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Native American Heritage Month: Home

Resources supporting the Hoop of Learning and Native American Students Association (NASA) library display during the month of November.

Our Spirits Don't Speak English

"Imagine you are a child, taken from your home, your family, taken from everything you know. In 1869, the U.S. government enacted a policy of educating Native American children in the ways of western society. By the late 1960's, more than 100,000 had been forced to attend Indian Boarding School"- 2008

Articles from the PVCC Library

Unless They Are Kept Alive - This article discusses the mortality rates among Native American students in U.S. government-run Indian schools during 1878-1918. The students were susceptible to contagious diseases in boarding schools often far from home. The schools were federal attempts to assimilate Native Americans and prepare them for citizenship, a task made difficult by the Indians' attachment to their sacred homelands. Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlyle (Pennsylvania) Indian School embraced the notion that Indian children could be assimilated in one generation, while Samuel Chapman Armstrong, founder of the Hampton Institute, held that it would take many generations owing to Indians' moral and social superiority to white Americans. 

Boarding Schools - Beginning in the 19th century, boarding schools played a fundamental role in the programs designed by the U.S. government to foster the assimilation of native prople, including North American Indians, into the mainstream of the U.S. society.  The transition to boarding-school life seldom came smoothly for Indian children.  The boarding-school setting also proved to be conducive to the spread of disease.

Looking at Discipline, Looking at Labor: Photographic Representations of Indian Boarding Schools - This article explores the peculiar iconography of photographs of  Indian boarding schools.  The photographs are examined and meanings imputed based on documentary evidence and theoretical understandings. A brief introduction to Indian boarding schools is provided;  Richard Pratt's use of photographs as a propaganda-of-the-image to garner support for Carlisle and other Indian schools is captured as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) documentation efforts that included panorama photographs and a collection of shots from the Pacific Northwest by Ferdinand Brady that emphasize labour.  The goal of the article is to describe the 'circumstances and milieus' in which the photographs were made and as they pertain to issues of sociological theory and meaning.

When Native Foods Were Left Behind - This article examines the effect of nutritional patterns in boarding schools on Native American students. Historical background on nonreservation boarding schools in the U.S. is provided, and details on the campaign of the Sherman Institute, a boarding school in Riverside, California, to maintain student health are presented.

Heard Museum Exhibit Examines Boarding Schools - Remembering Our Indian School Days celebrates the spirit of survival. Originally established to "civilize" Native Americans into main-stream society, Indian boarding schools became a shaping force of a national Native American identity. "This is not just a part of Native American history; it is an important element of American history in its entirety," [Margaret Archuleta] says. "Indian or not, this exhibit is an important examination of our society both past and present."

Breath Life and Meaning Into An Apology - Should it be left as an obscure attachment to an appropriations bill, a mention in some upcoming presidential speech or perhaps a ceremony bringing together national leaders and representatives of those whose lives were marred by harsh federal policies designed to "Kill the Indian, save the man?" Those words were spoken by the founder of the U.S. Indian boarding school system in 1892. Last May, the nonprofit organization White Bison undertook a 40-day, 6,800-mile crosscountry journey to 23 present and former Indian boarding school sites to raise awareness in Indian country about how the trauma of beatings, humiliation and sexual abuse experienced by our ancestors at the early Indian boarding schools still haunts Native communities today.

Progressive Education and Native American Schools, 1929-1950 - In this article, the author revisits the changing fortunes of Native Americans with respect to their experiences in the three types of government sponsored schools: industrial vocational boarding schools located outside the reservations, vocational boarding schools located on the reservations, and day schools on the reservations that stressed academic curriculums. He explores the impact of the Progressive Movement on the curriculum of these schools. He notes that when the progressive education fell into disrepute, the practices in the reservation day schools received similar criticism. As a result, by 1950, the federal government began to remove many of the progressive innovations from Native American schools.

 

Books Found in the PVCC Library

The PVCC Library holds a great collection of printed books. You can search the collection using this link PVCC Library Catalog.

For a complete list of titles, click here:  Native Americans' Boarding School Experience

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