School
by Marcus Humplick
Introduction:
Beginning with the arrival of the settlers into the Americas in the 1600s, colonialism began to destroy and uproot the various indigenous communities spread across the continents. Settlers predominantly migrated to the Americas seeking refuge from the mother country, where they experienced increasing restrictions and subordination. As a result, colonists traveled to the Americas to create their own identity, nation, and community, with the tenants of freedom, liberty, and justice for all its people. However, upon arrival, they encountered the native people, who coexisted with the land, respecting the earth, sharing, upholding their traditional values of respect for the land, and fostering cultural practices and ways of life. The settlers believed that they were far superior to the indigenous people, saying that they were there to “Kill the Indian and save the man,” in the words of Captain Richard Henry Pratt, superintendent of the Carlisle boarding school in Pennsylvania. With the arrival of the settlers, they gained control over the native peoples through their most effective means: force. As Franz Fanon states through his philosophical works, colonialism is violence. He says that violence is the “natural state” of colonialism, implying that without violence to keep the colonized in place, there would be no successful colonialism.
Applying Fanon’s theory of violence in combination with the settlers’ goal of colonizing and taking control over the land and the native communities, the settlers also sought to Europeanize or Westernize the peoples, forcing them (through violence) to live their lives under God, following and adapting Christian values and ideologies. By creating a series of Praying Towns, settlers were slowly and increasingly able to convert natives to Christianity and teach them the “right” and “civilized” ways of life.
With the backing of Christianity, settlers created the idea of “school” through physical and academic institutions, churches, and other colonization practices. The word school represents a multifaceted and complex topic that encompasses the unique experiences of native peoples historically and continues to impact what it means to exist in the context of the world today. School is a place of teaching and learning for all. However, the contents and conditions of that learning, proven by history, have created much controversy and trauma, which linger today amongst natives and the general population’s lack of knowledge surrounding the field.
This essay will grapple with colonialism’s effects, particularly in prayer towns, settler towns, and Western education and religious institutions. Taking a layered approach, focusing on North and South America, I plan to analyze the different ways that schools have affected native and indigenous communities, discuss the methods and reasoning behind the creation of these spaces, the intended lessons to be ingrained into natives, and the forms of abuse and trauma caused by school experience.
Historical Context of Indigenous Boarding Schools:
Concentrated heavily in the northeast of the United States, settlers aimed to take control of the natives, reinforcing heavily Christian ideals through teaching in order to justify their stealing of the land over time. Specifically, by creating prayer towns communities created by colonial governments to convert natives to Christianity, the settlers were able to convince some natives to learn teachings from the Bibles and adopt morals that were “Christian,” “good,” “moral,” and “civilized.” Commonly, indigenous people were referred to as “savage animals” desperately in need of religion and order. Specifically, Christian missionaries worked hard to convert the Wampanoag to Christianity in what is today known as Martha’s Vineyard. Using the tactics of sermons taught in the native tongue and the emphasis on specific scripture passages, the Wampanoags, known for their friendliness and willingness to engage with the settlers, began to adopt Christianity. They “believed they had allied with an unprecedentedly powerful spirit whose guardianship renewed their hope for the future without severing their ties to the past” (Silverman 147). Essentially, though the missionaries hoped to westernize, colonize, and Christianize the Wampanoag, like a multi-identity group, they adopted a mixture of Christian teaching with their cultural practices. With the arrival of the deadly epidemics of disease that swept through the natives, including the Wampanoag, Christianity was skewed to account for the detrimental effects of the disease. Wampanoag was taught to interpret “all suffering among nonbelievers as punishment from God for their sins, which included foremost the refusal to accept God’s way” (156). Not accepting God was explained as the reason why the Wampanoag were dying from the plague and were further forced to adopt Christianity and follow it even more closely so as not to be subject to suffering and sickness.
Furthermore, Wampanoag, though adopting Christian teachings and creating their church communities within these praying towns, struggled heavily with some fundamentals of Christianity, such as sin. They believed that “spirits might punish individuals” for some time but would never be condemned or forever marked as evil if they did not repent and re-open their hearts and souls to God. They heavily believed in the goodness of all people and nature’s way of dealing with/teaching people life lessons. With Christian missionaries and small-scale schools being successful within tribes such as the Wampanoag settlers, they sought to expand their reach, causing them to turn to future generations, the youth, by creating boarding schools.
Highly importantly, most often, reports of boarding schools, Christian teachings, and colonialism are heavily focused on native Indigenous people within the United States and sometimes Canada, however neglecting the Indigenous populations that reside in parts of South America. Specifically in Mexico, the implementation of boarding schools, the current state/reparations of boarding schools, and the overall social mobility that Indigenous people possess to account for the history of schooling are pretty different from that in Canada and the United States.
For a while, like Canadian and American boarding schools such as Carlisle, the Casa del Estudiante Indígena“brought together indigenous studies from around the country and endeavored to make Mexican citizens of these primitive subjects by immersing them in the standard” Ministry of Public Education curriculum. “They were also taught carpentry, soap making, ironworking, and auto mechanics'' (Dawson 83). However, with the passage of time and the lack of funding for public institutions, the Mexican government was forced to reevaluate the ethicality and quality of boarding school education, especially for Mexico's growing Indigenous population needing equitable education.
Eventually, Mexico’s boarding school situation was predominantly meant as a revival strategy to reinforce and reintroduce opportunities for native children to make “adequate” to be successful in Mexican society. Boarding schools, notably the Internados, were” introduced during the 1950s and 1960s. Students were not trained to be promotores culturales bilingües through a series of centros coordinadores indígenas” meant to make them proficient in traditional Mexican standards of education while still recognizing their indignity to some degree. Though not as entirely oppressive and abusive as Canadian and American boarding schools, the internados served as attempts to “modernize the youth” though they were “grossly inadequate” (84).
In modern times, many indigenous Mexicans are commonly asked why they did not choose to speak out against the inadequacies that they faced in their time at the internados. Given that a significant portion of the Mexican population is indigenous and recognized as Indigenous (through a geographical location or prior engagement with indigenous-focused schools), they hold power through mass agreement to not “consent to being ruled,” making them ungovernable and commonly the center of political and social attention in Mexico.
In contrast, in America, native populations were strategically meant to be erased and pushed to the exterior of the sociopolitical sphere, further causing them not to be recognized as sovereign, independent people who needed to be in direct conversation and negotiation with the American government. Essentially, Mexico’s problems surrounding education and indigeneity are likely not to be resolved since there is no relationship between indigeneity and the land (Indigenous people are respectively in their regions of Mexico), causing them to choose not to engage with the modern Mexican society to resolve the adverse long-standing effects of the internados the oppression and labeling of Indigenous peoples and the failed assimilation into Mexican society. Canadians strongly believe that they should be financially and geographically compensated for the physical violence and abuse that many Indigenous experienced in boarding schools, as, generally, the political situation in Canada can allocate more money and resources towards reparations, unlike the US. It is expected to think of boarding schools, indigeneity, and Indigenous/mom-indigenous relations to only pertain to the US and Canada. At the same time, places such as Mexico offer a nuanced and slightly cultural difference in history and current grappling with school.
Personal Accounts of Boarding Schools:
Over time, and as reparations and visibility surrounding the effects of boarding schools begin to surface, many Indigenous people who attended schools have begun to speak out about their experiences. Having experienced the school environment during their formative years, usually as young children, the attendees of institutions such as Carlisle experienced traumatic, solitary, and unique experiences that were not discussed outside of the schooling environment. Many of these experiences were negative, numbing, or confusing, causing them not to talk to their families and descendants about their experiences. However, with recent shifts towards recognition and reparations within the last 50 years, many have begun to speak out, highlighting the inner workings of these institutions, their daily lives at school, and their traumas.
Arnold Krupat, an academic and professor at Sarah Lawrence College, produced a long work that provided the story of an indigenous person, Dan Nicholas, and his retelling of his experience at the Chilocco Indian School and Haskell Institute. Dan recalls his mother suddenly dying when he was eight years old, and shortly after, being sent to school by his grandmother, not yet being placed in the boarding program, as the school had recently formed and had not turned to more extreme measures (Krupat 41-42). At school, he was taught the “quintessential teachings from the bible,” Western education, and the English language. Life was strict at school, and he often found himself under scrutiny and extreme surveillance, not being able to even talk in native languages, engage in rituals, and have a sense of native identity at the institution. Specifically regarding Christianity, he could not “get [himself] to accept the Christian idea of hell. It seemed impossible to [him] that people would believe such a thing,” causing him to grapple with deciding “which religion [he] was going to believe in” as he believes “no Indian can escape the beliefs of his kind unless” “he knows nothing of them” (61).On the other hand, when Dan had the opportunity to escape the tight grip and watch of the staff at Haskell, he had the opportunity to meet and grow fond of Geronimo, a notable military and medicine man. He forged tight friendships with his peers who had the same experiences.
However, most shockingly, Krupat notes in his introduction to Dan’s story that “Nicholas’s words” “were probably edited substantially, at several points in the typescript” as there are “odd shifts in subject, with no transitions, and throughout the narrative, the chronology differs from what one might expect in a conventional Western life history” (41). Erasure is a highly relevant issue surrounding the visibility of Indigenous peoples’ personal experiences, as it twists or conceals the truth or makes the schools seem as though they were relatively harmless or non-traumatizing. By Dan’s words being changed and crucial moments of the Haskell experience being omitted (such as the first-day experience, or abuse stories, punishments, etc.), it causes one to wonder what was truly happening behind closed doors at these institutions.
Thankfully, the modern-day release of alternative mediums, such as films, and visibility surrounding traumatic boarding school experiences via video, image, and dialogue have allowed Indigenous peoples’ raw and unfiltered stories to be told truthfully and ethically. In an eye-opening documentary published by Al Jazeera English, the interviewees recalled traumatic anecdotes and stories regarding their early experiences at institutions such as Haskell, Wrangell, and Carlisle. One of the interviewees, James Labelle, retold the story of his arrival day at the Wrangell Institute in Alaska:
At the school, the first place we went to in the boy’s dorm was a large open area with a concrete floor, and there we were ordered to get completely undressed. Many of us did not know each other, and here we were, standing in this receiving room, and some children who did not understand the commands to get undressed, some matrons were frustrated enough that they ran over to that little guy and just literally tore his shirt off his body and forcibly pulled off his pants. Of course, the child was in tears, was frightened…There was much eerie silence among the other kids who were watching this. The little things we brought were confiscated, and we would never see them again, and we were ordered to get in line… Each kid was assigned a two-digit number written with indelible ink on our clothing … My number was 68… It was very dehumanizing to the extent that some matrons were fond of only referring to us by our number… Our dorm rooms were military-style barracks…we got settled in for the night… that is when some of them started to cry…it started with little whimpers and little sniffles, but it caught on; all it took was for one little child to start crying then another one, another one to the point where all the little kids were wailing into the night (2020, 6:08-8:13)
This source provides an unfiltered narrative shared by many children who attended these institutions, not censored or erased by external colonial forces. I am angry for those affected, as these events happened over 50 years before a documentary was published and allowed people to tell their stories. Powerful sources such as documentaries allow for visibility and for affected people to heal by talking about and processing their traumatic pasts. At the end of the documentary, the interviewees and their families talk about how they never brought up the events at the boarding schools. In the end, stories, documentaries, pictures, and art are potent methods to shed light on the trauma of boarding schools and help the affected and their families learn about and begin to heal from the trauma.
Modern Day Indigenous Education:
On a more positive note, in recent years, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries such as Mexico and Peru, boarding schools and indigenous-focused educational institutions have proven effective for indigenous students. Specifically, in these countries, before the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the boarding schools aimed to assimilate the Quechua and Nahua peoples of Peru and Mexico, respectively. As Disa Kynsjö and Amy Damon write in their article focused on Peruvian schools, “in much of Latin America, Indigenous children experience lower levels of educational attainment and achievement than their non-Indigneous peers” (116). Much of the educational inequalities exist due to many factors, including socioeconomic status, geographical location, and overall sentiments towards native and indigenous peoples. In the last ten years, “several Latin American governments have implemented bilingual or Indigenous language education programs, specifically targeting the Indigenous population” (116). In schools, typically, the classes are taught in Spanish, and history and cultural subjects, specifically indigenous studies, are not taught often in the educational setting. Additionally, with the factors of racism and discrimination that Indigenous people face in Peru and other Latin countries, in combination with the assumptions that Indigenous people do not “fit in” in the general society, plus the fact that over 40 % of Peruvians claim to have Indigenous ancestry, it proves detrimental to the education success of young Indigenous students. As a result, implementing a curriculum modified to “include culturally sensitive and Indigenous language medium materials to be implemented in regions with Indigenous populations” has proven effective in boosting Indigenous students’ educational level and test scores (118).
Specifically, in Peru, approximately 3.4 million people speak Quechua, 500,000 speak Aymara, and 240,000 speak other indigenous languages. Implementing Quechua Medium Schools has allowed Indigenous students to become bilingual, proficient in their cultural history, and equipped with tools to become professionals. Reu
A study conducted by Hynjsö and Damon examining the standard Peruvian test scores (comparable to those of an SAT or ACT) proved that Quechua medium schools have a noticeable effect on scores of Indigenous students, reporting that they are almost a total standard deviation higher than the average (mean) of a distribution of scores. Though only a standard deviation improvement of 0.429, it is reasonable to say that a Quechua-medium school environment and adequate support from families generally results in better academic performance and career trajectories.
Erasure and Representation in Education:
Despite efforts to provide accessibility and visibility to Indigenous people and students, in many parts of the Americas, specifically in the US, education for the general population remains inadequate and nonexistent. Specifically in the American school system, carefully constructed, censored, muted, and mundane histories are taught in classes, leaving students uninterested, uneducated, and unaware of their nation’s true history and construction.
James Loewen, an American historian, anthropologist, and writer, produced a book titled Lies My Teacher Told Me, focusing on the erasure and censorship of history texts and curriculum taught in schools during his time in school and during the late 20th and early 21st century. He states that “American history is full of fantastic and important stories” and “American audiences, even young ones, need and want to know about their national past, yet sleep through the classes that present it. What has gone wrong?” (Loewen 3).
What has gone wrong? Is it that we neglect history because it may potentially scar or traumatize younger students? Is it that white children and young adults should not be “condemned” or “blamed” for their existence throughout history? Or is it that image is everything and that colonialism constitutes everything that physically and socially makes up our country and society?
Whatever the reason, students, including myself, have a right to declare that history is “boring” as we were never taught significant, captivating, traumatic, and infuriating history in detail. If history was not filtered, talked about in great depth, and focused on the “controversial topics of Indigenous colonization, modern-day segregation and racism, the history of LGBTQIA+, and many more topics. However, in my school experience, I was never exposed to these topics in the level of detail I am now exposed to at Dartmouth, a liberal arts college. Growing up in the South, though attending private school, I learned surface-level information surrounding these topics. However, I was never taught or made to realize that colonialism has founded our nation and remains today in practically everything we encounter (landmarks, places, social constructs, etc.). All I knew was that Native Americans existed in the Americas before the settlers, were overpowered by settlers, were “wiped out,” and are now “going extinct.” I was not taught that Indigenous people are still very much in existence, may not be entirely culturally and biologically Indigenous (as a result of history), but still consciously maintain their sovereignty through self-identification, the fostering of a community (through gatherings), and passing-down of stories, narratives, and histories (moreso acknowledged within the last 40 years). I am appalled that I was utterly blind to even the basics of Native American Indigenous history. Thankfully, through engaging in an NAIS course, I was able to learn about the history of Indigenous people and all the methods put in place to shield society from uncovering the disturbing truth.
Lasting Effects and Reparations:
By engaging with NAIS, we are collectively beginning the lengthy process of taking responsibility for the treatment of Indigenous people throughout the world. The subtopics of violence, abuse, and dehumanization of Indigenous people carry much weight, and their acknowledgment starts the process of reparation.
Boarding Schools were highly damaging to the Indigenous people who attended and have caused many to remain silent about their past due to the sheer damage that these institutions had on the identities and functioning of these individuals. In the words of Andrea Smith, American academic, feminist, and activist, she argues “the U.S. should be required to make reparations by addressing the continuing effects of human rights violation perpetrated by board school[s],” many of the violations being “increased physical, sexual, and emotional violence in Native communities; unemployment and under-employment in Native communities; increased suicide rated; increase substance abuse; loss of language and loss of religious/cultural traditions; increase depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; and increase child abuse (Smith 92). The only way that reparations can be made is through personal efforts to discuss the trauma and to continue to fight for sovereignty.
Sovereignty can be exhibited in many ways, whether through active resistance to colonial power, personal actions of maintaining tradition, or even through the mediums of art and literature. Louise Erdrich, a renowned author, focuses on indigenous communities and experiences. Specifically, in her early novels, she creates the stories of many young Indigenous children who experience lives during extreme colonial times. She writes from the main character’s perspective, illustrating their interactions with their families, their experiences at boarding schools, the abuse they may have experienced, and even the beautiful moments during their school years, essentially giving an overview of the detrimental effects of school without directly blaming/name-calling. By employing these storytelling strategies, first, searching for accountability and recognition, and second, she can promote the education of the general population surrounding boarding schools and cultural awareness and identity through depictions of real Indigenous family dynamics/stories. As an English scholar, Miriam Schacht writes, “Erdich’s characters emphasize the centrality of the land, and the loss, to the tribe; it is what forms the central trauma of many of her novels. The loss or abandonment of children is another central theme, but it is largely represented as individual, not systemic. Children are frequently abandoned by their parents, often by a choice the parents make”...“The trauma is there, but the systematic nature of it is erased” (Schacht 78). Erdich’s ways of storytelling separate the systemic nature of abuse, oppression, and misfortune. Essentially, this disconnect between systematic oppression, robbery of land, and dehumanization by the settlers is possible through her narrative and experience-oriented writing. Instead of criticizing the settlers, condemning them, and blaming them for the ruin of Indigenous land and communities, the storytellers indirectly imply the negativity that is colonialism. In a way, this form of writing promotes sovereignty–the freedom to depict one’s story the way one wants to, in the tone one wants, and with the characters one wants. Sovereignty means having the power and selectivity to represent a community through an accurate and just lens.
Conclusion:
This essay has examined the many complex aspects of school, the experiences lived by Indigenous people, and the overall education that the world has received surrounding Indigenous communities in schools. From analyzing the geographical history of the early settling areas and prayer towns to examining the indigenous-oriented schools in South America, it is evident that school is a fundamental aspect of many nations’ societies. By examining the highly negative aspects of these institutions throughout history and the more recent positive aspects of schools, we see that school has multifaceted implications.
Contemporary educational practices such as Quechua-Medium schools show some improvement in the dynamics between indigenous people and the rest of the population. However, it will take much more than “fixing” the schools to begin to account for the reparations necessary to begin the process of reconciliation and acknowledgment.
Reflecting on why it is essential to talk about school in general, school can shape a society and influence people in terms of how they view the world and interact with one another. A proper, well-rounded education that does not conceal the truth, no matter the subject’s weight, is highly beneficial for navigating coexistence and recognizing/appreciating Indigenous people. Due to my lack of schooling surrounding Indigenous communities in my country and around the world, I chose the topic of school not only to learn more about Indigenous people and their struggles but to highlight that I had to physically search for the knowledge, elect/choose to learn about a subject that is most commonly glossed over in general education. This knowledge gap that I had re-emphasizes the importance of addressing these educational flaws worldwide.
It remains crucial to keep researching and learning about Indigenous communities. Through uncovering hidden stories of the past and collectively providing a platform for those affected to come forward, we, as a larger community, can join together and help facilitate the healing process for Indigenous communities. Talking about boarding schools, education, and sovereignty is extremely important to be talked about in our classrooms, especially with Indigenous people in them. Education not only helps our future generations to become more sensitive and aware of our history but also begins to recognize and honor the suffering that many Indigenous people went through. Let us commit to learning, advocating, and ensuring that Indigenous communities’ voices and stories are heard.
References
Dawson, A. S. (2012). “Histories and Memories of the Indian Boarding Schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States.” Latin American Perspectives 39 (5): 80–99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41702285.
Hynsjö, Disa, and Amy Damon. 2016. “Bilingual Education in Peru: Evidence on How Quechua-Medium Education Affects Indigenous Children’s Academic Achievement.” Economics of Education Review 53 (August): 116–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.05.006.
Krupat, A. (2023). From the Boarding Schools: Apache Indian Students Speak. JSTOR. University of Nebraska Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.455884.8.
Loewen, James W. 2008. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Google Books. The New Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5m2_xeJ4VdwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=teaching+native+american+history&ots=PC_uvi7Pvl&sig=Dl1C7VhHl3JPRQdMLk1Ok_RZx_0#v=onepage&q=teaching%20native%20american%20history&f=false
Schacht, M. (2015). “Games of Silence: Indian Boarding Schools in Louise Erdrich’s Novels.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 27 (2): 62. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.27.2.0062.
Silverman, David J. 2005. “Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Martha’s Vineyard.” William and Mary Quarterly 62 (2): 141. https://doi.org/10.2307/3491598.
Smith, A. (2004). “Boarding School Abuses, Human Rights, and Reparations.” Social Justice 31 (4 (98)): 89–102. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768278.
“Unspoken: America’s Native American Boarding Schools.” 2023. Www.youtube.com. March 13, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OtfBPE4u1U.