Changed Forever: American Indian Boarding-School Literature by Arnold Krupat (review)

Readers of this journal will be eagerly anticipating the forthcoming second volume in Arnold Krupat's ambitious project, Changed Forever, since that collection will examine Lakota boarding-school life writing. However, the first volume, focusing on the Southwest and, more specifically, life writing by students from the Hopi, Navajo, and Apache communities, already has much to offer studies of Great Plains cultures. For one thing, Plains-based sites such as Haskell receive some treatment here. For instance, Krupat's presentation of material from A Voice in Her Tribe includes coverage of Irene Stewart's days at the Kansas institution after earlier attending Phoenix Indian School. More broadly, Krupat's overview of the genre he dubs "American Indian boarding-school literature" (xxxii), including his framework for interpreting such texts, represents a vital contribution to literary and cultural studies tied to the assimilation movement.

In that context, Krupat's introduction presents a thoughtful survey of prior scholarship on the boarding schools. Drawing from primary documents of the boarding-school era itself (such as the 1890 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs), Krupat also synthesizes findings from work by scholars such as Ruth Spack, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, and Brenda Child. He convincingly distinguishes his own contribution from such prior studies in part by characterizing major topical elements in the narrative genre from which his recovery project emerges. These include "topoi" (xxix) such as Clock Time, Discipline, and Naming. In Krupat's skilled approach, these themes produce a roadmap for future readings, including in university classrooms as well as scholarly projects. Additionally, by positioning these topical motifs within specific locations of action (such as the Dining Room and the Dormitory), Krupat spotlights the purposeful exercise of power that white administrators and teachers used in their attempts to suppress Native students' agency.

If there is any aspect of this commendable project that might disappoint, it is that, despite Krupat's describing his book as a series of "annotated critical editions," the individual chapters are more a set of summaries-withcommentary than complete primary texts. That said, each narrative's chapter does include a highly informative introduction situating its specific boarding-school account within a particular community context and historical moment. Thus, when seen as a crucial step in an ongoing literary recovery process, both the choice of excerpt-and-summarize as method and Krupat's choice not to push a simplified overarching argument are in line with a view of Native students' active agency as exercised through diverse specific pathways whose record still needs to be assembled via an honoring of multiple Indian voices.