"Meant to be Forgotten"

... Analyzing Tommy Orange's There There

In additional histories being written wrong in this country, many histories about Indigenous Peoples are meant to be forgotten. One example of that is Indian Boarding Schools. In 1879, Capt. Richard Henry Pratt opened the nations first off-reservation boarding school at Carlisle Penn. The below article, by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition declares that, "The multigenerational impact of ... U.S. Indian boarding schools are directly responsible for and inextricably linked to loss of Tribal language, loss of Tribal cultural resources, and ongoing intergenerational trauma in Native communities today."​

---

​The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

"The government of the United States had an “Indian problem.” To address it, they enlisted Christian churches and decided to remove children from our communities and our culture. They attempted to replace Tribal values, languages, and ways of knowing with dominant white Christian values, religion, culture, and language.
 
By 1926, nearly 83% of Indian school-age children were attending boarding schools. The multigenerational impact of removing children from families and communities cannot be overstated. The U.S. Indian boarding schools are directly responsible for and inextricably linked to loss of Tribal language, loss of Tribal cultural resources, and ongoing intergenerational trauma in Native communities today. In order for us to have justice, we need to begin with the truth.
 
Children as young as four were forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during the Boarding School Era. Children were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their Native language; banned from engaging in traditional or cultural practices; and stripped of traditional clothing, hair, personal belongings, and behaviors reflective of their Native culture. They suffered physical, sexual, cultural, and spiritual abuse and neglect and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture.  Many children never returned home, and the U.S. government has yet to account for their fates. 

WE MUST TELL THE WHOLE TRUTH
​
Beginning with the Indian Civilization Fund Act of March 3, 1819, and the Peace Policy of 1869, the United States, in concert with and at the urging of several Christian denominations, adopted a boarding school policy expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through the removal and reprogramming of American Indian and Alaska 

Image from “‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man:’ an Introduction to the History of Boarding Schools.” Healing Voices Volume 1: A Primer on American Indian and Alaska Native Boarding Schools in the U.S., vol. 1, no. 2nd Edition, June 2020, pp. 1–3.

Native children. The stated purpose of the policy was to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” The U.S. Boarding School Era emerged from the federal government’s desire to deal with the “Indian problem” by using education as a weapon. At the same time (the end of the 19th century), the U.S. hunted bison to near extinction to eliminate a major source of sustenance for Native people. One U.S. Army leader is said to have ordered his troops to “kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” While this effort sought to eliminate Indian nations by starving Indigenous economies, boarding schools were even more insidious. The intent was to eliminate Indians by removing all races of Tribal cultures—language, spiritual traditions, family ties, etc. and replacing them with European Christian ideals of civilization, religion, and culture.
 
We still do not know how many total children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and Christian churches. However, preliminary statistics tell us that within the first twenty years of the boarding school policy, 20,000 children had already been taken from their families and placed in schools far from their homes. Only twenty-five years later, that number more than tripled, and 60,889 children were in boarding schools by 1925.

home

Work Cited
Adams, David Wallace. “‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man:’ an Introduction to the History of Boarding Schools.” Healing Voices Volume 1: A Primer on American Indian and Alaska Native Boarding Schools in the U.S., vol. 1, no. 2nd Edition, June 2020, pp. 1–3.

---