UBIQUE

Written by Alice Yee

From 1860 until 1978, in response to The Civilization Fund Act passed by Congress in 1819 to begin the “Native American assimilation era”, approximately 357 boarding schools operated across 30 states both on and off reservations and housed over 60,000 Native American children. About a third of these schools were led by Christian missionaries and government officials.

The first Native American boarding school was established in 1860 on the Yakima Indian Reserve in Washington. It was mandated by the US government that Native children attend these boarding schools, with or without their families’ consent. Some Native parents made the tough decision to send their child because it was the only school available.  Indian agents, individuals hired on behalf of the US government to interact with Indigenous communities, were also responsible for seizing children from their families and their homes until boarding schools were filled as well as retaliate to resistance by withholding rations and supplies to Indigenous communities.

The children would be given Anglo-American names, removed of their traditional clothes for military-style clothing, their hair shaved, and they would be bathed in kerosene, which is aviation or heat fuel. The daily lessons consisted mainly of trade or work to “make Native students marketable in American society”. For instance, female students were taught how to cook, clean, sew, do laundry, and tend to farm animals, while male students were taught how to blacksmith, make shoes, and farm. Outdoor activities involved several hours of marching and recreational time was spent watching anti-Indigenous western movies. Students were also forced to convert to Christianity, celebrate holidays oppressive to their culture like Columbus Day, and learn academic subjects that emphasized American values and beliefs.

Richard Henry Pratt developed an educational program for the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania of 1879, inspired by his work experimenting with assimilation education on captive and imprisoned Indigenous peoples. He would go to implement a “Placing Out System” that temporarily relocated Native students to American communities, which tended to exploit them for domestic and physical labor. The Carlisle Indian School enrolled 7,800 children and young adults, from more than 100 tribes, over four decades.

Furthermore, punishment systems were confining and harsh. For example, speaking their Native language within the boarding schools could lead to privilege restrictions, diet restrictions, being beaten, coerced into heavy labor, and even confinement. Given that diet and physical abuse were forms of punishment, any medical or recovery resources were also extremely limited. Resultingly, boarding schools became more susceptible to infections and diseases and it wasn’t uncommon for Native students to become ill and eventually die. Unfortunately, the parents were rarely informed of their children’s deaths, with some only learning about it after they were buried in the school’s cemetery. There were over 230 deaths among students enrolled in Carlisle.

Melissa Mejia from The Indigenous Foundation describes that “several forms of resistance were performed in response to having their children pulled from their homes and forced to attend these boarding schools. This would include entire villages refusing to enroll their children in the boarding schools, coordinated mass withdrawals, as well as encouraging their children to run away from the school.” Even though the Native American Boarding School era has ended, a few off-reservation boarding schools still operate today. As of 2020, 3 out of the 7 federally funded boarding schools are controlled by Indigenous community leaders.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition’s oral history project interviewed Indian boarding school survivors to share their stories and testimonies to future generations. The oral history project is an exercise in “truth-telling,” said Jason Packineau, a member of Laguna and Jemez Pueblos and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. According to The Independent, the same Native American coalition has an interactive map providing the most extensive list of boarding schools, now standing at 523, with each dot on the map providing some brief details about the school’s involvement in Native American history.

Works Cited:

Bryan, Susan Montoya. “Legacy of Native American Boarding Schools Comes into View through a New Interactive Map.” Independent, The Independent, 30 Aug. 2023, www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-native-american-canada-minnesota-first-nations-b2402238.html.