Educating the Indian, Part 1 (L19) Residential Boarding Schools

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Educating the Indian, Part 1 (L19)Residential
Boarding Schools

• Dr. Anton Treuer
• Bemidji State University

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Solving the Indian Problem, 1880s

• Annihilate (war)
• Concentrate away from white (removal
  reservations)
• Break up tribal control of remaining land
  (allotment)
• Cultural assimilation (mission work education)

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Indian Education Debate

• John Oberly (BIA) gradual indoctrination, day
  schools for young kids, residential boarding
  schools for older kids
• Captain Richard Henry Pratt (POW camp for Apache
  at St. Augustine, FL) immediate assimilation,
  kill the Indian in order to save the man,
  immediate residential boarding schools for all
  Indian youth

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Our goal is to kill the Indian in order to save
the man. Pratt
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Pratt with Apache prisoners at St. Augustine,
Florida
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Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879-1918

• Not about GIVING an education
• About TAKING AWAY tribal culture
• Carlisle military barracks converted to school
• School was industrial
• Boys dug ditches, performed manual labor half
  day, girls sewed, cleaned, cooked half day

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Carlisle
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First US Congressional Committee on Indian
Affairs, 1818

• In the present state of our country, one of two
  things seems to be necessary either that those
  sons of the forest should be moralized or
  exterminated.

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T.J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
1889-1893

• I do not believe that Indians people who for
  the most part speak no English, live in squalor
  and degradation, make little progress from year
  to year, who are a perpetual source of expense to
  the government and a constant menace to thousands
  of their white neighbors, a hindrance to
  civilization and a clog on our progress have any
  right to forcibly keep their children out of
  school to grow up like themselves, a race of
  barbarians and semi-savages.

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Physical Make-over
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Conformity

• Hair cut
• Traditional clothes discarded, military uniforms
• March to and from class
• Beatings for speaking a tribal language

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Dislocation

• Forcible removal from the home
• No or limited parental contact (no visits, or
  only at parent expense, letters not sent)
  government feared lapse into old ways and
  parents pulling down their own kids
• Often sent 1,000 miles away
• Summers often with white families
• Parents and extended family disempowered

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BIA Commissioner, 1899

• This education policy is based on the well known
  inferiority of the great mass of Indians in
  religion, intelligence, morals, and home life.

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After School

• Kids pressured to find work and habitation far
  from reservations
• Race barrier in U.S. made employment elusive
• Many drifted back to reservations

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Home on the Rez

• Many kids could not recognize their parents and
  vice versa
• Many kids could not speak the same language as
  their own parents
• They were often assimilated, but at a heavy
  price emotional harm, destroyed families
• Military effect hard for volunteering adults,
  pure hell for 6 year kid

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BIA Boarding Schools (Government)

• Carlisle, PA Phoenix, AZ, Flandreau, SD
• 25 govt. schools in operation by 1899 with
  20,000 new students every year
• Carlisle had 58 tribes represented in final year
  of operation

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Private Mission Schools

• Similar industrial model
• Similar harsh punishments for speaking of tribal
  languages
• Sexual abuse more commonly reported

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Bad Reputation

• 1918 Influenza outbreak (nationwide) was
  especially devastating at the schools, 300 die at
  Haskell, KS, alone
• By 1900 over half res. Boarding school kids had
  trachoma (eye disease)
• Tuberculosis rampant
• Poor diet for students reported
• Carlisle, Haskell and other school kept
  cemeteries for kids (bodies not even sent home
  for burial)
• Carlisle closes in 1918, but others enroll even
  more kids

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Meriam Report, 1928

• Blasts schools for poor nutrition, poor health
  care, insufficient clothing, exceedingly harsh
  physical punishment, disempowerment of parents

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John Collier, 1933-1945

• Tries to establish day school options
• Great Depression WWII actually increase
  enrollment parents want kids fed and dont
  often know what happens to their kids

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BIA Boarding Schools Today

• Santa Fe controlled by Pueblos
• Haskell now only all-Indian university in world
• Chilocco and Phoenix closed in the Reagan era
• Still a few in operation like Flandreau, but
  reformed

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Unintended Consequences

• Rise in pan-Indian sentiment
• Marriages, friendships
• Greater native resolve, common struggle
• Heightened sense of otherness

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Long Term Effects

• In USA, grandparent generation went through
  system, and often 3 generations before them
• In Canada, parent generation went through system
  (started later, ended later)
• Generations of Indians with language and culture
  beaten out of them
• How does one learn how to parent
• Roots of identity issues, alcoholism, dysfunction

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Language Loss

• 183 tribal languages spoken in USA and Canada
  today, only 20 still spoken by kids, only 4 with
  large vibrant language communities
• Many speakers chose not to teach their kids to
  protect them from persecution

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Tribal Languages in U.S. Canada
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Indian Attitude Towards Education

• Still a widely held belief that getting an
  education means getting white-washed
• Still a widely held belief that educated means
  assimilated
• Still a widely held distrust of educators, school
  officials

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Education Achievement
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Apache Kids at CarlisleBefore After Year 1
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Free Resources Videos

• http//vimeo.com/10098173
• http//www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/boarding.
  html
• http//archives.cbc.ca/society/education/topics/69
  2/

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Good Books

• David Wallace, Education for Extinction American
  Indians and the Boarding School Experience
  1875-1928
• Brenda Child, Boarding School Seasons American
  Indian Families, 1900-1940