As you probably don’t know, I work for a Native American social services agency.  A few days ago I wrote this mediocre essay on the mindblowing topic of Indian Boarding Schools.  Enjoy!  If you have questions or thoughts, please post ‘em.

North American Indigenous peoples have been dealt a tough hand in our current society that has, according to 2000 Census data, placed them at and near the bottom of nearly every measurement of health and wealth.  Indigenous issues run the gamut from obesity and diabetes to alcoholism and internalized inferiority, all of which have their roots in what I believe to be misguided Western governmental policy. The following essay will discuss an issue which has touched many of my clients, co-workers and friends – forced Native American boarding schools.

Native American boarding schools were founded during President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration in 1860, and enrollment peaked in the 1970s.  A major intention of the boarding school policy was to strip Native Americans of their language, culture and religion in an effort to remove their “savageness” so they could participate in Western civilization.  Encapsulating this idea, Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, said in a speech in 1892, “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”

Students as young as five years old were forced to attend boarding schools and were violently reprimanded for speaking in their Native languages.  They were taught Christianity to replace their Native religions.  They were forced to cut their hair and to wear Western clothes.  In addition to the intended “cultural genocide” curriculum, the schools were plagued with lack of funding for health care and food, and thus many students died of disease and starvation.  Students were “leased” for hard labor during the summers to raise funds for staff salaries.   Furthermore, sexual and physical abuse was rampant.

Results from the history of forced boarding school attendance can be seen throughout Native society today.  According to a 2007 Amnesty International report, instances of sexual abuse are three and a half times more likely to occur among Native Americans than in any other ethnic group.  Alcohol, which was virtually non-existent in Native communities prior to the “Westernization” curriculum of boarding schools, quickly became abused at epidemic proportions, and the rate of alcoholism among Native Americans is currently six times the national average.

Working with Native Americans, I have personally witnessed the effects of the boarding schools.  Every single Native person in my agency that I have gotten to know – from the CEO to the Cultural Specialist to the Assistant Head Start Cook – has experienced both alcoholism and sexual abuse either directly or within their family.  I have been a part of many business meetings, talking circles, sweat lodges and spiritual events that have included an outpouring of screams and cries.   I have worked with actual students of the boarding schools as well as kids and grandchildren of boarding school attendees, and I have heard numerous horror stories of schools and witnessed their long term effects.   I have also met hundreds of Native Americans who do not know their language or their culture.  Currently, the foster care system is disproportionately filled with Native American youth.

Many of these people have described to me a feeling of incompleteness and hopelessness, a sense that society does not have a place for them.  I have heard stories and read reports that the poor parenting techniques and abuse perpetrated by boarding school attendees can be explained by their lack of decent, loving parenting models.  As a result, their children grow to parent as they were parented in a cycle of intergenerational trauma.

Yankton Chief Phil Lane Jr., the former CEO of my agency, once wrote an article comparing this episode in American and Canadian history to the question, “What if the holocaust never stopped?”  In the early 1980s, Lane created a video entitled Healing the Hurts about the Canadian Indian boarding schools.  Although initially criticized, feared and lambasted by both non-Natives and Natives alike, this video, combined with subsequent meetings of tribal elders and lobbying toward Parliament, ignited a movement that culminated in 2008 with an official apology by the Government of Canada and an agreement of financial reparations averaging close to $30,000 per boarding school attendee, with further allocations to those who were sexually abused.   The United States federal government does not appear to even admit this is a contemporary issue.

Obviously, financial reparations can help, but much more needs to be done from a social services viewpoint, including:

  • An investment in language preservation and other dying cultural elements.  This will help to fill the feeling of incompleteness of Native Americans, and work to preserve their culture into the future.
  • An increase in the education of Indigenous issues for social service and education practitioners.  An example of a lack of understanding of practitioners is regarding speech.  Non-Natives average a 1 second pause between turns in a conversation.  Natives average between 1.5 and 5 seconds between turns.  Often, non-Native counselors will interrupt their Native clients, rendering the clients voiceless.
  • A mass education campaign should be undertaken for the public at large who have been immersed in stereotypes that Natives don’t exist anymore, that they are all lazy drunks, that all Natives are the same and without cultural diversity, and that Natives are all rich from casino money.

Finally, the idea of cultural assimilation as the solution to the Indian “problem” still permeates society.  The issues stemming from the boarding schools negatively affect so much of contemporary Native life, and I feel it is time that America gives value to this conversation.  Our Indigenous population has so much to offer, from respect for elders and the environment to a strong sense of anti-materialism. We just need to help them heal and to give them a voice.

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