Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences

Preface

T Preface The American Indian boarding school experience left an indelible mark on the history of the United States and Canada, and only recently have we tried to understand the significance of the schools in the lives of students, teachers , administrators, and Indian communities. Perhaps we have waited so long for this scholarly examination because of the difficulties involved in addressing the dramatic impact of the boarding schools on the lives of so many people. For some American Indian students, the pain they suffered inhibits our intrusion into their lives. For other students, their boarding school days were filled with fond memories, sometimes mixed with melancholy, sometimes with humor. Understanding the many and varied levels of the boarding school experience is a complex business. No single interpretation of this experience exists today or ever will. Native American students and their parents viewed the schools in many different ways. Oral and written accounts by Indian students and non-Indians involved at the schools are extremely diverse. Historian Tsianina Lomawaima recently wrote to the editors that “part of that message, importantly, has been that the schools were not monolithically destructive or successful in their assimilative goals, but the harsh reality is—for some people, they were.” The editors of this volume agree with Lomawaima’s assessment, and we have tried to offer essays that address the multiple aspects of the boarding school experience in the United States. Because of the layered meanings of these experiences and the many “gray” areas existing within memories, the question of whether the schools proved a positive or negative experience for students, parents, and Indian communities cannot be answered. Lomawaima reminded the editors that “the central message of b.s. [boarding school] experiences is how varied—but almost always deeply affecting— they have been across individuals, schools, time and space.” Students, parents , and American Indian communities felt the boarding school experi- xii Preface ences deeply, and they continue to consider and reconsider the meaning of the experiences in their lives and the lives of other Indian people. The editors have used the motif of a traditional Native American monster story as a metaphor in analyzing the boarding school experience. We would like you to think in this way when reading the essays. Traditional Indian stories are the first body of historical literature we have within the Native universe. These are the famous creation stories shared orally for thousands of years, texts that portray imperfect worlds where positive and negative exist side by side, counterimages that balance each other. Often storytellers refer to these negative forces as monsters, and tribal elders can name these negative beings. For the students, the boarding schools, the English language, a foreign curriculum, and white officials represented monsters. Within many traditional stories, heroes also exist, offering themselves up to fight the monsters. Within the stories, the heroes combat the monsters for the benefit of their people, not to enhance their own ego. Most often the heroes survive their struggles with the monsters and use their newly acquired powers to do additional good for their people. Sometimes the heroes die during their struggles with the monsters, but someone always arises in the stories to carry on the good fight on behalf of the people. Indian students at the boarding schools became heroes of their people, and their contributions resonate throughout Indian country today. Some students chose to enter school, while others were forced to attend by parents, relatives, and government agents. In either case, students took a hero’s journey into the unknown, wrestling with many monsters, from loneliness to hunger and punishments. Too many children died fighting the monsters. Administrators sent some students home in coffins to be buried in the heart of their homelands, but they buried other children in cemeteries located on school property. Their families and friends have not forgotten these children. They are symbols of the casualties suffered by Indians at the schools, but they are not the only symbols that exist. Some of the positive elements of the schools remain, living within American Indian communities through the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of boarding school students. Tribal leaders from many corners of Indian country remember their boarding schools days or those of their relatives. The stories have shaped their lives and made them more informed about an important component of American Indian history. T Preface xiii We hope that the essays...