The logic of events demands the absorption of the Indians into our national life, not as Indians, but as American citizens… The Indians must conform to “the white man’s ways,” peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must…conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it…The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed, and the family and the autonomy of the individual substituted. -Thomas Jefferson Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1889

INTRODUCTION

In struggling to understand the frequency of violence against women in our communities, many Native American and Alaskan Native people believe that the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual assault in Native communities has its roots in the forced removal of Native children from their families to religious and government operated boarding schools. We believe that the problems affecting both rural and urban tribal communities today are a direct result of several generations of Indian children who were taken from their families and suffered abuse in over 300 boarding schools across this country beginning in 1879 and continuing well into the 1950s.1

Many children who were taken from their homes learned lessons of self-hatred, and domestic and sexual violence, and brought these ways back into their communities. The boarding school era of Native American experience created one of the most tragic chapters of loss in Native cultural identity, and left in its wake a legacy of domestic and sexual violence, alcoholism, displacement, and suicide that continues to affect tribal communities today.

To completely understand the impact of the boarding school era, one must not only look at the historical events of this period but also examine federal policy, religious influence, societal values, and western colonization.

FROM DAY SCHOOL TO BOARDING SCHOOL

The first boarding schools were started in the sixteenth century and were operated by Catholic missionaries whose goal was primarily to acculturate Native children. In the 1880s, however, the U.S. government began the “boarding school experiment”, another chapter of federal Indian policy that attempted to eradicate Native culture through the forced education and assimilation of Native children.2 Treaties signed between the federal government and tribes commonly included the “six to sixteen” clause, a provision that obligated the federal government to provide schools and teachers for Native children between the ages of six and sixteen.3

Initially, the federal government funded day schools for Indian children that were operated by churches and missionaries. This allowed children to attend school during the day and be with their families at night. Day schools weren’t as effective an agent of change as the government had hoped because children were still connected to their culture: speaking their language and practicing their tribal ways at home. Day schools didn’t last long.

The federal government’s second attempt to move Native children into mainstream society was the creation of off reservation boarding schools that allowed children to visit their families only during the summer and on holidays, with the condition that family members be allowed to visit their children while they were at school. This condition was soon recognized as counterproductive to enculturation, as Native children were still influenced by family members during visits with them.

The final stage of the government plan was the creation of Indian boarding schools far away from home villages and reservations starting in 1879. Children at these boarding schools were not permitted to visit their families, and were expected to stay for a minimum of four years. Captain Richard Henry Pratt was a key figure in this era of the boarding school. Pratt had been a veteran of the Indian wars and his philosophy of “kill the Indian and save the man” was instrumental in the government’s approach to the assimilation of Native children. It is at this time that the government began to attempt the cultural cleansing of Indians by the forced removal of their children to schools where they would be isolated from their family, and where the government could effectively get rid of anything Indian remaining in the child, in effect, killing the Indian in the child.

This philosophy was the goal of the boarding schools, with at least one founder and administrator proclaiming it in his commencement address.4 The commonly used term “savage” as a reference to Native people allowed the boarding school policy to prevail during this era. If the idea that the government was “helping” Native children to change their “savage” ways and become members of mainstream society was popularized, it justified what in any other context would amount to kidnapping and abusive treatment.

It is admitted by most people that the adult savage is not susceptible to the influence of civilization, and we must therefore turn to his children, that they might be taught to abandon the pathway of barbarism and walk with a sure step along the pleasant highway of Christian civilization…They must be withdrawn, in tender years, entirely from the camp and taught to eat, to sleep, to dress, to play, to work, to think after the manner of white man. -Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1866 5

Native children as young as six years old were taken from their families to these institutions, in many cases deliberately far away from their homes so that distance would strengthen the process of forced acculturation and education. There were also situations where children as young as three and four years old were sent to boarding schools. As an elder Julia Barton recalls: “I was three and a half then. I couldn’t even reach the sink to turn on the water. The older girls took care of me. They lifted me up so I could wash my hands.”6

Living conditions on the reservations during this time were deplorable: poverty, starvation, disease and death were commonplace. These conditions were a significant influence on some Native families to relinquish their children to the boarding schools that promised them a better life. Some tribal leaders foresaw that the future survival of their tribe meant that their children would have to learn “white man ways” and so willingly placed their children in boarding schools. However, many times children were taken involuntarily, rounded up like cattle, and parents were forced to turn them over to the Indian agents. Should a family resist, food and rations were withheld, and threats of imprisonment and intimidation were used to coerce them to give up their children.7 The lengths to which some parents went to try to keep their children are tragic: for instance, in  1895 a group of Hopi men surrendered to the U.S. cavalry and chose imprisonment at Alcatraz rather than give up their children.8

I would…use the Indian police if necessary. I would withhold from (the Indian adults) rations and supplies…and when every other means was exhausted…I would send a troop of United States soldiers, not to seize them, but simply to be present as an expression of the power of the government. Then I would say to these people, ‘Put your children in school,’ and they would do it. -Thomas Jefferson Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1866 ⁹

Originally published here