of native culture. Pratt recruited local volunteers to help teach the IndianIndian prisoners english. They were taught to work and serve the community. Pratt believed education would save the Indians during a time of industrialization. He enrolled the Indians in a black school.

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”.

After reading Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools by Ward Churchill, I have come to realization of some matters. First of all, while your goal might had been to civilize the Indians by teaching them English, manners, and change their whole appearance, the outcome was totally different. Your goal might have been successful to you, in the end you got what you wanted: to kill the Indian and Save the Man. But also, you stole those kid’s identities by taking them away from their families. You traumatized them, and making them go through so many forms of abuse. “Kill the Indian, save the men” or like U.S. Indian Commissioner William A. Jones said in 1903, the goal was to “exterminate the

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

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 Louise Erdrich’s Famous work of poetry, “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways”, shows how the context of the work and the author play major roles in understanding the poem from different aspects and angles to see between the lines of what we really call life. The Author Louise Erdrich is known for being one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and her writing on Native American literature is seen throughout the world. Through word decision, repetition, and symbolism bringing out her incredibly fierce tones, the author recalls the hurt and enduring impacts of Native American children being forced to attend Indian boarding schools. These schools emerged of a post-Civil War America in an effort to educate and also “civilize” the American Indian people.