Ward Churchill's 'Save The Man'

Ward Churchill wrote Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools in 2004. The book goes through the history of the mandatory attendance of Native American children at boarding schools. The title feeds on the concept that by killing off the Indians as children in these glorified concentration camps the government was saving the rest of society. Throughout the book, Churchill goes through the history of how the kidnapping of children was sanctioned by United States government before the Nazis did it. Native Americans have the highest mortality rate of any U.S. minority because of U.S. action and policy. The biggest killers though were smallpox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. All imported by the Europeans colonists.

The goal of this was to assimilate them into mainstream Canadian culture. However, many of the schools went much further than separation and isolation. In the context of residential schooling, killing the Indian meant disconnecting children physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually from their language, culture and their communities. Even more significant was the separation from their own sense of identity as being Indian. A physical disconnection was achieved by removing children from loving families and communities and forcing them to grow up in institutions among prejudiced strangers. Mental disconnection was achieved by forbidding children to use their own languages or any familiar customs that may have given them comfort. Emotional disconnection was achieved by teaching children that the parents, grandparents and Elders they so loved were savages, and their own bodies and racial characteristics were sinful and dirty. Spiritual disconnection was achieved by teaching children to adopt the new religion or suffer God’s wrath