Native American Boarding School: DESTROYING a Culture

Bickford-Duane, Pauline, in his article “DESTROYING a Culture” published in the magazine Cobblestone on Jan 2015, discusses about how US Government took land and broke treaties with Native Americans.  Then they tried to make them like white people, But later US Government learned that was a bad idea.  So, they gave Native Americans back a lot of rights such as the ability to governed themselves, attend their own schools, and learn their language.

Photographs from the Carlisle Indian School show a group of Sioux boys
shortly after their arrival at the school (ABOVE) and a group
of “assimilated” Sioux students (OPPOSITE).

The author first wrote a short history of how the United States government tried to take over Native American culture. She said the government had tried for almost 100 years and over 400 agreements to find a “solution” to the Native American “problem”. But most of them were not successful. then in the late 1800s, Senator Dawes proposed a solution. The Dawes Act forced Native Americans to adopt nonnative customs, language, and clothing. Native children went to American public schools  above the photo show after their arrival at the school. That time many children died because they were exposed to American sicknesses. they were having long hair, a sense of pride for Native Americans, using their Native language and eating non-native food. The Dawes act’s goals tried to make Native Americans be American way of life.  in 1930s the Meriam report published by the Institute for Government Research showed Indians still had many problems, “… exposed the poor quality of life on reservations as well as the inhumane conditions at boarding schools (for Native American children).”  In 1934 the U.S. came out with the Indian Reorganization Act that allowed the Indians to return to self-government and have more control their lives. And a chance to re-claim their culture heritage. The Act like all the other agreements is not perfect. it cleans up many misuse of the Dawes Act.  But perhaps most importantly it “opened up the potential for dialogue between tribes and the U.S. government.”

My opinion about this article, the US government did with the Dawes Act would be like expel the Chinese New Year or all ethnic foods. In western official often talk about the country is free. But in fact, from the history and now somehow it just shows fake free. When they did those to the Indiana kids and their family. Their action totally broken their parents heart. And in this article the America still has not figured out how to treat a native minority which it gets the better of. The strong bully the weak is always the theme of the world game. But I still hope that future of the world will have more peace and less harm to each other.