Posted by Helen on: 01.09.2007 /
Since I grew up in England I was taught English, not American, history. I didn’t know about Native American residential schools until I saw a book on them a couple of weeks ago in the library. I checked the book out and was shocked by what I read.
In searching the Internet for information about them, I found an Amnesty International Magazine article Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools. It begins:
U.S. and Canadian authorities took Native children from their homes and tried to school, and sometimes beat, the Indian out them. Now Native Americans are fighting the theft of language, of culture, and of childhood itself.
Richard Pratt was instrumental in starting the system of Native American residential schools. In 1892 Richard Pratt gave a speech which began:
A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a 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….
Later in the speech he says:
It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.
Richard Pratt started the Carlisle school. This model was adopted across the country, as the Amnesty International Magazine article says:
Government officials found the Carlisle model an appealing alternative to the costly military campaigns against Indians in the West. Within three decades of Carlisle’s opening, nearly 500 schools extended all the way to California. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) controlled 25 off-reservation boarding schools while churches ran 460 boarding and day schools on reservations with government funds.
Separation of church and state didn’t apply to these schools, for some reason.
According to many sources I’ve read, these schools were awful places. The Amnesty International article continues:
Both BIA and church schools ran on bare-bones budgets, and large numbers of students died from starvation and disease because of inadequate food and medical care. School officials routinely forced children to do arduous work to raise money for staff salaries and “leased out” students during the summers to farm or work as domestics for white families. In addition to bringing in income, the hard labor prepared children to take their place in white society—the only one open to them—on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
Physical hardship, however, was merely the backdrop to a systematic assault on Native culture. School staff sheared children’s hair, banned traditional clothing and customs, and forced children to worship as Christians. Eliminating Native languages—considered an obstacle to the “acculturation” process—was a top priority, and teachers devised an extensive repertoire of punishments for uncooperative children. “I was forced to eat an entire bar of soap for speaking my language,” says AIUSA activist Byron Wesley (Navajo).
I read Pigs In Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver last year, in which some of the main characters are Native Americans. At the time there were themes in it I didn’t understand about Native American families being forcibly separated and also not wanting their children taken away by white people. Now I’ve heard about the systematic removal of Native American children to residential schools, I understand much better.
Comment by: Paul
1 01/9/07 5:24 AM | Comment Link |it is a tragedy and one which reflects modern imperialism and scientific educationalism of the era - it is something that happened within america with native americans and it was what happened across the empires of all the western powers - social engineering at it’s most insiduously brutal - it sounded so good, make everyone like us “civilised” westerners but was practised so appallingly in so many places, not least because of the judgment that being white and western was the best…
I think we are no doubt still guilty of these imperial tendancies today, whether secular in making all countries in the image america or spiritual in seeking to have one christian right expression that everyone needs to conform too…
Comment by: Helen
2 01/9/07 7:39 AM | Comment Link |Yes, I think you’re right, Paul. Thanks for your comment.
Here are a couple of details from the book Kill The Indian, Save the Man by Ward Churchill which got to me (on pages 30 and 31 - and these originally came from A National Crime by Milloy):
One boy at the Onion Lake Residential School wrote home in 1923:
When I read these I felt like I was reading something out of a Dickens novel, or Jane Eyre yet these were facts from the US and Canada in the 20th century. (I expect what’s in the English novels was based on truth but at least it was a little longer ago than this)
Comment by: Mike Clawson
3 01/9/07 10:32 AM | Comment Link |.
I was struck by the similarities between this particular sentiment and the things Richard Dawkins says about a religious upbringing being akin to child abuse. If he’s right, then I guess one could make a case for taking children from religious families and re-educating them into a more rational (i.e. “civilized”) way of thinking.
Of course these kinds of things are monstrous atrocities no matter which ideology perpetuates it.
A good movie that depicts this kind of thing happening in Australia earlier last century is “Rabbit Proof Fence”. Check it out.
Comment by: Helen
4 01/9/07 10:52 AM | Comment Link |I take your point Mike - I think it’s inappropriate of Dawkins to call raising children in the parents’ faith ‘child abuse’.
However I’ve never heard him say the solution is to take the children away from their parents.
Comment by: Mike Clawson
5 01/9/07 3:09 PM | Comment Link |Yeah, I haven’t either. I thought it was just implied. Isn’t that what you do with child abusers?
Comment by: Helen
6 01/9/07 6:08 PM | Comment Link |Mike, it hadn’t occurred to me that that was the implication but I see your point. That is what usually happens to child abusers.
But what Dawkins is in favor of is the opposite of what Pratt wanted. Pratt wanted forced assimilation; it seems to me Dawkins would call forcing anything on children child abuse.
Comment by: NCxian
7 01/9/07 6:16 PM | Comment Link |Dawkins calls raising children within a religious tradition child abuse. Which is what the Native Americans were doing. He and Pratt are two of a kind in that regard.
Comment by: Helen
8 01/9/07 8:10 PM | Comment Link |In that regard, I suppose so. But I can’t imagine Dawkins forbidding children to speak their native language, forcing them to adopt the dress and hairstyle of another culture and depriving them of adequate food.
Comment by: Mike Clawson
9 01/9/07 10:55 PM | Comment Link |No, certainly not. I don’t mean to make a 1-for-1 comparison. Just that that one particular quote from Pratt put me in mind of some of the things Dawkins says. Dawkins certainly wouldn’t go to those other extremes.
Comment by: NCxian
10 01/10/07 6:34 AM | Comment Link |http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/07/01/03.php#12629
I was listening to the Diane Rehm show last week (link above) and heard an interview with Joseph Taliaferro (SP?) who wrote a book about a missionary who worked in northern Alaska in the the late 1800s. He talked a little about was why the missionaries were there in the first place. He said that the US had purchased the territory and wanted to “bring order” to the natives. In response to a caller, the author said that we had learned that rounding them up and putting them on reservations was unproductive, perhaps we even viewed it as wrong at that point, so instead, we (the government) dispatched missionaries to go . . . and do something, I’m not sure what the mandate was. We continued to maintain the notion that there was a hierarchy of “civilization”, that we were further up that ladder, and that we would be doing them a favor to bring them into the modern age. (Hhmm, more parallels to Dawkins? . . .)
This issue of whether you are helping somebody when you impose your values on them is very interesting to me. Our reflexive response is to say that it is always bad, but what about the folks who go to places like India and promote basic human rights for women, children and outcasts? Taking native children from their parents is, of course, way on the wrong end of the scale, but there is an interesting tension inherent in the more general question, it seems to me.
Comment by: Helen
11 01/10/07 9:41 AM | Comment Link |NCxian, you raise some excellent points - thanks.
Comment by: benjamin ady
12 01/11/07 10:15 AM | Comment Link |… my immediate response to the post and comments was “Yeah, I knew about that–but that was then. What similar atrocities are we (that is, the group/groups of which I naturally consider myself a part) currently committing–atrocities of which we are just as unaware as Pratt and co were of the atrocious nature of what they were doing?”
Of course, the answer to this question is very difficult to get at. Every culture/generation, I suspect, has their own innate atrocities, which they are inherently blind toward, and which can only, perhaps, be fully seen and condemned by other cultures/generations. This makes places like Off-the-map amazingly important, because it is in places like this that we are able to begin to hear/understand the other, and thus get that outsider perspective which may enable us to see/stop the atrocities which are inherent in our “we”.
Comment by: Helen
13 01/11/07 11:39 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin, thanks for taking this in the direction of asking what we’re doing wrong that we’re as unaware of as Pratt was.
I saw a Rwanda refugee on Oprah this morning (I was only watching it because I was waiting for my car to have an oil change). She was reading from an essay about her experience and she said “People say history repeats itself. No, we repeat history”.
Comment by: Stephan
14 01/11/07 12:39 PM | Comment Link |It could be argued that we are repeating history right now in Iraq, killing them in order to bring them democracy. Democracy is great, and it works well for us (most of the time), but who’s to says it’s right for the rest of the world? Are you still trying to shove our virtues down the throats of the “savages”?
Comment by: EchoHawk-Hayashi
15 01/11/07 4:13 PM | Comment Link |I thought you might find it interesting that most if not all native communities in Alaska, Canada and the contiguous 48 States are still facing tragic struggles directly related to the Boarding School experience. These types of calculated abuses were not only created for the direct benefit for certain ethnic and social groups (not Indians), but they also continued to be supported and staffed by church and state well into the 20th century. I have very close friends who have experienced this.
I was just encouraged that this discussion came up here, its very sad that most non-native people either have no clue about the boarding school projects or that its understood as a footnote of the past.
Comment by: Rachel
16 01/11/07 4:48 PM | Comment Link |Wow, EchoHawk. I was aware of the past atrocities but I must honestly say that I didn’t know it continued so long. How do we learn more? Do you think that some of your close friends who have experienced this might want to come to this blog to share their story with us?
Comment by: Helen
17 01/11/07 5:58 PM | Comment Link |Thanks for your comment, EchoHawk-Hayashi. Welcome to Conversation at the Edge.
About how late this continued: the book I got out the library is dedicated to a child who died of cold after running away from a residential school in 1966.
Your friends would be very welcome to share their stories here. If you have links to websites with personal stories please share them with us.
I grew up in England, so I learned very little American history.
My son is in 8th grade and is studying American history all year. I looked in his textbook to see what it says about Native Americans from 1800 onwards. It has a section about the way they were treated up through the Dawes Act in 1887. Then I can’t find anything else significant about Native Americans until a section about who fought for civil rights in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
I find it disconcerting that there’s no mention of the attempts to deal with the “Indian problem” after 1890, of which residential schools were a significant component. So, basically, my son is going to have studied American history and not know about these schools.
It bothers me that the textbook authors didn’t include any mention of the schools. It is way too easy to distort history in this way - i.e. by leaving things out. If some wrong information was being taught I expect parents would notice and complain. But omissions are less easily noticed and therefore are a more insidious way of coloring the way students will understand American history.
Comment by: JG
18 01/15/07 9:41 AM | Comment Link |On a related topic, I was very impressed by Peter Walker, an aboriginal Christian, when I heard him share about the difficulties and suffering experienced by the aboriginals in Australia - which even extended to aboriginals being driven over cliffs. His particular emphasis is on reconciliation. See for example:
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC19980701052
and
http://ctlibrary.com/1019
Comment by: Helen
19 01/15/07 3:49 PM | Comment Link |I agree that reconciliation is the ideal way forward. Having said that, it can only happen if the perpetrators own responsibility for what they did.
In skimming various sites, I saw some which claimed that some students had a positive experience at the residential schools. It’s hard to know whether that’s really true or an attempt to deny how awful they were. If the perpetrators are still in denial it’s unfair to ask the victims to reconcile (imo).
Comment by: JG
20 01/15/07 4:26 PM | Comment Link |I agree! Reconciliation involves both parties and so must be a two way process.
What is refreshing about Peter Walker is this call for reconciliation is coming from someone who, as an aboriginal has himself suffered. It is not coming from white Australians placing demands on aboriginals.
It is more complex when the “perpetrators” are people in the past, long since dead. In this respect the following link may be of interest. Should we apologise for things done hundreds of years ago?
http://www.reconciliationtalk.com/pages/recwalk#
Comment by: Victoria Wells
21 01/16/07 11:49 PM | Comment Link |Mans inhumanity to man is so inconcievable. My question now is “Because it IS justifiable should it be justified?” A measure that should applied to any ‘good intention or goal.’
The unbelievable legacy of destruction that is the Indian Residential School Experience is one my family knows first hand. It is the reason my mom choose to move me away from my ‘Homelands’ and raise me in the city, away from the long ‘ingrown’ arm of the Department of Indian Affairs. In my generation the police didn’t have to come and kidnap the childern, as in my mothers and grandmothers era, the childern where just compliantly sent. In 1969 I went to Kindergarten in Vancouver, BC when all of my contemporaries were attending Christy Indian Residential School on Vancouver Island, which closed when I gradutate in 1982. It finally closed after the efforts of our chiefs and leaders began negotiating with the DIA in 1970. I am ‘home’ now and see and experience on a daily basis the challenges that are quoted above in “Soul Wound”. As a First Nations Christian Missionary I am overwhelmed at graciousness of our people who, so deeply wounded, are still willing to cautiously approach the Lord and to learn of His teachings.
Repentence is the beginning of reconciliation and sin is generational; so should we apologize for things done hundreds of years ago? I advocate; Absolutely. I have seen the blessing of just this toward the healing of another. So if an apology from a sincere heart makes the world a better place, what have we to lose? Just because we can justify not apologizing should we?
Comment by: Helen
22 01/17/07 4:37 AM | Comment Link |Victoria, thanks for your comment. I’m glad you were able to avoid the residential school experience; I’m so sorry your family and many others know it first-hand.
I agree with you that reconciliation begins with repentance, which is expressed in apologies. I think we should apologize for what was done in the past, even if it was done hundreds of years ago.
Comment by: JG
23 01/17/07 6:59 AM | Comment Link |That is my view also but it is a concept often derided by others. For me, it is not backward looking but looking forwards. It is saying, I don’t want the present and future marred by events in the past and therefore I will do all in my power to prevent the past adversely affecting the present and future.
Again I agree. One area that concerns me is over child protection policy. I don’t know how it works in the USA but here in Britian the “welfare of the child” is paramount. It is “the interests of the child” that come first. The problem is, who decides what is in the best interests of the child? Not the child! Not the parents or family of the child but in reality the state.
Whilst I fully support the principle of protecting children from abuse I do believe there should be a strong presumption in favour of keeping the child with the parents unless there are very strong grounds for not doing so.
Comment by: JG
24 01/18/07 9:50 AM | Comment Link |Further to my comment yesterday, found a reference to forced adoption in newspaper this morning with a link to the following site:
http://www.unity-injustice.co.uk/
The home page starts: