The Smell of the White Man Is Killing Us: Education and Assimilation Among Indigenous Peoples

Introduction

A cursory glance at Euro-colonial encounters clearly illustrates the close connection between assimilating indigenous peoples¹ and educating them. In North America the Spanish, French, and English all carried similar attitudes about the “savagery” and “barbarism” of the indigenous peoples and believed that the twin engines of Christianization and education would produce a people more palatable to European sensibilities. In the case of Australia, the colonizers transplanted attitudes and ideas about indigenous peoples and benefited from the English experience in other parts of the empire. There exists a wide array of scholarly works on colonization and colonialism, yet only a handful of scholars have focused on the importance of institutions, namely boarding schools, in realizing the economic and philosophical goals of the dominant colonizing powers. Moreover, much of the scholarship considers a single area or cultural group and does not utilize transnational comparisons.²

The value and future importance of transnational history was highlighted in a series of summer conferences convened in Florence, Italy, between 1997–2000 that brought together an international array of scholars to discuss theories and practical applications of globalizing American history. The intellectual product of these deliberations was “The LaPietra Report: A Report to the Profession” which was endorsed by the Organization of American Historians and provided a number of recommendations and directives for U.S. historians. The report advocated the blurring of fixed national boundaries, using a cross-cultural approach in teaching and research, and incorporating a wider range of historical narratives into the scholarly discussion of events. The challenges presented have resonated with scholars of indigenous peoples in North America for over two decades due to the complex intersection of colonial powers, tribal cultures, and linguistic groups that affect indigenous history in North America. The comparisons between Canada and the United States, and to a lesser extent Mexico, are obvious to scholars in the field. To extend these comparisons to a wider geographic scope and to a larger sampling of indigenous cultures, however, requires a broad command of national histories, theory (post-modern, post-colonial, and post-structuralist), imperialism, and indigenous history, to name a few.³

The task of comparing (and by its very nature contrasting) indigenous boarding schools in the United States and Australia require new modes of thinking about research and a very clear theoretical structure. The process of comparing two societies, albeit quite similar in some respects, and their approaches to indigenous education requires understanding differing definitions and goals of assimilation, considering different notions of race and racism vis-à-vis indigenous peoples, interpreting government policies affecting indigenous people, and determining the cultural value that each nation places on education as a “civilizing” agent. The scholarly and theoretical challenges involved in this study are significant, yet the robust intellectual discourse that will emerge makes the effort worthwhile and enriching.⁴ In addition, as Richard Slatta recently noted, “to limit the subject of historical inquiry within national boundaries is always to invite the charge of narrow perspective and historical nationalism.”⁵ The comparison of indigenous boarding schools provides an appropriate venue and opportunity to generate meaningful transnational comparisons.

In order to identify the points of comparison between mission schools in the United States and Australia, a group of questions will focus and clarify the analysis. While the role of education in the process of cultural assimilation raises a wide range of important issues, this essay will consider five points: (1) “How was the philosophy of indigenous schools affected by prevailing notions of race and ethnicity in the United States and Australia?” (2) “What role did the forces of “Anglo-conformity”—christianization, cultivation, and civilization—play in school curriculums and the aspirations for assimilation?” (3) “How did the various religious denominations assist in forcible assimilation?” (4) “How did indigenous students respond to the assimilationist efforts in the schools?” and (5) “How did the indigenous student population interpret the boarding school experience and to what extent did they preserve their traditional cultures?”

The response to these questions will be organized in five broad areas of discussion. First, some...