Native American Boarding Schools

In 1870 the United States government decided that they wanted to remodel the Native American Culture. They began with forcing all Indians to live on small, unprotected land which they called an Indian reservation. Their next step was to put our Native children into extremely harsh boarding schools and have them stripped of their culture. They decided it would be easiest to take the culture away from our children instead of adults. In 1877 the Congress set aside $20,000 to reeducate all Native children, their goal was to “kill the Indian, and save the child.” Often times the schools that the children were assigned to could be 800+ miles from their homes and family. By the 1900s almost all of our native children were taken away from our families

Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle Barracks as a demonstration to convince the government that Indians could be reeducated in an American way. After the government agreed to reshape our culture, the numbers of boarding schools and students increased rapidly. They had an enrollment of 3,598 in 1877 and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, 20,000 Indian students were enrolled in 148 boarding schools and 225 day schools. Many of the schools that the children were forced to attend were built extremely poorly. When boys first arrive in the camps they had their hair cut short, many would have had longer hair, for having short hair was looked at poorly in the native American culture because it represented a state of mourning and was associated with death. Traditional clothing was taken away from our children. The boys were given miniature copies of military uniforms with high collars, stiff shirts, and leather boots. Long cotton dresses and hard leather shoes were given to girls. Their Indian names were taken away from them and they received Americanized names. The Blue Starred Woman, a famous Native American child that attended a boarding school says that her original name meant absolutely nothing in the camp and they were never allowed to use it. Most children had harsh discipline, especially if they were caught speaking a native language, performing a traditional ceremony, or practicing their native religion. While at the boarding

After two years of long, intensive research, the findings were published in 1928, the 847-page report mentioned numerous concerns with American Indian programs. children were in overcrowded schools and exposed to unsanitary conditions, there were several diseases and infections that were not fixed properly. The merriam commission showed that the schools are illegal because of child labor that they are having to do. The report spoke about education, policies toward American Indians, emigration, family life of American Indians, health issues, and the legal and religious aspects of the “Indian Problem.” Research showed the that Americans failed at the task of keeping us safe. In the late 19th century the United States put a plan together to have policies against the American Indian people of North America. Although Indian Boarding schools ended, many of our Indian children never