Native American Boarding Schools Summary

In today’s society, it is often taken for granted and expected that people receive an education, no matter their background. This was not the case for slaves and Native Americans in the United States dating back to the 1800s. As Frederick Douglass and the Heard Museum’s Remembering our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience showed, education was life changing to those it affected. Education provided them freedom and something that could never be taken away like most things had been. It wasn’t always a positive experience, but education gave them the chance to make a difference for themselves and their peers. While the initial purpose of boarding schools was to stop Native Americans from practicing their customs, they and other minorities

In the speech “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man”, Captain Richard Pratt claims that the savagery of the Indians poses a problem to the advancement of the American society. He argues that their surroundings including language, superstition, and lifestyle cause this problem. TO support his claim, he provides the example of an Indian and White infant. He states that raising them in opposite environments will result in the acquisition of their respective qualities. Pratt proposes the solution of sending Indians to boarding schools, so they can gradually become civilized.

Indian Boarding schools were created in the 1800s to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” They achieved this by transforming the natives looks, culture, language, and teaching them a certain way so they would be able to function in a “european society”. Indian boarding schools taught students both academic and “real world” skills, but they did so while ripping the indians from their culture. Most indian boarding schools were the same with their tactics in transforming the native man into a white one.

The nature of these boarding schools was to assimilate young Native Americans into American culture, doing away with any “savageness” that they’re supposedly predisposed to have. As Bonnin remembers the first night of her stay at the school, she says “I was tucked into bed with one of the tall girls, because she talked to me in my mother tongue and seemed to soothe me” (Bonnin 325). Even at the beginning of such a traumatic journey, the author is signaling to the audience the conditioning that she was already under. Bonnin instinctively sought out something familiar, a girl who merely spoke in the same “tongue” as her. There are already so few things that she has in her immediate surroundings that help her identify who and what she is, that she must cling to the simple familiarities to bring any semblance of comfort.

She was unable to, and in the process, demonstrated that the impact that boarding schools had on Native Americans was one of terror and indoctrination, which did not bode well for

American and Australian native residential boarding schools have a lot in common, since they both s have the same goal.Which was to assimilate Native children into Western culture. Both Native American children and Aboriginal were taken to the boarding school by force.Their family did not have the option to keep their children either. Both System were sponsored by churches and the government backing.However their are some difference as in Australia the focus on who was taken to the residential boarding school was on half-caste(Aboriginal children that mixed with white).They also intended removal to be a permanent separation from the family, and community. while in America the focus was on all Native American Children, both mixed and full

In this story, cultural assimilation is shown from the perspective of Harley Wind Soldier, Frank Pipe who are the students in the class of colonialist educator, Jeannette McVay. Although Jeannette tries to adapt to the culture of the “isolated territory” (31-34), neither the students nor Jeannette understand each other because of the cultural differences (40-43). This situation resulted in that the students demand to read stories belonging their culture and the teacher wants to improve herself about native culture (50,

There were many reasons for children to enter into the boarding schools. In some cases children were rounded up and transported to the schools without permission from their parents, some parents chose to send their children because of the lack of resources they had to care for the children, and still others thought that the education would be beneficial in the ever changing society. The reasons for sending the children were diverse. Towards the end of what is now called “The Indian Boarding school era” it was estimated that by 1931, two-thirds of Native Americans have attended a boarding school (Warne, & Lajimodiere, 2015).

Assimilation is not a word the aboriginals take too kindly. Wayne Warry (2007) defined it as the “process by which a minority population is absorbed into a prevailing dominant culture”; the dominant culture being that of the European. The fastest way to assimilate the Indians was to remove the children from their homes (the government had already lost hope on the adults) and force them into residential schools. The recommendation came from N.F. Davin who took the idea from native schools based within the United States. At this time the government believed that they owed it to the “poor Indian” to give them an “equal chance of success”. Residential schools offered religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic like the day schools but also

The students in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls” nor the Native Americans had a choice to be forced out of their homes and assigned a new home, which resulted in learning a new language and to learn how to change their attitudes towards other people, how

They are often labeled as uncivilized barbarians, which is a solely false accusation against them. This paper aims to address the similarities between Native American beliefs and the beliefs of other cultures based on The Iroquois Creation Story in order to defeat the stereotype that Natives are regularly defined by. Native Americans are commonly considered uncivilized, savage, and barbarian. Nevertheless, in reality the Natives are not characterized by any of those negative traits, but rather they inhabit positive characteristics such as being wise, polite, tolerant, civilized, harmonious with nature, etc. They have had a prodigious impact on the Puritans

“When you judge others , you do not define them: you define yourself” - Earl Nightingale. In a society where people are still judging other people to try to make them look good is a low blow, you know you will not be able to judge them on their actions but on something they were born with, the color of their skin or the way the look. This is why discrimination happens every day, bigots must have a scapegoat to blow all the stress they have. But in reality they are not defining the other person because those are petty words, but the bigots actions while insulting the poor man will define the bigot . Once people have learned about how to blow all the stress they have, we can almost act as one. We would be able to win much more because it would

In both instances in “St. Lucy’s” and the Native American Indians, they had no other option but to be repressed by the Early Americans. Such as the early American nation thought it was necessary for the assimilation of the American Indians. Likewise the assimilation of the American Indians the girls in “St. Lucy’s” were forced to blend in and forget their old way of life to learn to act like a human. For the purpose of assimilation, some American Indian children were kidnapped and taken to boarding schools to learn how to be more like the early Americans and forced to forget their old way of life. With this in mind; “St. Lucy’s” children weren’t really kidnapped, but more convinced that this is what there wolf parents wanted from them and

A memorial day for me was one Friday night at a dance at Flandreau Indian Boarding School in South Dakota. I went to this Boarding School, not knowing what to expect. My father had gone to this same Boarding School many years before I had. He graduated from there and I was hoping to do the same. Me and my very good friend of mine, we had the crazy idea to go to the school together to escape the realities of our home town. But unfortunately, she left to the Boarding School a semester ahead of me. Then by the time I got accepted into Flandreau, she had gotten herself into a predicament and she wasn’t there to tend the winter semester.

This time in her life is not different from the other children’s lives on that reservation; she followed a consistent routine and her mother cared for her, she felt loved. Zitakala-Sa was “...as free as the wind that blew my hair, and no less spirited than a bounding deer” ( Zitkala-Sa “Impressions of an Indian Childhood). However, after leaving her home at age 8 to attend a boarding school intended to reform Native Americans into the White’s culture this wild and spirited child began to lose that confidence in her identity. Her first time returning home was uncomfortable though school was much worse; she realized when she came home that she “was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one” (Zitkala-Sa “The School Days of an Indian Girl”).