In the
article “Destroying a Culture” published by Pauline Bickford-Duane in the Cobblestone is about how the Indian
boarding schools were shut down after the U.S. released a report called the
Meriam Report. The report exposed
“the poor quality of life on reservations as well as the inhumane conditions at boarding schools.” Not long after the report was filed the U.S. fell into the Great Depression causing everywhere to live in rough conditions for most of the 1930’s. The children at the boarding schools were also treated very poorly, they were punished if they spoke their native language and were assigned different clothes than what they usually wore. They were use to long hair as part of their culture but it was forbidden at the schools. Not only were the boarding schools a concern, land was also another big problem. Every family got some land to manage but overall it was just too dry to farm. This was typically not a problem because most of them were used to hunting so farm tools were not known on a large scale. In 1887 the Dawes Act was passed and that claimed the right to protect native property, at that time there was 138 mission acres of land being owned but in 1900 that had dropped 78 million acres.
“the poor quality of life on reservations as well as the inhumane conditions at boarding schools.” Not long after the report was filed the U.S. fell into the Great Depression causing everywhere to live in rough conditions for most of the 1930’s. The children at the boarding schools were also treated very poorly, they were punished if they spoke their native language and were assigned different clothes than what they usually wore. They were use to long hair as part of their culture but it was forbidden at the schools. Not only were the boarding schools a concern, land was also another big problem. Every family got some land to manage but overall it was just too dry to farm. This was typically not a problem because most of them were used to hunting so farm tools were not known on a large scale. In 1887 the Dawes Act was passed and that claimed the right to protect native property, at that time there was 138 mission acres of land being owned but in 1900 that had dropped 78 million acres.
I seem to
enjoy every article I read. I think the main reason I enjoy them so much is
because we talk about some of it in class but then I have so many unanswered
questions that when I read the articles I find some of those out. The thing in
this article that surprises me the most is how much the children had to change
just so they wouldn’t get punished in school such as the hair or the clothes
they wear. If I were teaching in a boarding school I would want the kids to
stay how they came so the students and I could learn more about that person’s
background. The one and only question I have about the boarding schools is do
the teachers also have to follow the same guidelines as the students?
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