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Thinking and Talking About SIPI 43 and that this hand is a government hand, and that this government hand will always be holding you up and holding you down. And that this government hand has a long . . . history, and that you are a major part of this federal history by coming to school here, even [if] you don’t know it.” Attending SIPI is not, she tells us, entirely value neutral, for by attending, students not only become part of the history of federal Indian education but also perpetuate that history, for better or worse. Stories of federal Indian children’s schools,especially off-reservation boarding schools, with their isolation of children far from their communities, are part of the oral history of many contemporary Native American families. Young people in Native American communities internalized the knowledge of this history. Debra K. S. Barker characterizes these narratives as “family stories a good number of us have heard from our parents, grandparents, and elders; especially, they recall the story of their unwilling participation in the federal government’s effort to reeducate on a massive scale thousands of American Indian children” (1998:48). Comparing any institution to a BIA school, especially a boarding school, is a particularly harsh indictment of that institution, and worthy of notice. Metaphorical Themes and Their Use for Interpretation The metaphors that students used regularly in describing the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute are clustered around one of three main themes: (1) SIPI is a system of control, (2) SIPI is network of support, and (3) SIPI is a resource for self-determination. The metaphorical clusters position students ’ experiences at SIPI on a continuum ranging from extreme levels of institutional control to high levels of student volition and personal power. The metaphor cluster of “SIPI is a system of control” is the least volitional . The metaphors in this cluster include “SIPI is a prison,” “SIPI is a [historic BIA] boarding school,” “SIPI is a [restrictive] parent,” and “SIPI is a high school.” Metaphors of this type characterize students as powerless and suppressed both at the institutional level and in their face-to-face dealings with the school’s representatives.They are commenting on institutional hegemony (Adams 1995) at SIPI, which mandates a range of capitulations from students and effectively minimizes, or negates, their identities as adults while they are on campus. Students using these metaphors are interpreting institutional mechanisms for managing students, such as inconsistent or outdated rules and paternalistic attitudes, as exhibiting an institutional lack of trust or respect for students. In acknowledgment of this power differential , many of the institutions that SIPI is compared to have the right, and 44 Chapter 2 responsibility, to modify an individual’s behavior coupled with the power to punish. The metaphors sharing the theme of “SIPI is a network of support,” include “SIPI is a family,” “SIPI is a reservation,” and “SIPI is a haven.” In these metaphors, the individual is situated in a social and pseudo-kin network on campus and the metaphors develop in response to the emotional bonds students share with other members of the school community. They are not entirely free actors, as they are responsible to their peers, but students see these bonds as affirming their individual identities. Some students spoke of feeling accepted as a person, especially as a Native American person, for the first time in their lives, and of being inspired by their peers to explore their culture and identity. Typically, the bonds are described as one-way, in that narratives about acceptance center on a student receiving acceptance from peers, not on their offering acceptance to other students. The bonds that motivated these metaphors were purely interpersonal and did not derive from a larger, institutional philosophy. SIPI simply provided a setting or context for the relationships to develop. The third metaphor theme, “SIPI is a resource for self-determination,” focuses on the ways in which students can utilize the school, leading to metaphors such as “SIPI is an opportunity,” “SIPI is a stepping-stone,” and most intriguingly, the meta-metaphor “SIPI is what you make it.” These metaphors define the school in terms of individual choices and personal volition . These metaphors represent students acting in their own best interests and making decisions for themselves.The institution serves a functional role toward achieving their educational goals, and the emphasis is on students crafting their own future from the raw material (opportunity) offered by the school. Achieving that future requires students to make smart...

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