White Man's Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation (review)

They came from many regions of the United States, boys and girls, bringing with them their own civilizations. American Indian children came from numerous tribes that had their own languages, laws, literatures, religions, families, music, dances, educational systems, and philosophies of life and death. But many non-Indian reformers believed they knew what was best of these children: to assimilate them into the dominate culture of the nation and transform them into the mainstream. Their method proved to be a segregated educational system that tore children from their cultures, parents, grandparents, and communities. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, American officials brought Indian students to their schools to destroy aspects of Native American culture and supplant it with white civilization that included a large dose of Christianity. Some non-Indians argued that forced assimilation was crucial to Native American survival, while others wanted Indian students to become "useful" laborers. Indian schools became the mechanism by which white reformers could effectuate cultural genocide and assimilation. This is the subject of Fear-Segal's scholarly study.

Reformers used the white man's club to transform Indian children, and Fear-Segal uses the statement as a starting point for her unique and insightful volume. She approaches the book topically fashion, using multiple fields of research, sources, and methodologies to examine the influence of race in the creation and execution of Indian schools, particularly off-reservation boarding schools. Fear-Segal draws on historical theories about race, power, and social control to begin her book but does not belabor these keen points at the expense of in-depth content and her own astute analysis. Fear-Segal knows her topic well and she invites readers into the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Dakota Mission, Santee Normal Training School, and other similar institutions to illuminate issues of race. She demonstrates the origin and continuance of the assault on Indian civilization by focusing on the educational philosophies and consequences of key individuals, including Richard Henry Pratt, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Stephen Riggs, Marianna Burgess, and others. Her use of biography and autobiographies of Indians and non-Indians alike is a strong contribution of the book, and her careful reading of these sources provides a fresh look at familiar participants in the Indian school system. Fear-Segal compares and contrasts the educational philosophies and approaches of Hampton Institute, Carlisle Industrial School, and the Santee Normal Training School, and her use of comparisons throughout the volume enriches the study and contributes to our understanding of complex educational systems forced on many Indians.

The author does not make victims of Indians but uses examples of individual Indian students like Thomas Wildcat Alford, Zitkala-sa, Charles Eastman, Kesetta Roosevelt, Jack Mather, Susie Rayos Marmon, and others central to the book. Fear-Segal offers wonderful examples of how selected American Indian students acted and reacted to their situation, and, in some cases, how they survived after their boarding school days. She makes clear that all of the students, whether they are known well or not, had a tremendous impact on American history and culture through their participation in the schools. The families of former students know the stories of their kin very well, and they continue to have personal knowledge, memories, and interpretations that influence the development of new literature on the history of Indian schools. Fear-Segal draws on Native American knowledge in framing her work. She provides a moving chapter on the student cemetery at Carlisle and its long-term meaning to Indians and non-Indians alike. Fear-Segal has brought together numerous topics central to the Indian school experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including race, gender, assimilation, education, and power. She concludes her outstanding study with an analysis of the inter-tribal pow wow at Carlisle in 2000, held on the grounds of the former Indian school. The pow wow brought together Native Americans from many regions of the country, including Alaska, where relatives of former students...