The Boarding School Seasons Summary

Deeper Insights on Boarding School Life: The Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940. Book by Brenda J. Child discusses the stories of Native American children, and their parents during the time of boarding schools, and how it drastically affected their lives, along with their personal experiences firsthand through letters. This contributes to our understanding of the time of boarding schools and what Native children experienced throughout their everyday lives whether it be interactions with school officials, learning to adapt to a new world, being forced to forget their tribal ways, being abused by school officials, etc. While the sudden change from home on a reservation to moving to an off-reservation white-run boarding

The personal letters from children and their parents contain information about parents’ concerns about their children's living situations, health issues, mental stressors, their desperate letters of wanting the children to be sent home, children writing to be accepted into some schools due to racism among white classmates, parents forcing their children to stay, resilience against the oppressors, etc. These important sources add to the historical context that is also stated within Child’s book and help give readers a different perspective to help examine the harshness of the boarding schools’ treatment towards Native students. For instance, children quickly became unhappy with their new lives due to being homesick for their families and tribal ways. This occurred because they’d never been away from their homes, or the schools would keep them away for years to keep their education from

50) In response, the school officials stated “It is not the policy of the school to permit pupils to go home on account of sickness in the family,” essentially thinking that by allowing children to go home, the progress made by the students would be at risk of retaining. The letters showcased in the book are not from just one group of people, they come from different groups. For instance, most of the letters are from parents and students, but include those written by school officials, and staff who work with the children. In these letters, boarding school officials would encourage families to follow assimilation goals, the need to push the white man’s civilization onto their children, the behaviors of all students, student succession, etc. Furthermore, the letters show when school officials broke the tie between their initial intentions and the painful reality the children went through. The letters within the book that I found most revealing were those of school officials and commissioners failing or not choosing to report illnesses because they did not believe their conditions were serious enough to report to parents. Due to this decision, students’ bodies would weaken quickly after not being reported or taken care of. Eventually, many students were infected with the tuberculosis