Indian Play: Indigenous Identities at Bacone College

Conclusion

273 Conclusion NEW INDIGENOUS IDENTITIES Bacone College was designed not only to provide much-needed access to higher education in the erstwhile Indian Territory but also to contribute to the “civilization” of Indians by “plant[ing]” Christianity in their hearts and minds.1 As such, Bacone’s early religious mission was firmly embedded in late-nineteenth-century neocolonial ideologies that were designed to assimilate American Indian youth to European American cultural values and economic roles. However, the school’s effect on American Indian students and their cultural identities was far more complex. In the school’s earliest years, few people associated Bacone with Indian cultures or Indianness: the school’s demographics, curricular and extracurricular activities, campus culture, and fundraising activities did not overtly emphasize Indian identities. Yet by the mid-twentieth century, many people—both Native and nonNative —considered Bacone an Indian school. Pinpointing what made Bacone an Indian school is a complex task. This endeavor is made all the more difficult by the intersection of shifting cultural ideologies of Indianness, the neocolonial goals of schools run by European Americans to assimilate Indian students by educating them, and variables of human agency, creativity, and inventiveness (and their limits). Bacone became an Indian school during the period from 1927 Conclusion 274 to 1957 for several reasons. On one level, non-Indians considered Bacone an Indian school, not only because it served an increasingly diverse Native American student body but also because its administration successfully projected images of Indianness to the larger public. In this respect, Bacone carefully crafted its public image so that it would be perceived as an Indian school. Many of the images Bacone projected to the public were romanticized images of Indianness and had little to do with the actual lives of the school’s Native students. However, these images did provide a jumping-off point for students to negotiate aspects of their Indian identities, and they also helped to bring in much-needed funds, which were channeled back into cultural programs. Fundamentally, it was the school’s reinvestment in cultural programs for students and the creative peer culture on campus that ultimately transformed Bacone into an Indian school. In interviews and in writings, many students who attended Bacone between 1927 and 1957 indicated that they developed a new or stronger sense of what it meant to be Indian while at the school. When they entered school, Bacone’s students had diverse backgrounds and degrees of experience with traditional tribal cultures. The school’s fund-raising activities emphasizing Indianness and its programs in Indian culture provided students from different backgrounds with many opportunities to engage ideas about what it meant to be both educated and Indian in mid-twentieth-century America. Participation in sports, music groups, the art program, the Indian Club, and campus social events exposed students not only to the backgrounds and identities of other students but also to white perceptions of Indianness. In their attempts to win art competitions and recapture culture for future generations, young Indian artists created Indian identities that emphasized tribal distinctions and minimized histories of tribal Conclusion 275 borrowing. In the Indian Club, students distinguished themselves based on regional identities, and students from the Five Tribes often adopted the more colorful clothing and dances of their friends from the Plains and Southwest. Furthermore, students created new pan-Indian identities that often juxtaposed Indianness to whiteness and blackness. Using forms of Indian play, students articulated ideas about Indianness that were tribal, regional, and pan-Indian and that articulated with ideas about race, blood quantum, physical appearance, gender, social class, citizenship, cultural knowledge, and religion. What kept Bacone from becoming the more far-reaching Indiancentered institution that it might have been? Several factors were at work here. The departures of Princess Ataloa and President Weeks within a few years of each another meant that Bacone lost two dynamic personalities largely responsible for transforming it into an Indian school. Moreover, American entry into World War II did not bode well for Bacone’s abilities to raise funds or retain older students . However, largely because of the Indian alumni who returned to work at Bacone and revitalized the school’s programs in Indian cultures, Bacone continued to build its reputation as an Indian school well into the early 1950s. Ultimately, by the latter half of that decade, the gradually changing landscape of postwar America coupled with the shifting goals and financial concerns of...