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Ethnocide In The School House Analysis

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Response Paper 3 The article, “Ethnocide in the Schoolhouse: Missionary Efforts to Educate Indian Youth in Pre-Reservation Wisconsin” describes various efforts at attempts to ‘educate’ the Native Americans native to Wisconsin and those who have moved to Wisconsin as a result of resettlement treaties. However, what these attempts at education were really designed to do was to assert control over the Native population. The education that the Native Americans were forced to receive was really an extension of the war that preceded it, and were both part of an imperialistic U.S. policy towards the Native Americans in Wisconsin. As a result of the Black Hawk War, a dramatic shift occurred in the population of Wisconsin. Before the war, American Indians owned Wisconsin. (Moranian 243) After the …show more content…

(Moranian 246-247) While Protestant, Catholic, and Methodist missionaries all had slightly different methods and philosophies in converting and educating the Native people of Wisconsin, the U.S. government which assisted in funding these missionaries cared more about the ends rather than the means. (Moranian 247) The ends of course being Native Americans who lived, behaved, and spoke the same language as whites. Despite any good intentions of the missionaries, that is exactly what they did. The best example of this is how white gender roles were forced upon Native Americans: “[Indian] Boys were taught the essentials of farming, despite the prevailing tribal attitude that farming was a demeaning exercise to be left for the women. Similarly, Indian girls were instructed in cooking, sewing, knitting, and cleaning, using foods, materials, and techniques that were out of place in Indian society.” (Moranian 253) These gender roles were the foundation of the white American family and society, and these values were crucial to U.S. domination of Native

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