Photographic Essay
Tribal Boarding School: Influence on Ethnic Identity
For over 100 years, the United States school system has been the story of Native Americans. No Indian has gone unaffected by the consequences of this systematic institution. Millions of Indians have been forced into federal boarding schools, struggling to stay alive in unsanitary and disease infested conditions. Living on top of one another and sleeping in military style barracks. Children were totally removed from their families and heritage for extended periods of time, often for years. This photographic essay is a pictographic story of a culture of people whose lives where forever changed by this imposed system.
Beginning in 1879, Indian boarding schools were established across America starting on the east coast with Hampton Institute in Virginia, and Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania (Giago 1). The U.S. government took on the responsibility of Indian education as part of a treaty agreement (BIA ix, Ammon 10). The treaties were made in exchange for land; the U.S. government would provide medical, educational, and essential needs to the tribes (BIA ix). Captain Richard Pratt convinced parents on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in Dakota Territory to let the United States take boys and girls to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, over 1,500 miles away (Indian Country Diaries). Pratt was convinced that only by removing children from the supposedly corrupting tribal environment and by schooling them among white people could they assimilate into American life (Coleman 46). He was convinced that Indians only needed a “broad and enlarged liberty of opportunity and training to make them, with in the short space of a few years, a perfectly acceptable part of our population” (Fear-Segal 158). Pratt was granted permission to conduct this educational experiment to prove this theory (Fear-Segal 158). Carlisle closed in 1918, but for 39 years it became home away from home for thousands of Indian boys and
For over 100 years, the United States school system has been the story of Native Americans. No Indian has gone unaffected by the consequences of this systematic institution. Millions of Indians have been forced into federal boarding schools, struggling to stay alive in unsanitary and disease infested conditions. Living on top of one another and sleeping in military style barracks. Children were totally removed from their families and heritage for extended periods of time, often for years. This photographic essay is a pictographic story of a culture of people whose lives where forever changed by this imposed system.
Beginning in 1879, Indian boarding schools were established across America starting on the east coast with Hampton Institute in Virginia, and Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania (Giago 1). The U.S. government took on the responsibility of Indian education as part of a treaty agreement (BIA ix, Ammon 10). The treaties were made in exchange for land; the U.S. government would provide medical, educational, and essential needs to the tribes (BIA ix). Captain Richard Pratt convinced parents on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in Dakota Territory to let the United States take boys and girls to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, over 1,500 miles away (Indian Country Diaries). Pratt was convinced that only by removing children from the supposedly corrupting tribal environment and by schooling them among white people could they assimilate into American life (Coleman 46). He was convinced that Indians only needed a “broad and enlarged liberty of opportunity and training to make them, with in the short space of a few years, a perfectly acceptable part of our population” (Fear-Segal 158). Pratt was granted permission to conduct this educational experiment to prove this theory (Fear-Segal 158). Carlisle closed in 1918, but for 39 years it became home away from home for thousands of Indian boys and
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