The Indian Boarding Schools

The Indian Boarding School: Michelle Bollinger

After reading about Indian Boarding School I was shocked at the amount of ignorance and the demoralizing way Native America's were treated. It is a shame to think that those who were in this country before anyone else were treated like savages instead of human beings.  "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that the high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous favor in promoting Indian massacres.  In sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead.  Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."  This demonstrates how the culture of Native Americans is completely disregarded.  These are people who helped grow the country into what it was and they were being shunned for looking differently and having different values.

When looking into the boarding schools that they had, they came across as awful, horrible, places to send any child.  "The goal of these schools was to aggressively strip Indian youth of their cultural traditions, languages, and religious beliefs.  The approach to education was not grounded in an understanding of child development or academic instruction - but rather racism, Christianity and military discipline."  This was probably the most alarming part of the article that I read.  I felt that they were actually brainwashing Native American children into thinking how horrible they were and that their culture was morally wrong.  Being an educator now, I realize how impressionable my students are.  They spend the majority of their time in school and look up to teachers as role models.  If a figure of authority told them that something they were doing was wrong, they would most likely believe it.  Culturally responsive teaching is such a huge part of our teaching environment now a days that it is crazy to think children were being influenced in this way in American schools.

Below is a before an after picture of a Native American student after he was stripped of his culture.

There were MANY instances just like this one where these children were forced into white culture.


Kill the Indian, Save the Man  this video speaks in depth about Indian Boarding Schools and how poorly the students were forced to attend boarding schools and be assimilated into white culture.  They were even unable to speak their own language - the harsh treatment is baffling.

"Renowned American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peiter, who has been wrongfully incarcerated since 1977, once referred to is years at Wahpeton Indian School in North Dakota as his 'first imprisonment'."  I am not surprised by this quote after reading the article.  Trying to put myself in the shoes of a student in one of these boarding schools is very difficult.  There had been instances of Native American women being impregnated by the priests who ran the schools.  Sexual, emotional and physical trauma was ongoing throughout the country at Indian Boarding Schools. Fortunately, I have never had to live a life like this one.  I feel horrible for the way that the Native American communities were treated, solely because they were different.