Boarding schools to solve the Indian problem.

 When I was a teenager I read a book called, Indian School Days written by Basil Johnston. This book was about a 10 year old Ojibwa boy from Ontario who was removed from his home and sent to live in a residential boarding school in Northern Ontario. I don't remember many details about the book but it left its mark. It has been probably 25-30 years since I read it and I remember the title and how it made me feel guilty and sorry for people who came before me and were treated so poorly by people who should have known better.
Looking at the American Indian Issues web site, http://americanindiantah.com/index.html brought me back to that book. I feel that the more you take something away from someone the more they want it. To make someone want sugar, put them on a diet. To make someone patriotic, move them away from home. The same can be said for our Native Americans. The more they were pushed into reservations, the more they wanted to maintain their traditions. In 1867 The Indian Peace Commission came up with idea of reservations. The web site explains that the reasoning was that the Natives could be "civilized", taught english, farming and converted to Christianity. It didn't work. In 1879 the idea of boarding schools was born. The idea was to remove the children from their homes and "teach" them to be white while they were away from the reaches of family and reservation life.
This video from you tube is a good memoire of a few people who were raised in a boarding school in New York called the "mush hole."

Children were removed from their homes. They were not allowed to speak in their native language. If they did speak in the native languages they were punished. Their hair was cut short, sometimes shaved off entirely. They were fed "white" food and made to wear "white " Clothes. Some children were as young as 4. These children saw their parents sometimes as little as once per year. When they were re united they did not speak the same language and did not know the history or ways of their people.
Perhaps one of the most startling facts about the residential schools is that they continued to run into the 1970's. This practice was not specific to one area of the country or a particular tribe. It was all across the US and Canada.


Indian School Days by Basil Johnston Key Porter Books 1988 Toronto

http://americanindiantah.com/index.html