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Native american boarding schools
The negative and positive and causes impact of boarding school
Indian boarding school research paper
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Indian Boarding schools dramatically changed life of young Indian children/kids. The goal of these schools were to assimilate Indian children into a Euro-American lifestyle and possibly destroy the Indian culture all together. Indian Boarding schools were notorious in the 1880s-1920s. Children were unwillingly put into these schools, their age ranging from 6-18. Many boarding schools forced on atrocious years of life for Indian children. In the early 1800s, when the Euro-Americans came onto the Indian lands, they didn’t respect or support the Native American ways or traditions and they thought Euro-American lifestyle was much better. When the Indians were later living on small reservations (that the U.S government forced them onto) and dying …show more content…
Kids would work for hours. They did a majority of the school’s work, from doing the laundry, to feeding the pigs (Marr). Some kids would work for rich Euro-American families in the summer, doing jobs the families did not want to do. Teachers at the school thought that by doing all this work, students would be taught skills that they would use when older. Children would work extremely hard, but get fed hardly anything and the food was almost always spoiled or bad …show more content…
Some of the former students had gained much Euro-American knowledge and learned English. Lots of students went back to their Indian reservation with their family. It was very difficult for some students to go back home because there were no jobs on the reservations that the schools had prepared them for. Some of these “grads” even forgot their own Native language. Other’s didn’t go back home, because they were taught that their Native traditions were wrong. So instead of going back to their reservations, they got jobs on farms or in towns
The schools provided environments for students that made them feel alone and helpless, by completely taking away the students culture, traditions, and native language. The students went into the school with little to no English skills and yet, were expected to speak English and were beaten for speaking anything but English. An article written by BBC stated, “The schools, which operated from the late 19th Century, were designed to assimilate the children into European-Canadian society by removing their language, religion, and culture. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native language.” (BBC News). This was an extremely unhealthy environment for the students because they were always scared and couldn’t really express themselves having no prior knowledge of the English language. In an interview with artist and former Residential School student Freddy Taylor stated, “When he couldn’t recite the Lord’s Prayer, he was beaten; when he couldn’t spell an English word, he was beaten; when he spoke in his native tongue of Ojibwa, he was beaten” (Eagle). These children were stripped of their identity and were beaten when they tried to recover what was left of it. Even when the children tried to adapt to the European-Canadian culture, if they would make a mistake when learning the English language, they
The Europeans were relentless in their attempts to get rid of the Native Americas the attitude of the Europeans was felt among the Native Americans.
The Europeans invaded America with every intention of occupying the land, the bountiful natural resources as well as the complete domination of the native people. The Europeans desire for the land created an explosive situation for the native peoples as they witnessed their land and right to freedom being stripped from them. They often found themselves having to choose sides of which to pledge their allegiance to. The Europeans depended upon Indian allies to secure the land and their dominance as well as trade relations with the Indians. The Indians were in competition with one another for European trade causing conflict among the different tribes altering the relationships where friends became enemies and vice versa (Calloway, 2012, p. 163). These relationships often became embittered and broke into bloody brawls where it involved, "Indian warriors fighting on both sides, alongside the European forces as well as against European forces invad...
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
In the 1830's the Plains Indians were sent to the Great American Deserts in the west because the white men did not think they deserved the land. Afterwards, they were able to live peacefully, and to follow their traditions and customs, but when the white men found out the land they were on was still good for agricultural, or even for railroad land they took it back. Thus, the white man movement westward quickly began. This prospect to expand westward caused the government to become thoroughly involved in the lives of the Plains Indians. These intrusions by the white men had caused spoilage of the Plains Indians buffalo hunting styles, damaged their social and cultural lives, and hurt their overall lives.
This program is part of the PBS series American Experience. In this episode, a critical eye is cast on the early efforts by Congress to "civilize" Native Americans. This homogenization process required the removal of Native American children from their homes and placing them in special Indian schools. Forced to stay for years at a time without returning home, children were required to eschew their own language and culture and learn instead the ways of the white man. Archival photographs and clips, newspaper accounts, journals, personal recollections, and commentary by historians relate the particulars of this era in American History and its ultimate demise. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide
Alexie Sherman, a boy under an Indian Reservation that suffers from bullying since the 1st grade, who would have a hard time being around white people and even Indian boys. US Government provided him glasses, accommodation, and alimentation. Alexie chose to use the title "Indian Education" in an effort to express his internalized feelings towards the Native American education system and the way he grew up. He uses short stories separated by the different grades from first grade to twelfth grade to give an idea of what his life was like. He seemed to have grown up in a world surrounded by racism, discrimination, and bullying. This leads on to why he chose not to use the term Native American. He used the term "Indian" to generate negative connotations
...ool to receive an education. However, being new in America, they were apt to make many mistakes, which in some cases proved deadly. In all, their experiences helped them to develop knowledge of their new homeland. They also helped them to make better decisions and better the future for their family.
In our day and age where our youth are becoming more aware of the history of the country and the people who inhabit it, the culture of Native Americans has become more accessible and sparks an interest in many people young and old. Recent events, like the Dakota Access Pipeline, grab the attention of people, both protesters and supporters, as the Sioux tribe and their allies refuse to stay quiet and fight to protect their land and their water. Many Native people are unashamed of their heritage, proud of their culture and their ancestors. There is pride in being Native, and their connection with their culture may be just as important today as it was in the 1800’s and before, proving that the boarding school’s ultimate goal of complete Native assimilation to western culture has
At these boarding schools, Native American children were able to leave their Indian reservations to attend schools that were often run by wealthy white males. These individuals often did not create these schools with the purest of intentions for they often believed that land occupied by Native American Tribes should be taken from them and put to use; it is this belief that brought about the purpose of the boarding schools which was to attempt to bring the Native American community into mainstream society (Bloom, 1996). These boarding schools are described to have been similar to a military institution or a private religious school. The students were to wear uniforms and obey strict rules that included not speaking one’s native tongue but rather only speaking English. Punishments for not obeying such rules often included doing laborious chores or being physically reprimanded (Bloom, 1996). Even with hars...
"Compressed emotions," that is the explanation a teacher once gave to the ongoing question, "What is poetry?" He said it was someone's deepest emotions, as if you were reading them right out of that person's mind, which in that case would not consist of any words at all. If someone tells you a story, it is usually like a shell. Rarely are all of the deepest and most personal emotions revealed effectively. A poem of that story would be like the inside of the shell. It personifies situations, and symbolizes and compares emotions with other things in life. Louise Erdrich's poem Indian Boarding School puts the emotions of a person or group of people in a setting around a railroad track. The feelings experienced are compared to things from the setting, which takes on human characteristics.
In conjunction to the Indian Act, any child ages three to sixteen was forcibly taken from their home and implemented into the Residential School system where they stayed for ten months of the year from September to June. It was during this time that children of the system learned basic skills in English, French, and arithmetic. This education was an active attempt to separate these children from the traditions of their family or tribes. Furthermore, unlike the multicultural education of today, residents of the schools studied a majority of Eurocentric subjects such as history and music further eradicating their cultural traditions. In addition to poor education, schools such as these were often underfunded and most of the time spent there, children learned to do “honest work” meant to prep them for a life of servitude. Girls were trained early for housework such as laundry, sewing and cooking while the boys did general maintenance and agriculture. Due to the fact that these children spent the majority of their time doing chores, most of the children only completed grade 5 by the time they were legal
The Native American Reservation system was a complete failure. This paper focuses on the topics of relocation, Native American boarding schools, current conditions on today’s reservations, and what effects these have had on the Native American way of life.
In an effort to Christianize and Americanize Native Americans boarding schools were created. Reformist hoped that by sending Native American children to these schools they would turn them into citizens that society would accept. The schools were intended to teach children to speak English, dress and wear their hair like Americans, convert them into Christian and to think like Americans. However, children that were sent away for many years would come home to only be complete strangers around their families (Townsend, 375). There were several critics during this time that made an impact on society regarding their views about boarding schools.
The Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied all of the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who speaked hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large built terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper. seashells and soapstone.To this day, movies and television continue the stereotype of Indians wearing feathered headdresses killing innocent white settlers. As they encountered the Europeans, automatically their material world was changed. The American Indians were amazed by the physical looks of the white settlers, their way of dressing and also by their language. The first Indian-White encounter was very peaceful and trade was their principal interaction. Tension and disputes were sometimes resolved by force but more often by negotiation or treaties. On the other hand, the Natives were described as strong and very innocent creatures awaiting for the first opportunity to be christianized. The Indians were called the “Noble Savages” by the settlers because they were cooperative people but sometimes, after having a few conflicts with them, they seem to behaved like animals. We should apprehend that the encounter with the settlers really amazed the natives, they were only used to interact with people from their own race and surroundings and all of this was like a new discovery for them as well as for the white immigrants. The relations between the English and the Virginian Indians was somewhat strong in a few ways. They were having marriages among them. For example, when Pocahontas married John Rolfe, many said it has a political implication to unite more settlers with the Indians to have a better relation between both groups. As for the Indians, their attitude was always friendly and full of curiosity when they saw the strange and light-skinned creatures from beyond the ocean. The colonists only survived with the help of the Indians when they first settler in Jamestown and Plymouth. In this areas, the Indians showed the colonists how to cultivate crops and gather seafood.The Indians changed their attitude from welcome to hostility when the strangers increased and encroached more and more on hunting and planting in the Natives’ grounds.