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Why Children Enter Into Boarding Schools

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There were many reasons for children to enter into the boarding schools. In some cases children were rounded up and transported to the schools without permission from their parents, some parents chose to send their children because of the lack of resources they had to care for the children, and still others thought that the education would be beneficial in the ever changing society. The reasons for sending the children were diverse. Towards the end of what is now called “The Indian Boarding school era” it was estimated that by 1931, two-thirds of Native Americans have attended a boarding school (Warne, & Lajimodiere, 2015).
According to the class text book Experiencing the Lifespan (Belsky, 2013 p. 113), the purpose of parents is to promote …show more content…

“You can ask almost anyone on any given reservation in Montana, and they will most likely be able to tell you about a relative who attended one of the schools” (Zimmerman, Personal Communication, 2015). Although boarding school policies ended in the early 1900s, many remained open into the early 1960s with the original ideology of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” (Brave Heart, 1998). I shared with her that my siblings and I are the first generation in my family to never attend a boarding school. My mother, grandmother and both great parents attended a boarding school. My mother refuses to talk about her experience while she attend a boarding school out of state. Her withdrawal on the subject and her lack of participation in traditional Native American practices only further supports the destruction the schools had on the identity of Indian …show more content…

One such factor we talked about that promotes resiliency is culture. “When individuals are able to associate their identity with their culture they tend to have more positive outlooks on life than those who do not have this association.” People who are reconnecting with their culture and participating in cultural activities, such as attending powwows, tribal ceremonies, and learning from the elders has greatly improved their wellbeing” (Zimmerman, Personal Communication,

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The First Days At Carlisle Sparknotes

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“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.

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Is The Difference Between St. Lucy's And Native American Children

172 Words | 1 Pages

In “St. Lucy’s” and the Native Americans one and the other were forced into a new culture, but had no say in this event. In some cases Native American children were kidnapped and taken to boarding schools far away from their family 's. Likewise “St. Lucy 's” had basically the same issue as the Native American children people came and took them away to a new culture they did not particularly like. Presented to Brenda J. Child author of “Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940””American Indian children who often went to school quite a distance away from home, often suffered homesickness and their parents loneliness.”.similarly the girls were also homesick and desired to see their parents. Guy B. Senese claims that “Many

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How Did The Dawes Act Contribute To The Decline Of Native Americans

927 Words | 4 Pages

The government made the “Indian children go to boarding schools run by white”, “...stopped Indian religious rituals and encouraged the spread of Christianity and the creation of Christian churches on the reservations”. (Brinkley 398). This way the government slowly but ultimately declined what was left of the Native Americans and their

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Junípero Serra

1262 Words | 6 Pages

These schools have been described as an instrument to wage intellectual, psychological, and cultural warfare to turn Native Americans into “Americans”. There are many reports of young Native Americans losing all cultural belonging. According to an interview with NPR, Bill Wright was sent to one of these schools. He lost his hair, his language, and then his Navajo name. When he was able to return home, he was unable to understand or speak to his grandmother.

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Native American Boarding Schools Summary

186 Words | 1 Pages

Throughout assimilation, there was a cultural barrier between the Indians and the teachers. At the core of this barrier was the idea that one culture was more civilized than the other. This idea can be seen in both Native American boarding schools and at St. Lucy’s. As stated in Sarah E. Stone’s dissertation, the teachers at Native American boarding schools were not “culturally familiar” (57) with the students and, as a result, treated them differently. Similarly, at St. Lucy’s the nuns saw the wolf girls as barbaric people and treated them accordingly.

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The Purpose Of Unit V: American Indians

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The purpose of the boarding schools were to strip the Indians of their culture, to punish them until they believed and practiced English ways. Boarding schools were made to isolate the children and break the patterns of their backgrounds. The adolescents at were treated horribly at the school, their hair had been cut, they had been abused for speaking the only language they knew and they were locked in closets for crying. The children of the boarding schools were neglected, they returned with the language of the English and some knowledge of christianity but they did not return with the basic skills to work in the white society. The children could no longer relate to their families and the impact was huge negativity.

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Positive Effects Of The Government Boarding School In Civilizing Native Americans

342 Words | 2 Pages

The cartoon works to portray the effects of the government boarding school for Native Americans in a positive way to show that the schools are effective in “civilizing” Native Americans. Additionally, the cartoon attempts to show that the Native Americans want to go to boarding schools and are happy to assimilate into white culture, clothes, gender roles, etc. The creation of board schools was a result of the ideology that white society was superior to the Native American way of life. Although white people agreed that the Native Americans had been treated unfairly in the past, they believed they were doing Native Americans a great service by forcing them into boarding schools, taking away their culture and traditions, and forcing them to assimilate.

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The Creation And Implementation Of The Carlisle Indian Industrial School

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They did not take the time to get to know the students, but instead made their judgements based on the clothes they wore, the language they spoke, etc. The staff of the school were quick to replace parts of Native American culture with their European American counterpart. Students were forced to cut their hair, change their diet, and were only allowed to speak english. These changes were overall extremely harmful to the students of the Carlisle Industrial Indian School. Luther describes that “the change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness was too much, and in three years nearly one half of the children from the plains were dead.”

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Mary Courchene On Native American Children

319 Words | 2 Pages

I hated them because they were Indians.” Mary Courchene, a former residential school student said this about her own parents. I believe that this is just an awful thing to happen to children, that they are pulled away from their family and told to despise them because of their skin color and culture. When the Native American children were brought to the residential schools the main goal was to assimilate them by eliminating their culture and native tongue. When I think of what Mary Courchene said I can’t help but feel unsettled, because

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Why Do Native Americans Attend Schools

168 Words | 1 Pages

Many Native Americans, as well as the pack in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, were forced to receive an education. Figures of authority tried, and usually succeeded, to force Native American children to attend school. These figures of authority did not give the Native Americans a choice in this matter, nor did they care about these individuals or their culture. Not to mention, over 100 Native American youth were chosen to attend school in PA. This was a noticeable number of people that were forced to attend school, and this was not very considerate.

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Analysis Of Gertrude Bonnin's The School Days Of An Indian Girl

1138 Words | 5 Pages

The nature of these boarding schools was to assimilate young Native Americans into American culture, doing away with any “savageness” that they’re supposedly predisposed to have. As Bonnin remembers the first night of her stay at the school, she says “I was tucked into bed with one of the tall girls, because she talked to me in my mother tongue and seemed to soothe me” (Bonnin 325). Even at the beginning of such a traumatic journey, the author is signaling to the audience the conditioning that she was already under. Bonnin instinctively sought out something familiar, a girl who merely spoke in the same “tongue” as her. There are already so few things that she has in her immediate surroundings that help her identify who and what she is, that she must cling to the simple familiarities to bring any semblance of comfort.

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Essay On Native American Boarding Schools

527 Words | 3 Pages

Neither were the parents allowed to visit their children so the time the kids were finally able to go back with their family they started to become practically like strangers to each other because they knew very little about each other especially since many of the children were younger and had spent most of their lives in these school. The lack of communication between the Native American parents and children was another reason many parents weren’t aware of the trauma the kids were suffering in the homes. The kids were so affected they remember that even at night when they were left alone to sleep they were all so quiet and no one talked about what was happening to them. The native children didn’t have normal childhoods they didn’t play or interact with each other this alone shows how affected they were with the boarding

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Native American Language Diversity

1000 Words | 4 Pages

This lead to students primarily speaking English; only using their native language at home or with extended family. Some Native Americans went as far as to outright refuse to teach their children their native language, in an attempt to protect them from similar hardships (Dick and McCarty). General Richard C. Pratt was the founder of the Native American boarding school system and was somewhat famously – or should I say infamously? – quoted as saying that his schools would, “kill the Indian to save the man” (Haynes 2). Navajo was one of the languages that was most heavily affected by the Native American boarding school system.

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Residential School Essay

800 Words | 4 Pages

Residential Schools was an enormous lengthening event in our history. Residential schools were to assimilate and integrate white people’s viewpoints and values to First Nations children. The schools were ran by white nuns and white priests to get rid of the “inner Indian” in the children. In residential schools, the children suffered immensely from physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse. Although the many tragedies, language was a huge loss by the First Nations children.

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System Theory In Social Work

1518 Words | 7 Pages

Erasmus Mundus Master in Social Work with Families and Children 4th edition - 2016-2018 1st Semester Name: Rojika Maharjan 1. Social work has evolved with different “theories in social work”; either concepts derived from other social sciences such as psychology or sociology or “theories for social work” which are the core philosophy of social work practice specified to give a professional purpose and approach to practice (Healy, 2014). a) Regarding the context of children and families, system theory and strength theory are appropriate. i)

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