PBS Utah takes a moving and insightful look into the dark chapter of American history, the federal Indian boarding school system. #Indigenous #Documentary #boardingschool #nativeamerican #buffalosoldier #santafe #kiowa #comanche #navajonation
The goal was total assimilation into Anglo civilization at the cost of Native American culture, tradition, and language. The film story starts with pre-history and comes full circle to modern day. Much of the film is told in first person Native American voice by the people who continue to live it.
The history of the United States of America is like a coin. For every story written of the successes and growth of the country, there is the other side — where people are subjected to the consequences of decisions over which they had no control. During the westward expansion of the U.S., the indigenous people were those people, whose treatment ranged from being dismissed to outright extermination.
Somewhere along that spectrum is the story of American Indian Boarding Schools. One school in particular, the Santa Fe Indian School, today serves as a microcosm of American Indian education and the history of tribal culture since before the Civil War. The school also shows a potential path forward from a troubled past.
The boarding school concept can be traced to Civil War Army Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt, who led a unit of Buffalo Soldiers near Oklahoma. Together they captured 72 men from the Caddo, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa Nations, and transported them to Fort Marion, Florida. Upon arrival, the captives were forced to cut their hair, dress in military uniforms, and learn English. In essence, they were being groomed to resemble their white captors in an effort to “civilize” them. During a time in U.S. history when the policy toward Native Americans was usually one of forced removal and even extermination, the idea of assimilation, was considered progressive. The famous quote “Kill the Indian, save the Man,” is attributed to Pratt.
“Early assimilation policies were to steal Native American land,” says Christy Abeyta, Superintendent at the Santa Fe Indian School. “If we can assimilate these Native Americans into the dominant culture then they have no need for reservations, they’re going to migrate into urban areas and there will be no need to maintain tribal lands, because they would have lost their culture, the language, all ties to what they held so sacred…and that was the land.”
Many of the old boarding schools are now relics of history. Carlisle, the most famous, is a National Historic Landmark. Tomah Indian School in Tomah, Wisconsin, is a Veterans Administration Hospital. The Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah, closed its doors in 1984 and has since been demolished.
The Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas is now Haskell Indian Nations University, billing itself as the premiere tribal university in the U.S. Sherman Indian High School in Riverside maintains a military-like boarding-school schedule, but has moved away from the assimilation concept. It teaches native languages and offers college prep and career pathway programs. And then there is the Santa Fe Indian School.
Academic standards at the school exceed New Mexico’s standards. It offers advanced college preparatory classes, tracks in computer programming, math and science, as well as a language arts program. It also has courses in Native American history and silversmithing. Since the council took over, the drop-out rate declined from 30% in 1981 to 4% in 1986.
Alicea Olascoaga is a recent graduate of the school, now attending Dartmouth College. She has strong memories of the Santa Fe Indian School.
“It’s the best that I’ve ever experienced and I think the best that New Mexico has to offer,” she says. “I’ve been in public schools in Albuquerque and I never had the same connection that I do with my teachers here. I never got the attention and the assistance that I have here.”
Alicia is also reflective when it comes to the history of her school, and the policy that created it.
“It’s definitely hard to think about boarding schools, the pain and anguish that Native Americans were put through during that time. But I think today it’s very different, and the purpose is to nurture Native Americans, and to ultimately benefit and to support and to improve who we are as a people as a whole.”
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