The concept of Native American boarding schools, especially the one in Carlisle caught my attention because of how devastating and extreme this federally supported course of action was. The immediate effect of the implementation of boarding schools were the ripping of children away from their families and communities in the attempted/forced indoctrination to the “American way of life” and Christianity. This action was most definitely taken to circumvent the adult Native people that would not conform to Euro-American Centric ideals by altering the children’s way of living so that the old generation would die out and the new would raise the next to do as they were told. These boarding schools were designed to steal children from their parents and then steal their language, cultural identity, traditional way of life, and even their given names from the children. These abrupt, unwanted changes were not just emotionally and mentally taxing on the children and families involved but it was also literally detrimental to their physical health as they were physically punished, sexually abused, and malnourished and suffering due to the abrupt change in diet of which Luther Standing Bear of the Lakota had said, “Of all of the changes we were forced to make, that of diet was doubtless the most injurious, for it was immediate and drastic” (1). These complications follow the surviving children into their adult life, attributing to higher rates of certain health issues. Furthermore, these boarding schools had a significant death toll and not only that but, “New evidence proves that the graves are not correctly marked and the Army doesn’t know for certain which children are buried where (due to the cemetery being moved in 1927 for the installation of a parking lot)”(2). This quote resonated with me the most because not only was the US government willing to kidnap thousands of children from their homes in order to enact their assimilation-oriented will , but they couldn’t even show any semblance of respect for the children they killed by marking their graves correctly or leaving their places of rest untouched. This disregard really shows (not that we didn’t already know this) that the U.S. government’s intentions were not ever for peacemaking or the wellbeing of our Indigenous peoples, but instead aiming to erase the identities of people who refused to conform to these very Euro-American Centric ideals. All of this, in the end, has left very deep scars in Native communities trying to heal across North America that can still be seen today through the continual struggle to regain any language, culture, or traditions lost and the uphill battle that is repatriating deceased boarding school child-prisoners to their homelands to finally rest.
1: Slide 14 of the September 25th PowerPoint on The Dawes Act (1887), Allotment, and Boarding Schools
2:https://boardingschoolhealing.org/advocacy/carlisle-repatriation/