Indian Boarding Schools
Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act Fund of March 3, 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1869 the United States, in concert with and at the urging of several denominations of the Christian Church, adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through the removal and reprogramming of American Indian and Alaska Native children to accomplish the systematic destruction of Native cultures and communities. The stated purpose of this policy was to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”
Between 1869 and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches. Though we don't know how many children were taken in total, by 1900 there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled. The U.S. Native children that were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during this time were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture. They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government.
Source: The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Sioux girls at Indian School. Unknown photographer, circa 1890’s, cabinet card. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. RC2010.037.
Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center
Hosted by the Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections in Carlisle, PA, the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center is a collaborative project that works to digitize and make historic materials accessible concerning the Carlisle Indian School.
Established in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School holds a significant place in the history of Native American education in the United States as it was the first off-reservation boarding school aimed at assimilating Native American children into mainstream American culture. Pratt's philosophy, "Kill the Indian, save the man," encapsulated the ethos of the school, emphasizing the eradication of Native American cultural identity in favor of Americanization. More than 10,000 children from over 100 distinct cultures came to the school from across the country to live in Carlisle Barracks, an old military base during the 30 years in which the school operated. Students were forcibly removed from their families and communities, often facing harsh treatment and strict discipline. The school closed in 1918, but not before becoming the model for over twenty more boarding schools. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School left behind a complex legacy of cultural assimilation, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for Native American rights and self-determination.
Choate, John N. First Students of Carlisle (Girls) Oct. 1879. Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/images/first-group-female-students-version-1-1879
Carlisle Indian Industrial School by ISBN: 1496207696Publication Date: 2018-11-01Carlisle Indian Industrial School offers varied perspectives on the school by interweaving the voices of students' descendants, poets, and activists with cutting-edge research by Native and non-Native scholars. These contributions reveal the continuing impact and vitality of historical and collective memory, as well as the complex and enduring legacies of a school that still affects the lives of many Native Americans. The Carlisle Indian School (1879-1918) was an audacious educational experiment. Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt, the school's founder and first superintendent, persuaded the federal government that training Native children to accept the white man's ways and values would be more efficient than fighting deadly battles. The result was that the last Indian war would be waged against Native children in the classroom. More than 8,500 children from virtually every Native nation in the United States were taken from their homes and transported to Pennsylvania. Carlisle provided a blueprint for the federal Indian school system that was established across the United States and also served as a model for many residential schools in Canada. The Carlisle experiment initiated patterns of dislocation and rupture far deeper and more profound and enduring than its founder and supporters ever grasped.
Fort Sill Indian School
Fort Sill Indian School was originally founded in 1871 as a Quaker boarding school. Twenty years later, the school moved away from being affiliated with any religion and remained a secular educational institution until it finally closed its doors 1980 - almost 110 years from its initial founding. Both the size of the campus and student body increased over this period as well. The first class of students numbered twenty-four in one school building but by the 1970s there were more than 300 students enrolled on a campus numbering 30 buildings. Prior to World War II, much of the student body were Comanche, Apache, Caddo, Kiowa, Delaware, and Wichita, reflecting the demographics of western Oklahoma where Fort Sill is located.
Like several other boarding schools created during this time, Fort Sill Indian School aimed to assimilate Indigenous children to be more "civilized" and "American."
"For some, the strict discipline and harsh punishment meted out at the institution made it feel more like a prison than a place of learning. Being away from family and tribal communities made the experience even more alienating. Others, however, enjoyed their time there, making lifelong friends, participating in extracurricular activities, and remaining Indian despite attempts by the government's educational machinery to grind it out of them." - "Fort Sill Indian School," The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=FO039
Below are photos from the George A. Addison Studio Photographic Collection housed at the Dickinson Research Center in the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. These striking photos are taken in the late 1890s and are a literal snapshot of the children, teachers, and life at the Ft. Sill Indian Boarding School.
"General View, Ft. Sill School."
General View, Ft. Sill School. George A. Addison, circa 1895, boudoir photograph. George A. Addison Studio Photographic Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2004.110.66.
"Ft. Sill Indian Boarding School."
Ft. Sill Indian Boarding School. George A. Addison, circa 1895, boudoir photograph. George A. Addison Studio Photographic Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2004.110.68.
"Ft. Sill Indian School 1897."
Ft. Sill Indian School. George A. Addison, 1897, boudoir photograph. George A. Addison Studio Photographic Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2004.110.67.
"Ft. Sill Indian Boarding School."
Ft. Sill Indian Boarding School. George A. Addison, circa 1895, boudoir photograph. George A. Addison Studio Photographic Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2004.110.76.
Sherman Indian Museum Collection
The Sherman Indian Museum collection documents the history of the Perris Indian School, Sherman Institute, and Sherman Indian High School as well as the Native American experience in the US and within government-run American Indian boarding schools. The collection spans more than a century and richly documents the experiences of students, representing more than 50 tribal nations, who attended the school since its inception in 1892.
To learn more about the Sherman Indian Museum Digital Project, check out Eric L. Milenkiewicz's article "Increasing Awareness to American Indian Off-Reservation Boarding School Archives: Sherman Indian Museum Digital Project," in The Public Historian's November 2023 issue.
Photograph of Sherman Institute. Circa 1901. Sherman Indian Museum Collection. ark:/86086/n22r3sxx. Calisphere, Sherman Indian Museum, Riverside, CA. https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/86086/n22r3sxx/
Books
Boarding School Seasons by ISBN: 9780803264052Publication Date: 2000-02-01Boarding School Seasons offers a revealing look at the strong emotional history of Indian boarding school experiences in the first half of the twentieth century. At the heart of this book are the hundreds of letters written by parents, children, and school officials at Haskell Institute in Kansas and the Flandreau School in South Dakota. These revealing letters show how profoundly entire families were affected by their experiences. Children, who often attended schools at great distances from their communities, suffered from homesickness, and their parents from loneliness. Parents worried continually about the emotional and physical health and the academic progress of their children. Families clashed repeatedly with school officials over rampant illnesses and deplorable living conditions and devised strategies to circumvent severely limiting visitation rules. Family intimacy was threatened by the schools' suppression of traditional languages and Native cultural practices. Although boarding schools were a threat to family life, profound changes occurred in the boarding school experiences as families turned to these institutions for relief during the Depression, when poverty and the loss of traditional seasonal economics proved a greater threat. Boarding School Seasons provides a multifaceted look at the aspirations and struggles of real people.
Education for Extinction by ISBN: 0700629602Publication Date: 2020-05-29The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man." This fully revised edition of Education for Extinction offers the only comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort, and incorporates the last twenty-five years of scholarship. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically. Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Boarding School Blues by ISBN: 0803294638Publication Date: 2006-09-01Like the figures in the ancient oral literature of Native Americans, children who lived through the American Indian boarding school experience became heroes, bravely facing a monster not of their own making. Sometimes the monster swallowed them up. More often, though, the children fought the monster and grew stronger. This volume draws on the full breadth of this experience in showing how American Indian boarding schools provided both positive and negative influences for Native American children. The boarding schools became an integral part of American history, a shared history that resulted in Indians "turning the power" by using their school experiences to grow in wisdom and benefit their people. The first volume of essays ever to focus on the American Indian boarding school experience, and written by some of the foremost experts and most promising young scholars of the subject, Boarding School Blues ranges widely in scope, addressing issues such as sports, runaways, punishment, physical plants, and Christianity. With comparative studies of the various schools, regions, tribes, and aboriginal peoples of the Americas and Australia, the book reveals both the light and the dark aspects of the boarding school experience and illuminates the vast gray area in between.
Stringing Rosaries by ISBN: 9781946163103Publication Date: 2019-06-12Denise K. Lajimodiere's interest in American Indian boarding school survivors' stories evolved from recording her father and other family members speaking of their experiences. Her research helped her gain insight, a deeper understanding of her parents, and how and why she and her siblings were parented in the way they were. That insight led her to an emotional ceremony of forgiveness, described in the last chapter of Stringing Rosaries. The journey to record survivors' stories led her through the Dakotas and Minnesota and into the personal and private space of boarding school survivors. While there, she heard stories that they had never shared before. She came to an understanding of new terms: historical and intergenerational trauma, soul wound. She is haunted by the resounding silence of abuses that happened at boarding schools across the United States. She wants these survivors' stories told uninterrupted, so that each survivor tells their own story in their own words. The youngest survivor interviewed was fifty years old, and the oldest was eighty-nine. In the tradition of her Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe, she offered them tobacco and gifts. She told them her parents' and grandparents' boarding school stories and that she is considered an intergenerational, someone who didn't go to boarding school but was a survivor of boarding school survivors. The journey was emotionally exhausting. Often, after hearing their stories she had to sit in her car for a long while, sobbing, waiting to compose herself for the long drive back across the plains.Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors has been recognized with multiple awards.o One of three finalists for the 2020 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prizeo 2020 Independent Press Awards, Distinguished Favorite in Cultural and Social Issueso 2020 Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY Awards) Bronze Medal for Multicultural Nonfictiono 2020 Independent Book Publishers Association-Benjamin Franklin Award, Silver Medalist in the Multicultural categoryo 2019 Midwest Book Awards, Gold Medal in the Regional History categoryo 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Finalist, Historyo 2019 Midwest Book Awards, Silver Medal for Cover Design
They Called Me Uncivilized by ISBN: 9781440162787Publication Date: 2009-08-01Walter Littlemoon's memoir, They Called Me Uncivilized, is a call to awareness from within the heart of Wounded Knee. In telling his story, Littlemoon describes the impact federal Indian policies have had on his life and on the history of his family. He gives a rare view into the cruelty inflicted on generations of Native American children through the implementation of U.S. government boarding schools, which resulted in a muted truth, called Soul Wound by some. In addition, and for the first time, his narrative provides a resident's view of the 1973 militant Occupation of Wounded Knee and the lasting impact that takeover has had on his community. His path toward a sense of peace and contentment is one he hopes others will follow. Remembering and telling the truth about traumatic events are prerequisites for healing. Many books have been written by scholars describing one aspect or another of Native American life, their history, their spirituality, the 1973 occupation, and a few have tried to describe the boarding schools. None have connected the dots. Until the language of the everyday man is used, scholarly words will shut out the people they describe and the pathology created by federal Indian policy will continue.
Education Beyond the Mesas by ISBN: 9780803216266Publication Date: 2010-12-01Education beyond the Mesas is the fascinating story of how generations of Hopi schoolchildren from northeastern Arizona “turned the power” by using compulsory federal education to affirm their way of life and better their community. Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, one of the largest off-reservation boarding schools in the United States, followed other federally funded boarding schools of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in promoting the assimilation of indigenous people into mainstream America. Many Hopi schoolchildren, deeply conversant in Hopi values and traditional education before being sent to Sherman Institute, resisted this program of acculturation. Immersed in learning about another world, generations of Hopi children drew on their culture to skillfully navigate a system designed to change them irrevocably. In fact, not only did the Hopi children strengthen their commitment to their families and communities while away in the “land of oranges,” they used their new skills, fluency in English, and knowledge of politics and economics to help their people when they eventually returned home. nbsp; Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert draws on interviews, archival records, and his own experiences growing up in the Hopi community to offer a powerful account of a quiet, enduring triumph.
Picking up the Pieces by ISBN: 9781459819955Publication Date: 2019-09-10"Will educate and enlighten Canadians for generations to come. It's a must-read for anyone seeking to understand Canada's residential-school saga. Most importantly, it's a touchstone of community for those survivors and their families still on the path to healing."--Waubgeshig Rice, journalist and author of Moon of the Crusted Snow Picking Up the Piecestells the story of the making of the Witness Blanket, a living work of art conceived and created by Indigenous artist Carey Newman. It includes hundreds of items collected from residential schools across Canada, everything from bricks, photos and letters to hockey skates, dolls and braids. Every object tells a story. Carey takes the reader on a journey from the initial idea behind the Witness Blanket to the challenges in making it work to its completion. The story is told through the objects and the Survivors who donated them to the project. At every step in this important journey for children and adults alike, Carey is a guide, sharing his process and motivation behind the art. It's a personal project. Carey's father is a residential school Survivor. Like the Blanket itself, Picking Up the Piecescalls on readers of all ages to bear witness to the residential school experience, a tragic piece of Canada's legacy.
A Knock on the Door by ISBN: 9780887557859Publication Date: 2015-12-18"It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer." So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools prepared by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Between 2008 and 2015, the TRC provided opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to share their experiences of residential schools and released several reports based on 7000 survivor statements and five million documents from government, churches, and schools, as well as a solid grounding in secondary sources.A Knock on the Door, published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, gathers material from the several reports the TRC has produced to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools in a concise and accessible package that includes new materials to help inform and contextualize the journey to reconciliation that Canadians are now embarked upon.Survivor and former National Chief of the Assembly First Nations, Phil Fontaine, provides a Foreword, and an Afterword introduces the holdings and opportunities of the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, home to the archive of recordings, and documents collected by the TRC. As Aimée Craft writes in the Afterword, knowing the historical backdrop of residential schooling and its legacy is essential to the work of reconciliation. In the past, agents of the Canadian state knocked on the doors of Indigenous families to take the children to school. Now, the Survivors have shared their truths and knocked back. It is time for Canadians to open the door to mutual understanding, respect, and reconciliation.
