The Role Of Education In Native American Culture

Identity in Native America is directly associated with culture and language. As a result, some of the issues today which are important in shaping the identity of modern Native Americans include: representations of native people by the media in sports and popular culture; how indigenous languages are being revitalized and maintained; and identity reclamation. The Native American lifestyle has changed significantly during the last half of the 20th century and that is because views on the Native people have drastically changed over time. They have had many hardships that have greatly impacted their culture over the past few centuries leading up to today.

Education has been a topic of controversy for many years now, and will continue to be for years to come. The modern American society is best defined by its education. A good part of the average person’s life is spent at school, going to school, and paying for school. However, even though education is so obviously very important, there are many groups in America that are getting shorted. The Native Americans are a key group that has struggled the most. The largest obstacle they face is lack of proper education. The standard educational practices being used for the instruction of Native American peoples are not effective. There are many pieces to this road-block, and many solutions. This can be rectified by having more culturally

Popular culture has shaped our understanding and perception of Native American culture. From Disney to literature has given the picture of the “blood thirsty savage” of the beginning colonialism in the new world to the “Noble Savage,” a trait painted by non-native the West (Landsman and Lewis 184) and this has influenced many non native perceptions. What many outsiders do not see is the struggle Native American have on day to day bases. Each generation of Native American is on a struggle to keep their traditions alive, but to function in school and ultimately graduate.

The modern American society is best defined by its education. The “American dream” is founded on going to school, getting a good job, and becoming successful. Ironically, the actual native peoples of this country are actually the least likely to attain this dream. The largest obstacle they face is lack of proper education. The standard educational practices being used for the instruction of Native American peoples is not effective. There are many pieces to this road-block, and many solutions. This can be rectified by having more culturally aware teachers and parents, and by teaching the general population more about the Native American cultures.

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).

Culture, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is stated as “The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that dpends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. The customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious or social group. The set shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution or organization. The set of values, conventions or social practices associated with a particular field, activity or societal characteristic.” Of these four definitions, I shall be focusing on the second one to discuss what makes up the culture of American Indians.The culture of the various tribes that made up the Native Americans is one of close knit families, highlyspiritual peoples and living together as one with the land they lived on. They believed in spirits, worshiping and honoring them. Some settled into single locations while others were nomadic, but all had a focus on working with the land around them. Because there are so many varying tribes that make up Native

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

The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) was formed in 2006. This government agency, previously known as the Office of Indian Education Programs, controls the direction and curriculum for all Indian schools as well as managing the funding. Three legislative acts developed the roles of the BIE. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and The Education Amendments Act of 1978. The only more recent legislation was The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. It is the mission of the BIE to provide quality education to all Native Americans by focusing on the spiritual, mental, physical, and cultural aspects of the individual within his or her family and tribal or village context (U.S. Dept.

Native societies and U.S. society, both benefitted from the Native’s changed opinion of education. American Indians did not see the importance in the formal, European American style of education. They viewed the learning of life skills to be more important than learning reading, writing, or arithmetic. However, after children returned to the reservations with skills that could be transferred to make reservation life easier and more productive, the Native opinion of education changed. They saw the benefit of education. Former students of boarding schools were more likely to want an education for their children. This spread throughout the tribes, until education became a normal part of reservation life.

Through the years minority groups have long endured repression, poverty, and discrimination. A prime example of such a group is the Native Americans. They had their own land and fundamental way of life stripped from them almost unceasingly for decades. Although they were the real “natives” of the land, they were driven off by the government and coerced to assimilate to the white man’s way. Unfortunately, the persecution of the Natives was primarily based on the prevalent greed for money and power. This past impeded the Native American’s preservation of their culture as many were obviated of the right to speak the native language and dress in traditional clothing. Because of this cultural expulsion, among other

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.

Various federal government policies or actions have significantly impacted the daily lives of Native Americans today. One such action is one taken by President Grant in 1865 that required all American Indian to be taken away from their homes and families and be placed in boarding schools. This action was meant to separate American Indians from their culture. However, this action has greatly impacted the climate of schools and the education system towards American Indians. Many American Indian children continue to be belittled in school as there is a cultural bias that has existed against this native community for years (Martinez, 2014). Because of this cultural bias, many Native Americans continue to drop out of schools today.

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain...There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.,” Chief Seattle Speech of 1854. The culture of the Native American people has been deteriorating ever since the Europeans arrived in the Americas. The impactful and immense loss of lifestyle that they faced is one that can never be recovered, what the United States has given them are generations of trauma and blatant suffering. However, the U.S. did not stop there, a multitude of cultures have been broken to help keep America pure. For instance, one of the most significant cultures that have been dismantled by the U.S. other than the Natives and their music were the languages and music of the African slaves. The apparent likeness of these two cultures in the ways in which their deconstruction impacted them is in more of an abundance, such as the dominating influence of the Christian religion and the gravely vital role of maintaining what little heritage they could through language. In contrast to this, the two groups had an opposing difference pertaining to how the Natives and slaves tried to compensate the immense loss of their culture through the generations.

Colin G. Calloway called the enforced European-style education of Native American children “the educational assault on Indian children” (383). Native American children were taken from their homes to be raised and educated in boarding schools in an effort to make them better members of European-American society. In 1880, the Board of Indian Commissioners wrote that “as a savage we cannot tolerate him [Native Americans] any more than as a half-civilized parasite, wanderer, or vagabond. The only alternative is to fit him by education for civilized life” (as cited in Calloway 383). The board did not hide their use of education as a way of destroying Native American culture and/or making it into

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.