Zitkala-Sa's Native American Stories

Gansworth shows evidence of the school's policy to "kill the native" destroying any pride in the students' native cultures and instilling a perceived superior white culture in the students. In Native American Stories Zitkala-sa writes about some of her experiences at the Carlisle school recounting most notably an "opium-eater holding a position as a teacher." Zitkala-sa goes on to describe the aforementioned teacher saying, "I find it hard to count that white man a teacher who tortured an ambitious Indian youth by frequently reminding the brave changeling that he was nothing but a 'government pauper (92).'" From Zitkala-sa's perspective, one may see the unscrupulous types that were hired to supposedly save the American Indian. Feelings

Coupled with the deceiving of the school inspector, a disingenuousness in the future success of the Native American students is revealed. Ultimately Ziktkala-sa concludes, "I slowly comprehended that the large army of white teachers in Indian schools had a larger missionary creed than I had suspected. It was one which included self-preservation quite as much as Indian education (92)." Zitkala-sa is referring to self-preservation of white culture as a prevailing goal of the off reservation boarding school. In both Gansworth's writing and David Wallace Adams' Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, students recall school administrators cutting the children's hair, changing their manner of dress, their diets, and names to fit in with white culture. Furthermore, both authors describe accounts of militaristic regimentation and discipline. According to Adams, students resisted in many ways including perpetuating tribal traditions in secret. Parents also would reintroduce tribal cultural values to their children during visits home as a means to resist the cultural snobbery of the Carlisle School (20,Davis). In Julie Davis' American Indian Boarding School Experiences: Recent Studies from Native Perspectives, she cites Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940

Zitkala-sa recounts in American Indian Stories how her brother returned home after his education with skills that he was unable to put to use on the reservation because the position he occupied for a brief period went to a white man instead (92). Native Americans were never fully able to obtain equality after their education and were therefore in many cases were left off worse than before. According to Indian Boarding School Experience, Substance Use, and Mental Health Among Urban Two-Spirit American Indian/Alaska Natives, a sample population of 447 adult Native Americans who attended boarding schools as children were compared with those with no history with boarding schools in regards to mental health and substance abuse. The results demonstrated that former attendees of Indian boarding schools had higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse and were more susceptible to thoughts of suicide or attempted suicide. Those raised by former Indian boarding school students were at higher risk for anxiety disorder, ptsd, and suicidal thoughts (421). The effects of Native American boarding schools such as the Carlisle School are still felt today in Native American