The education of the American Indian was heading the assimilation process that began when reformers and government policy makers agreed that to educate the Indian was to “civilize the savage” (Holman, n.d). By educating the Indians, it was thought that it would be giving him, or her, the opportunity to live and work among the whites; preparing them to become farmers, citizens and self-sufficient members of the population (Holman n.d). Boarding schools were one method of education used to assimilate the Indian people.
During the boarding school experience, children who did not embrace the white culture suffered traumatic changes as they saw their old culture seemingly disappear. The educational process they were forced to endure was at times cruel and unjust (Holman, n.d). Educators expected students to adjust quickly. Rather than letting the children take a natural course of change which would be slow, but eventual, they took an approach that was both quick and aggressive (Holman, n.d). The boarding school experience and the education philosophy of the government that brought such schools to life left a “legacy of
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It was their desire to make advances for Indian causes. For example, two sisters, Susan and Suzette La Flesche used their education to lecture and lobby Congress for Indian rights (Holman, n.d.). Continuing in the family path, their brother Francis became the first Indian anthropologist (Holman, n.d). Even more impressively, the sisters used their education to become members of the medical community. Suzette, following her attendance to the University of Nebraska, worked as a volunteer nurse among the Poncas. Susan became the first female Indian physician following her graduation from the Hampton Institute and the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. She then returned west to work as the government reservation doctor for the Omahas (Calloway,