Essay On Indian Boarding Schools

The cartoon works to portray the effects of the government boarding school for Native Americans in a positive way to show that the schools are effective in “civilizing” Native Americans. Additionally, the cartoon attempts to show that the Native Americans want to go to boarding schools and are happy to assimilate into white culture, clothes, gender roles, etc. The creation of board schools was a result of the ideology that white society was superior to the Native American way of life. Although white people agreed that the Native Americans had been treated unfairly in the past, they believed they were doing Native Americans a great service by forcing them into boarding schools, taking away their culture and traditions, and forcing them to assimilate.

Indian Residential Schools is a horrible event that happened from the 1840s until the 1990s. From these past mistakes in judgement, the education system has added curriculum to bring more knowledge to the event. By doing this we read “Indian Horse” by Richard Wagamese which is a fictional novel based on true events. It is about an Ojibway boy who experienced the hardships before, during, and after the Indian Residential School. The importance of learning the past is to ensure that this can be prevented in the future, to recognize what happened, and to help those affected by Indian Residential Schools.

The Cocopah Indian Tribe runs a K-12 school in Somerton, Arizona, where the education department is. Bilingual

On January 28th, 1879, Davin was appointed from the new Conservative government to solely investigate the commission on American industrial schools for native children.8 His report submitted on March 14th, 1879, suggested that day schools were ineffective due to the influence of wigwam overpowered the influence of the school.9 It states, “Little can be done with [adult Native People]. [They] can be taught to do little at farming, and at stock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized manner, but that is all. ”10

Many Native children were taken by forced from their families and were submitted for a long time into residential schools. It was

The girls for example where taught to be domestic workers, they were to cook, clean and sew (American Indian Relief Council). The boys on the other hand obtained other skills for example shoemaking, blacksmithing, or performed manual labor like farming (American Indian Relief Council). Instead of boys learning to hunt and girls learning to pick berries, they where taught to do basic labors expected of them in the new American culture they were being taught. There were consequences when these tasks where refused, which resulted in harsh beatings. There was no waiting for the punishment to begin; as soon as some children had arrived to the boarding school they experienced their first traumatic experience.

Simon J. Ortiz was a member of the Eagle Clan. Ortiz was raised in Acoma village of McCartys and only spoke Keresan at his village. His Father worked as Rail worker and a woodcarver, however he was an elder in the clan and was responsible of keeping the religious knowledge and customs of the pueblo. Ortiz was a student at the McCartys Day School tell the sixth grade, until he was sent to St. Catherine’s Indian School in Santa Fe. As boarding Schools attempted to provide the English language education, such schools sought to stimulate Native Americans into American mainstream culture.

Raging epidemics would often keep the doors shut for weeks or even months at a time. Floods, a tornado, and two fires also slowed things down a bit. In 1865, The Civil War brought education to a screeching halt, and as many of the Choctaws had allied with the Confederates, the Union seized quite a bit of control, power, land and money from the Nation detrimentally affecting Choctaw institutions including the schools. For example, before the war congress had appropriated 10,000 dollars every year in support of Indian education which, when added to the money donated by a few missionary societies and the tribal governments and annuities, kept things pretty well funded. Thankfully after the war, the Choctaws sold land in the East and repaired their relationship with the US government, thereby restoring some power and sway to their government, as well as money toward their educational

Imagine being ripped apart from family members, culture, tradition, and labelled a savage that needs to be educated. Imagine constantly facing punishment at school for being one’s self. Unfortunately, these events were faced head on for many First Nations people living in Canada in the late 20th century. These First Nations people were the victims of an extensive school system set up by the government to eradicate Aboriginal culture across Canada and to assimilate them into what was considered a mainstream society.

These schools have been described as an instrument to wage intellectual, psychological, and cultural warfare to turn Native Americans into “Americans”. There are many reports of young Native Americans losing all cultural belonging. According to an interview with NPR, Bill Wright was sent to one of these schools. He lost his hair, his language, and then his Navajo name. When he was able to return home, he was unable to understand or speak to his grandmother.

“The significance of Native American boarding school was that Americans were trying to assimilate their culture and their way of living.” Many Native Americans today have very different opinions to how their people were placed in Indian boarding school. “Many Native Americans think that it helped their people be more civilized and help them live in american ways. ”While other Native Americans think that boarding schools were a place where they were torchered and a place where they lost their freedom and their culture. “Most people agree that Indian Boarding schools were just trying to help indians be more civilized, but others can see the wrong in the schools.”

Expectations often impose an inescapable reality. In the short story “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie, Victor often struggles with Indian and American expectations during school. Alexie utilizes parallelism in the construction of each vignette, introducing a memoir of tension and concluding with a statement about Victor’s difficulties, to explore the conflict between cultures’ expectations and realities. Alexei initially uses parallelism to commence each vignette with cultural tension. In second grade, Victor undergoes a conflict with his missionary teacher, who coerced Victor into taking an advanced spelling test and cutting his braids.

Residential Schools was an enormous lengthening event in our history. Residential schools were to assimilate and integrate white people’s viewpoints and values to First Nations children. The schools were ran by white nuns and white priests to get rid of the “inner Indian” in the children. In residential schools, the children suffered immensely from physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse. Although the many tragedies, language was a huge loss by the First Nations children.

Neither were the parents allowed to visit their children so the time the kids were finally able to go back with their family they started to become practically like strangers to each other because they knew very little about each other especially since many of the children were younger and had spent most of their lives in these school. The lack of communication between the Native American parents and children was another reason many parents weren’t aware of the trauma the kids were suffering in the homes. The kids were so affected they remember that even at night when they were left alone to sleep they were all so quiet and no one talked about what was happening to them. The native children didn’t have normal childhoods they didn’t play or interact with each other this alone shows how affected they were with the boarding

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.