Indian Residential Schools is a horrible event that happened from the 1840s until the 1990s. From these past mistakes in judgement, the education system has added curriculum to bring more knowledge to the event. By doing this we read “Indian Horse” by Richard Wagamese which is a fictional novel based on true events. It is about an Ojibway boy who experienced the hardships before, during, and after the Indian Residential School. The importance of learning the past is to ensure that this can be prevented in the future, to recognize what happened, and to help those affected by Indian Residential Schools.
The Native Americans were taught the white people's culture and language. The goal of the white man's school was to teach the Native Americans their ways so that they would forget their own culture. They were taught to be responsible for yourself and not to help the group. They were taught that if you work in solidarity then you get to the top at the expense of others. 4.
The perception was that Native American adults had a limited ability to learn new skills and concepts. Later in the report, it is expressed that children learn little at day school, causing their “tastes to be fashioned at home, and [their] inherited aversion to toil is in no way combated. ”11 Davin recommended that similar industrial boarding schools should be built in Canada, which would attempt to assimilate Native children into the European culture.12 Nicholas Flood Davin’s research and advances about the industrial schools in America, was important in the creation and developing of the Residential school system in
“The First Days at Carlisle”: Critical Analysis “The First Days at Carlisle” by Luther Standing Bear takes place in the year of 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the Carlisle school, a federal boarding school. The purpose of the school was to force the Native American children to assimilate to the white man's culture and to eradicate their culture and traditions. At the school Native Americans children were taught the ways of the white man, but they were not given beds, they were not well fed, they were treated like prisoners, and they were taken advantage of. Throughout the short story “The First Days at Carlisle,” Luther Standing Bear shows how the Native American children were not well taken care of at the Carlisle school.
In the novel “The Surrounded” by D’Arcy McNickle the author depicts the conflicts that many Native Americans went through when they were sent into the “white man’s world”. Native Americans were forced to attend boarding schools and taught to be “civilized” causing many to become alienated with their culture. McNickle shows the disconnection that Native Americans went through and felt between both worlds. They no longer fit in the Native American world and would never fit in with the rest of the world. While Europeans often times thought that they were saving Native Americans and teaching them the right ways to live reality was that assimilation and forced ideals led to the destruction of individuals.
Expectations often impose an inescapable reality. In the short story “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie, Victor often struggles with Indian and American expectations during school. Alexie utilizes parallelism in the construction of each vignette, introducing a memoir of tension and concluding with a statement about Victor’s difficulties, to explore the conflict between cultures’ expectations and realities. Alexei initially uses parallelism to commence each vignette with cultural tension. In second grade, Victor undergoes a conflict with his missionary teacher, who coerced Victor into taking an advanced spelling test and cutting his braids.
Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education” describes his personal experience as a Native American in the American school system while growing up in the 1970s. In this historical period, many white Americans discriminated against those of different races and ethnicities. In this short story, Alexie attempts to open the eyes of white Americans who do not realize what Native Americans and other groups go through to inform them of the hardships he encountered all his life by utilizing stereotyping and the organization of his writing. The intended audience of "Indian Education" is white Americans who either did not realize or were negligent of the troubles Native Americans were enduring.
For every 100 American Indian/Alaska Native kindergartners, only seven will earn a bachelor's degree, compared to 34 of every 100 white kindergartners” (NCSL). Indigenous children mostly have to deal with these issues when going to schools on their reservations. The schools they attend are often low on budget and do not deliver the education they need fully. Due to their low-quality schools, it can cause them not to understand the material and drop out, can cause behavioral issues, and make them not pursue higher education. Though Natives not only face issues in their education system, but face medical issues as well, “In general, Indigenous populations have higher rates of certain medical conditions than the general U.S. population.
Presents his incisive challenge to this culture” (Cooper). Her adaptation of his work tries to communicate to readers that the circumstances you are born into do not hinder you from greatness. This research shows the difficulty of being an educated native Indian, amongst the Sioux tribe in 1890. Through his writing, he tries to
Those kids got the message that no matter what they learned at home in their tribal cultures, it was wrong. The worst part was, some of the people teaching and working at those schools abused them”(Pearson et al. 11). The adage is a adage. It was clear that the goal of these Native American Boarding Schools was to assimilate young generations of indigenous people and erase their cultures from American society. To add, the “educators” themselves were complicit in even violating the law.
Merrell’s article proves the point that the lives of the Native Americans drastically changed just as the Europeans had. In order to survive, the Native Americans and Europeans had to work for the greater good. Throughout the article, these ideas are explained in more detail and uncover that the Indians were put into a new world just as the Europeans were, whether they wanted change or
Assignment #02: Section A: Of the questions that have been raised, Native Americans should be recognized more for founding our society today, should be taught about more thoroughly and accurately, and shouldn’t be assumed to be savages or uneducated as we normally presume them to have been. I learned many new things from the “The New World” chapter from the American Yawp textbook. Among these things, I learned about the different ways the Native Americans thought about their creation, that the males married into the female’s families instead of vice versa, and how the Spaniards incorporated the Native Americans into their colonial lives. The Native Americans had many stories about how they were created, ranging from a bald eagle forming them to emerging from caves. Secondly, I found it interesting that, unlike in our culture today, men married into a woman’s family to gain influence in society.
“The significance of Native American boarding school was that Americans were trying to assimilate their culture and their way of living.” Many Native Americans today have very different opinions to how their people were placed in Indian boarding school. “Many Native Americans think that it helped their people be more civilized and help them live in american ways. ”While other Native Americans think that boarding schools were a place where they were torchered and a place where they lost their freedom and their culture. “Most people agree that Indian Boarding schools were just trying to help indians be more civilized, but others can see the wrong in the schools.”
The importance of pursing higher education in the Native American community is something that is personal to me, but is something that affects everyone. Everyone has some knowledge of U.S. history, however, Native American history is only a subset of this country’s narrative. The fact that European immigrants invaded the native’s land and committed incomplete genocide, through massacres such as the Seminole Wars and Wounded Knee Massacre, yet it is not taught in schools is puzzling. Considering that American Indians are native and true to this country, it should be fair to say that their accurate history should be the history taught in the classroom. With the inaccurate teachings of Native Americans and exactly how this country was founded,
government on the Native society was boarding schools that began in the late 19th century. Native children, as young as five years old, were taken from their families off the reservations thousands of miles away to boarding schools. One of those boarding schools was the Carlisle Industrial School, which opened in 1880, founded by Captain Richard Harry Pratt. The sole purpose of these schools was to assimilate the next generation of Native’s into the Anglo society. The boys were taught mechanical and agriculture skills, while the girls were taught domestic lessons such as sewing and cleaning.
