Death Became Their Scapegoat: The Boarding School Trauma Effects
In this article the author traces native language usage among three generations of a Lakota family, explaining one woman's decision not to teach her children Lakota to protect them from abuse at a boarding school and her descendants' efforts to learn and preserve their language (Haase). Phyllis’s was a third generation Lakota child. Phyllis’s mother never taught her Lakota because she feared harm would come to her. Phyllis felt that what American settlers did to her mother killed her. The experience from the boarding school never left the Lakota children for example Phyllis’s mother was abusing alcohol as a result of her childhood experience. Phyllis says that she “saw how the
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They began moving West due to the arising conflicts with neighboring tribes and diminishing sources of food and clothes caused by the migration of buffalo and white settlers’ expanding west. The Lakota believed, migrating to the west, would help avoid confrontation with American settlers and their problems would be resolved. (Burke, Greene, and Earring) The Lakota, like many other Native American tribes, ended up falling victim to Manifest Destiny, the widely held belief that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent no matter who was in their way (ushistory.org). The Lakota were a barrier between American settlers and expansion. The United States had two options: one was essentially committing genocide or to exterminate all the Lakota in their way, or convert all the Native Americans to Christianity as they felt this to be a better option than committing genocide. The Americans claimed, “They would simply kill the Indian and save the man”(Little Elk). American settlers felt the best approach would be to target the younger children and teenagers since they could be placed in boarding schools and be converted to Christianity. They soon figured it would be simply easier to begin the brainwashing at an early age as their minds were more malleable than adults. The Lakota children suffered substantial mental and emotional long-term effects; ultimately …show more content…
The creation of the boarding schools at the start of the 20th century was used to “Civilize and Americanize” Native children so that they could function in American society. (Little Elk) They wanted to culturally transform the Lakota children and make them civilized to American customs. The education they received in boarding schools was also encouraged cultural assimilation, where the Lakota children did not speak their native tongue but English. The Lakota children were only trained to function in specific fields. The girls for example where taught to be domestic workers, they were to cook, clean and sew (American Indian Relief Council). The boys on the other hand obtained other skills for example shoemaking, blacksmithing, or performed manual labor like farming (American Indian Relief Council). Instead of boys learning to hunt and girls learning to pick berries, they where taught to do basic labors expected of them in the new American culture they were being taught. There were consequences when these tasks where refused, which resulted in harsh beatings. There was no waiting for the punishment to begin; as soon as some children had arrived to the boarding school they experienced their first traumatic experience. In the Native American culture the cutting of hair meant a relative had died and as the Lakota children were all forced to stand in line
The perception was that Native American adults had a limited ability to learn new skills and concepts. Later in the report, it is expressed that children learn little at day school, causing their “tastes to be fashioned at home, and [their] inherited aversion to toil is in no way combated. ”11 Davin recommended that similar industrial boarding schools should be built in Canada, which would attempt to assimilate Native children into the European culture.12 Nicholas Flood Davin’s research and advances about the industrial schools in America, was important in the creation and developing of the Residential school system in
In “St. Lucy’s” and the Native Americans one and the other were forced into a new culture, but had no say in this event. In some cases Native American children were kidnapped and taken to boarding schools far away from their family 's. Likewise “St. Lucy 's” had basically the same issue as the Native American children people came and took them away to a new culture they did not particularly like. Presented to Brenda J. Child author of “Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940””American Indian children who often went to school quite a distance away from home, often suffered homesickness and their parents loneliness.”.similarly the girls were also homesick and desired to see their parents. Guy B. Senese claims that “Many
One of the examples would be the clothing that the Whites forced them to wear, some Native Americans dislike the pieces that they were forced to put on, and resisted. They wanted to retain their tribal clothing. Yet still, this was a plan of the white men to brainwash and teach the Native Americans of being civilized and assimilate them into the Western culture. “According to the white man, the Indian,
During the 1840, the United States was able to access much more land in the west than previously before. The United States saw this as an opportunity to expand their territories and to settle and obtain all things the land has to offer. The United States justified their actions through the idea of Manifest Destiny, which they viewed to be a harmless and benevolent philosophy. Manifest Destiny was in fact not as benign as the United States has come to believe; it caused the colonization and imperialism of land that held many Natives who were eventually killed or sent into reservations. People in the southern region of the conquered land were greatly influenced by this expansion as well; it caused many families who were living in the Texas area
Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The foundation of America is freedom. Freedom from Britain. However, the freedom is limited to white males who own property. When colonists started to immigrate to America, they wanted to escape from under the rule of Britain.
These schools were part of a plan devised by well-intentioned, eastern reformers led by Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast who also helped establish organizations such as the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Boston Indian Citizenship Association, and the Women’s National Indian Association. The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to “assimilate” Indian tribes into the mainstream of the “American way of life;” the Protestant Republican ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to “civilize” Indian people, make them accept white men’s beliefs and value
The Navajo children are immediately told at a very young age that the culture they have been learning from a very young age is considered inferior to the English language and the white men of America. The attempt to forget Indian culture was nearly successful as the instructors in the boarding school made many Navajos agitated and afraid to speak their Native language years after they graduated from the boarding school. In fact, the mission’s motto was “Tradition Is The Enemy Of Progress” (Bruchac 23). It was also written in front of the mission school. The boarding school went to desperate measures to tell the Navajo kids that what they followed was wrong and an enemy of making progress.
These schools have been described as an instrument to wage intellectual, psychological, and cultural warfare to turn Native Americans into “Americans”. There are many reports of young Native Americans losing all cultural belonging. According to an interview with NPR, Bill Wright was sent to one of these schools. He lost his hair, his language, and then his Navajo name. When he was able to return home, he was unable to understand or speak to his grandmother.
1. Pratt opposed reservations because Jefferson’s treaty agreement meant the Great River would be the border between them and the whites. Indians would be isolated and not a part of the American life. 2. Schools would “kill the Indian and save the man” by introducing them to the life of an American.
In Oglala Women, Myth, Ritual and Reality, Marla Powers portraits a powerful Native American community- Oglala, one of the main tribes of the Lakota (allied people) alliance located on the Oglala Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They are known for being one of the biggest reservations in the United States who won the war in 1868 against the United States. In this book, Powers focuses on the women’s role within their community and how their sacred traditions and religion shaped their culture. Therefore, by using various readings on Lakota practices, this paper will examine the gender roles in Oglala culture in terms of marriage, religion and the effect that Americanization and Christianity have had on their culture and how they compare
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
Neither were the parents allowed to visit their children so the time the kids were finally able to go back with their family they started to become practically like strangers to each other because they knew very little about each other especially since many of the children were younger and had spent most of their lives in these school. The lack of communication between the Native American parents and children was another reason many parents weren’t aware of the trauma the kids were suffering in the homes. The kids were so affected they remember that even at night when they were left alone to sleep they were all so quiet and no one talked about what was happening to them. The native children didn’t have normal childhoods they didn’t play or interact with each other this alone shows how affected they were with the boarding
The nature of these boarding schools was to assimilate young Native Americans into American culture, doing away with any “savageness” that they’re supposedly predisposed to have. As Bonnin remembers the first night of her stay at the school, she says “I was tucked into bed with one of the tall girls, because she talked to me in my mother tongue and seemed to soothe me” (Bonnin 325). Even at the beginning of such a traumatic journey, the author is signaling to the audience the conditioning that she was already under. Bonnin instinctively sought out something familiar, a girl who merely spoke in the same “tongue” as her. There are already so few things that she has in her immediate surroundings that help her identify who and what she is, that she must cling to the simple familiarities to bring any semblance of comfort.
In Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, Alexie’s father’s love for books grew to make his self-love books ending up in Alexie teaching himself how to read. Alexie describes the stereotypes and what is expected of Indian children and how Indian children were expected to basically have no knowledge Many lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but invalidated them on the outside. While other children were doing this, Alexie’s father was one of the few Indians on the reservation who went to Catholic School on purpose and was also an devoted reader. Alexie grew up around books. His father had a strong love for books as he bought them by the pound from pawn shops, goodwill and the salvation army.
The text “School Days of an Indian Girl” by Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) is an autobiographical short story written in the early 1900’s in which the author recounts her experience in a government-subsidized boarding school. The purpose of her short story is to show the difficulties of being a Native American in a white, American-dominated school while at the same time showing how white Americans treated the Native American minority in educational situations or environments while her audience targets people with similar experiences as her or arguably even the white Americans due to the text being in the lingua franca, English. In this text, the author has an interesting way of representing her white American counterparts due to her culture’s