Indian Country Diaries By Sarah E Stone

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

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.

In “St. Lucy’s” and the Native Americans one and the other were forced into a new culture, but had no say in this event. In some cases Native American children were kidnapped and taken to boarding schools far away from their family 's. Likewise “St. Lucy 's” had basically the same issue as the Native American children people came and took them away to a new culture they did not particularly like. Presented to Brenda J. Child author of “Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940””American Indian children who often went to school quite a distance away from home, often suffered homesickness and their parents loneliness.”.similarly the girls were also homesick and desired to see their parents. Guy B. Senese claims that “Many

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.

They did not take the time to get to know the students, but instead made their judgements based on the clothes they wore, the language they spoke, etc. The staff of the school were quick to replace parts of Native American culture with their European American counterpart. Students were forced to cut their hair, change their diet, and were only allowed to speak english. These changes were overall extremely harmful to the students of the Carlisle Industrial Indian School. Luther describes that “the change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness was too much, and in three years nearly one half of the children from the plains were dead.”

They were stripped away from their traditional and ordinary lives and introduced to the “oppressors’” way of life. If they stepped out of line and attempted to retain their previous lifestyle, they were physically abused through a system that wanted to spend as less money as possible to “kill the Indian, save the man.” It was this trauma that they went through as children that they reflect on their own children as they grew accustomed to it. It was this that many Navajo families of the reservation have a sense of fear to teach the younger generation the culture and language they were forced to grow apart from. The result and impact of the boarding school system can still be seen

As time moved forward, the relationship between Europeans and Natives started to change, and with this change came forced assimilation. For the Natives, the Europeans saw the forced assimilation as there way of civilizing them (Lahlum, 22 Feb 2017). One of the main features of forced assimilation was Indian Boarding schools. In these schools, they teach the Native children English and Christianity (Laliberte, Natives, Neighbors, and the National Game, 2010). On the other hand, the immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia willingly adapted there culture to include aspects of Minnesota/ American Culture.

The white men had treated the natives poorly, continued in viewing them as savages and trying to civilize the Native Americans through uncomfortable ways. Native Americans were forced to assimilate into Western culture and have to withstand the racism and discrimination from the Whites during that time. One of the methods that the Whites used to try to have the Indians fit into the Western culture were Native American boarding schools. These schools were established during the late 19th century to educate the Native American children according to Euro-American standards. The boarding schools often established rules for the Native Americans to follow, but most of the Native Americans were not willing to abandon their culture and tribal traditions.

In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.

In the late 19th century the United States put a plan together to have policies against the American Indian people of North America. Although Indian Boarding schools ended, many of our Indian children never

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.

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

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.