The logic of events demands the absorption of the Indians into our national life, not as Indians, but as

American citizens… The Indians must conform to “the white man’s ways,” peaceably if they will,

forcibly if they must. They must…conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This

civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it,

and must either conform to it or be crushed by it…The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism

In struggling to understand the frequency of violence against women in our communities,

many Native American and Alaskan Native people believe that the prevalence of

domestic violence and sexual assault in Native communities has its roots in the forced

removal of Native children from their families to religious and government operated

boarding schools. We believe that the

problems affecting both rural and urban

tribal communities today are a direct result

of several generations of Indian children

who were taken from their families and

suffered abuse in over 300 boarding schools

across this country beginning in 1879 and

children who were taken from their homes

learned lessons of self-hatred, and domestic

and sexual violence, and brought these ways

back into their communities. The boarding

school era of Native experience created one

of the most tragic chapters of loss in Native

identity, and left in its wake a legacy of

domestic and sexual violence, alcoholism,

displacement, and suicide that continues to

affect tribal communities today.

To completely understand the impact of the

boarding school era, one must not only look

at the historical events of this period but

also examine federal policy, religious

influence, societal values, and western

colonization.

The first boarding schools were started in the sixteenth century and were operated by

Catholic missionaries whose goal was primarily to acculturate Native children. In the

1880s, however, the U.S. government began the “boarding school experiment”, another

chapter of federal Indian policy that attempted to eradicate Native culture through the

federal government and tribes commonly included the “six to sixteen” clause, a provision

2

that obligated the federal government to provide schools and teachers for Native

Initially, the federal government funded day schools for Indian children that were

operated by churches and missionaries. This allowed children to attend school during the

day and be with their families at night. Day schools weren’t as effective an agent of

change as the government had hoped because children were still connected to their

culture: speaking their language and practicing their tribal ways at home. Day schools

didn’t last long.

The federal government’s second attempt to move Native children into mainstream

society was the creation of off reservation boarding schools that allowed children to visit

their families only during the summer and on holidays, with the condition that family

members be allowed to visit their children while they were at school. This condition was

soon recognized as counterproductive to enculturation, as Native children were still

influenced by family members during visits with them.

The final stage of the government plan was the creation of Indian boarding schools far

away from home villages and reservations starting in 1879. Children at these boarding

schools were not permitted to visit their families, and were expected to stay for a

minimum of four years. Captain Richard Henry Pratt was a key figure in this era of the

boarding school. Pratt had been a veteran of the Indian wars and his philosophy of “kill

the Indian and save the man” was instrumental in the government’s approach to the

assimilation of Native children. It is at this time that the government began to attempt the

cultural cleansing of Indians by the forced removal of their children to schools where

they would be isolated from their family, and where the government could effectively get

rid of anything Indian remaining in the child, in effect, killing the Indian in the child.

This philosophy was the goal of the boarding schools, with at least one founder and

“savage” as a reference to Native people allowed the boarding school policy to prevail

during this era. If the idea that the government was “helping” Native children to change

their “savage” ways and become members of mainstream society was popularized, it

justified what in any other context would amount to kidnapping and abusive treatment.

Native children as young as six years old were taken from their families to these

institutions, in many cases deliberately far away from their homes so that distance would

strengthen the process of forced acculturation and education. There were also situations

3

where children as young as three and four years old were sent to boarding schools. As

an elder Julia Barton recalls: “I was three and a half then. I couldn’t even reach the sink

to turn on the water. The older girls took care of me. They lifted me up so I could wash

Living conditions on the reservations during this time were deplorable: poverty,

starvation, disease and death were commonplace. These conditions were a significant

influence on some Native families to relinquish their children to the boarding schools that

promised them a better life. Some tribal leaders foresaw that the future survival of their

tribe meant that their children would have to learn “white man ways” and so willingly

placed their children in boarding schools. However, many times children were taken

involuntarily, rounded up like cattle, and parents were forced to turn them over to the

Indian agents. Should a family resist, food and rations were withheld, and threats of

lengths to which some parents went to try to keep their children are tragic: for instance, in

1895 a group of Hopi men surrendered to the U.S. cavalry and chose imprisonment at

In order to integrate Native children into the dominant culture, a methodical approach of

stripping away Native identity became a strong component in the federal educational

curriculum. In true militaristic style, the first order of business for children arriving at

boarding school was to cut their hair. Some children had never had their hair cut. Their

hair was a source of pride and honor. Short or shingled hair to many Native children had

specific cultural meanings. Short hair could signal that a person was in mourning, for

example. In other traditions, it could be the sign of a coward. Cutting their hair was

traumatic for Native children and many experienced it as an assault:

4

Children were stripped of their personal clothing and belongings when arriving at

boarding school. Once stripped, they were scrubbed with lye soap that was harsh on the

skin and left it dry and cracked. They were forced to wear school uniforms that were the

required dress code, stripping them of their individuality and promoting uniformity.

Schools were comprised of children from many different tribes each with distinctive

characteristics of clothing relevant to their tribal custom. This clothing was also a strong

link to their families. Older children often sewed many of the uniforms students were

forced to wear. Medicine bags, jewelry, rattles and other personal items that provided

comfort and connection to their families, and which had been given to them by their

parents and grandparents were taken away. Some of these items would be returned to

children when they left the school, however, many others were taken and burned upon a

child’s arrival.

The cultural deprivation Native children experienced in boarding schools included

changing their names to more “American” or “Christian” names. Reformers, for the most

part, frowned upon using the true names of Native children as too impractical and

reminiscent of their tribal identity. Educators believed that a good “American” sounding

name would benefit them in their preparation for mainstream society. Some children’s

names were chosen from the Bible, while others were inadequate English translations of a

child’s Indian name by Indian agents for the purpose of recording them on government

rolls. Initially, a child’s true name was changed, and then they were given both a first

and a last name in the tradition of the dominant culture. This renaming was contrary to

Native cultures in which individuals were not identified by a first name/ last name

system. Indian names were generally a unique description of the individual, and

described them as a whole person. Quite commonly, as a child grew, or an individual

made note worthy accomplishments, a new name would be taken or given that signified

this life change. In addition, the imposition of “American” last names upon children

directly impacted Native culture, in which family lineage was connected to a clan system

traced (in the main) through the mother, and did not denote ownership but belonging.

This was in contrast to the dominant culture, where ancestry was traced through the

father and very often was used to show ownership of offspring. Changing the names of

Native children without any forethought by Indian agents and reformers was not only

insulting; it was psychologically abusive, robbing the children of their sense of self, their

identity. This practice also created problems for Native families in regards to ties and

ancestral lineage. For example, Lillian Bull All the Time, the daughter of Bull All the

Time, became Lilian Bomfort, a problem for her future children and a hindrance to

Native children attending boarding schools were forbidden to speak their own language.

English was the only language a child was allowed to speak. This policy was strictly

enforced by school personnel with punishments of varying degrees. Among the

punishments children endured when caught speaking their own language were having

their mouths washed out with soap, being forced to kneel for hours on a hard cement

floor or on a broomstick, being stripped and immersed in ice-cold water, having their hair

pulled, and having their hands, legs, and/or heads slapped with a leather belt, a rubber

thrown across the room with such force that his collarbone was broken for speaking to

5

difficulty pronouncing the required words of the required English language. Each time

the child mispronounced a word, a nun would hit the child across the face with a switch

causing her to bleed profusely. The child was repeatedly struck, until she was bleeding

and unable to speak out of pain, fear and humiliation, and the frustrated nun locked her in

the closet. This child eventually stopped speaking Lakota forever, and developed a

Shaming by ridicule also became way in which children were discouraged from speaking

their own language—those who did, were singled out and referred to as a “buck Indian”.

Some children would speak their language in secret. Others kept it alive by quietly

saying their Christian prayers in their own language. Some children kept their language

alive (in the face of violent repercussions) by occasionally tormenting their educators:

speaking to them in their Native tongue and feeling a sense of pride that their captors did

not know what they were saying. This was an extremely dangerous act, the more

strongly children resisted assimilation, the more severe the punishment and ridicule that

would be inflicted upon them.

While the brutality of the physical violence that Native children endured in boarding

schools can be seen as a conscious effort by school authorities to compel children to

conform to the expectations of the dominant culture, the sexual abuse many children

experienced at these institutions can only be described as unconscionable, it was a

violation not only of a child’s body, but an assault on their spirit. Sexual abuse,

especially the sexual abuse of children, creates silent victims: the abuse varies in

experience; it can be disguised by the perpetrator to appear to the child as an act of

affection, especially to children separated from their parents and desperate for love and

attention. The sexual abuse Native boarding school survivors suffered at the hands of the

adults to whom they were entrusted was varied. Some children were sexually fondled

elder who attended the Pipestone Indian School recalls his fifth grade teacher who

admired his beautiful singing voice. So much so, that on Fridays he was expected to

Another child at the St. Francis Indian Mission School recalls witnessing young girls

being taken in the night by priests and nuns alike and returning to their beds crying and

Winnebago, Nebraska, it was considered an initiation for thirteen-year-old boys to be

of how many children were sexually abused at boarding schools during this era, child

sexual abuse wasn’t an issue that would be addressed by psychologists until many

decades later. Most of the stories come to us from survivor interviews or interviews with

the relatives of survivors who struggle to understand their victimization. However, given

the current publicity of child sexual abuse by clergy, we can conclude the magnitude of

Indian children sexually abused at boarding school must have been great.

Many boarding schools, whether operated by military regulations or missionary rules

were authoritarian and regimented. Children were housed in sparsely furnished

dormitories, and forced to adjust to a strictly controlled environment. The sound of a

6

steam whistle, a bell, or a bugle regulated movement and time; such sounds would tell a

child when to get up, stand, walk, eat, work, play, and sleep. The absence of family left

Native children without traditional role models. Boys, for instance, were left without the

positive men’s roles their culture provided: respect for the Earth, and for women as

creators of life. The healthy familial relationships that Native children would have been

exposed to at home were replaced by the regimented, institutionalized gender roles of the

boarding schools, where women and children were subordinate to the male authorities.

Integrated into the reading, writing, arithmetic, and labor curriculum of the boarding

schools were mandatory prayers and church attendance. Turning Native children, away

from their tribal spiritual ways, had long been considered a powerful tool in

acculturation. This enforced Christianity drilled the foreign concepts of corporal

punishment, sin, and evil into the minds of Native children (concepts that were in striking

contrast to their own spiritual beliefs), creating a strong sense of fear and confusion, and

introducing children to a basic precept of domestic violence, power and control and the

imposition of one’s will on another through the use of violence. An Indian child’s

perception of spirituality did not include a God that punished one with beatings for living

in the natural world the Creator had provided. Nor was the concept of physical

punishment as a method of discipline culturally understood:

Christianity had been used as a tool to change Native societies since the arrival of the

Spanish. At boarding schools, Christianity was used as a shaming device to portray tribal

spirituality as pagan and uncivilized. After years of this forced indoctrination both in the

schools and outside of them, many Native children and adults abandoned their traditional

ways and converted to Christianity in some form as a matter of survival.

The loss and worry parents felt for their children in boarding schools was profound. The

separation from their children caused great anxiety and sorrow, with parents imploring

administrators to be allowed to visit, many writing letters that asked for permission to see

their children. These letters were, for the most part, ignored and discarded. One elder

recalls that his parents hid in the bushes outside the grounds of the Holy Family Mission

The worries of Native parents were well justified: while some children were sent home

when they became ill, many other children died while at boarding school and never

returned home again, leaving parents to struggle with the loss and guilt of sending their

children to school. There are no accurate numbers reflecting how many children may

have died at while at school, however, almost every boarding school had a cemetery on

7

In trying to get back to their families, some children ran away. When these children

were caught (and not all were) they were treated as escaping prisoners: they were locked

up in the stockade, basement or makeshift building in order to isolate and punish them.

Some children were shackled to their bed at night and forced to wear a ball and chain

during the day. Runaways were also put on display: tied to a tree or made to wear a yoke

and forced to parade in front of other children as an example, sometimes dressed up in ill

successfully made it home, while other’s died in their attempt to be reunited with their

families, some children’s despair at their forced separation was so overwhelming that

In addition to the cultural and familial deprivation Native children experienced at the

boarding schools, they also endured their caretakers’ often blatant indifference to their

physical well being. This indifference amounted to institutional racism; it sprang from

society’s perceptions of Indians as less than human, and was supported by federal

policies created to address the “Indian Problem”. Native children were mistreated

because the federal policy of the period allowed it.

As the treatment of Indians and Indian Education became public knowledge, the federal

government commissioned a survey to evaluate the administration and effectiveness of

federal Indian policy. The Institute for Government Research, in its report to Congress,

entitled The Problem Of Indian Administration, (also referred to as the Merriam Report)

stated, “the survey staff finds itself obliged to say frankly and unequivocally that the

provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding school are grossly

The Merriam report found that medical attention was inferior and irresponsible, leaving

healthy children exposed to children with communicable diseases and infections, some of

which could have been treated by an adequate diet. This pattern of substandard treatment

in the area of addressing the medical needs of children was detected in most schools, and

was the norm rather than the exception. The report also lists insufficient attention to

dietary needs as a cause of concern: many children were found to be below normal health

status, as much as 17 pounds underweight in some children. Another concern was the

industrial and labor training children underwent, in particular the use of Indian children

as labor to support the maintenance of the boarding schools during their time there, as

well as the practice of “outing” in which Indian children spent some of the school year

living with white families as laborers for the family. Children became a cheap source of

labor for farms and merchants in the area. The report found it questionable whether this

training was a beneficial preparation for mainstream society, or an issue of involuntary

8

There were many things Indian children learned at school besides English. The most

debilitating message was one of self-hatred. This lesson was repeated over and over

again through the use of violence and racism. Native children who came to the boarding

schools with a distinct cultural base of different values, customs and social norms that

had been practiced from generation to generation were confronted with a life altering

cultural conflict detrimental to their very existence. In their home cultures, Native

children were considered gifts within the tribe and were treated with admiration. A child

was nurtured in their development; grandparents (elders) were a significant part of a

child’s upbringing, instructing them in life-ways such as hunting, gathering, preparing

food, cooking and other activities. There were teachings that guided a child in their

growth and relationships with other people and the world around them; respect and care

for elders instilled appreciation and responsibility as a family member. Customs such as

putting out a tobacco offering before the taking of any animal or plant fostered a

reverence for Mother Earth and the gifts of the Creator, and reflected a spiritual and

ecological understanding. These teaching defined a child’s place in the world and

secured their identity. Instruction for a child included learning from the natural world

around them: watching the seasons and life-cycles and knowing how these elements

intersected with their life was all part of a child’s educational growth. A child’s

development included ceremonies, separate for girls and boys, which marked in time

rights of passage from one age to another. These cultural ways instilled confidence and

courage and a personal sense of self worth that was vital to the child and tribe: in sharp

contrast to the dominant culture of the time, Native children were not taught that they

were less important than adults and elders. However, all this and more changed upon

their entrance to boarding schools where Indian children learned to modify their behavior

to conform to the ways of the dominant society. All too often, however, this was still was

not enough for the reformers. No matter how well a child conformed to dominant culture

beliefs and behaviors in an attempt to survive, in appearance they were still Indian.

Esther Naghanab, an Ojibwe elder, recalls that when a teacher at her boarding school

visited her home, she demanded that Esther’s parents wash her more often because her

skin was dirty (it was brown). Esther’s father, in an attempt to make her life easier at

The guardians of children at Indian boarding schools who were entrusted with their care

and development failed. They failed to recognize that these were children, children who

were still learning about the world around them, Native children who were powerless and

alienated from their cultural base, who had to deny their own existence as indigenous

people, and were forced to re-invent themselves in order to survive.

After the Merriam Report was publicized in 1928, the era of the boarding school finally

began to come to an end, with the last of the government-operated boarding schools

closing in the 1950s. Many children returned home to their communities and families as

some children returning home, the years of separation and deculturation had been too

great. Many events had transpired in their absence; parents, siblings, and relatives had

9

It was a warm summer evening when

I got off the train at the Taos

station. The first Indian I met, I

asked him to run out to the pueblo

and tell my family I was home. The

Indian couldn’t speak English, and I

had forgotten all my Pueblo

language. Next morning the

governor of the pueblo and the two

war chiefs came into my father’s

house. They did not talk to me; they

did not even look at me… The

chiefs said to my father, “Your son

who calls himself Rafael has lived

with the white men. He has been

far away… He has not… learned the

things that Indian boys should learn.

He has no hair…He cannot even

speak our language. He is not one

of us.”

-Sun Elk (Taos Pueblo)

passed away. The returning children’s primary language was English, they even arrived

home called by a different name than when they had left for school. Their physical

appearance was different and alienated them from others. As Helen Sekaquapatewa

(Hopi) recalls:

The cultural transformation created life long divisions between these children and others

in the communities they returned to. The shame and internalized oppression that the

boarding schools had ingrained in

children followed them home; they

looked at their relatives as poor

would be years before the full

damage of the boarding school era

would be known.

When Indian children passed

through the boarding school doors,

they arrived in the hundreds, and

eventually thousands. In the 39-

year history of the Carlisle Indian

Industrial School over 12,000

children passed through their doors

the boarding schools as distinct

individuals who had mothers, and

fathers, grandmothers, and

grandfathers, aunts, and uncles.

They were members of Nations

that had a direct lineage to

centuries of traditions and customs

handed down from generation to

generation.

This lineage, this direct line back

through the centuries was broken by the boarding school experience and the resulting

losses can only be measured by the problems that affect tribal members today. We are

Nations struggling with restoring our way back to tradition, handicapped by our relatives

who are the survivors of abuse. Some of us are so traumatized that we deny the residual

affects and grieve through alcohol. Some of us are still not able to identify as “Indian”

10

because we were removed for too long and never made our way back. We live on the

fringes of two worlds, we want to belong in both, but we may not be fully accepted by

either. Too often, we use the rage and anger of our common experience against one

another. Today, the disparaging slang term “apple” is a used amongst Native people to

define someone who left the reservation or who has taken on dominant culture ways; red

on the outside and white on the inside. This can be traced back to the children that

survived the boarding school experience in the only way they could, by adopting the

ways of the dominant culture, only to have their forced assimilation used against them.

We use internalized oppression against each other to cover our fears. There are many

people who struggle with their Indian identity today and deny that the ravages that affect

tribal communities today have their birthplace in the era of acculturation. The right to

parent our own children in traditional ways was replaced by the violence many of us

encountered in the boarding school, and now that violence has become a part of our lives,

traveling from generation to generation traced back to the original traumatic events.

There is a name for the trauma we have experienced, according to Dr. Maria

YellowHorse BraveHeart; it is called Historical Trauma Response (HTR). A notable

element of this theory is that the manifestations of HTR, such as depression, suicide,

domestic violence, alcohol abuse and other social problems are passed on from

generation to generation. Included in this theory is research that explains our connection

to our ancestors in the past and how we as descendants experience their suffering in the

that perpetuate the cycle of suffering. Children learn by example. If the parenting

lessons children receive center on the use of extreme violence to discipline, having their

basic needs neglected by their caretakers, and the violation of their bodies and spirits by

sexual abuse, these children are often incapable of parenting well, and pass these lessons

down in varying degrees to their own children and communities.

The cumulative years of the boarding school era can be categorized as cataclysmic.

Though this education experiment transitioned many Indian children into mainstream

society, many other children and families were devastated. There were some children

who adapted and benefited from their educational experiences. They went on to become

authors, teachers, athletes, and other leading figures in America and their respective

tribes. However, for those tribes whose children never came home, or died, or whose

broken spirits never recovered, the loss cannot be calculated in terms that today’s

mainstream society can understand—there are no words.

The complexity of the boarding school experience and the issues it raises are too

numerous to address in a brief overview such as this article. Many people, including our

own relatives, say to let the past go and move toward the future. However, there are

some of us who cannot move toward the future unless we face the historical events that

shaped our lives today.

In the PBS documentary Nokomis; Voices of Anishinabe Grandmothers, Bea Swanson, a

White Earth elder, travels to the old St. Benedict’s Mission School. She walks through

11

the door of the abandoned school building and is overwhelmed by memory. Bea walks

into one room and sees the old school sign on the floor. Trying to keep control over her

voice and her emotions, she remarks that she believed that enough time had passed for

her to be able to face this place. However, after standing in the place where she spent her

childhood, the memories that come back are still too real. She says that in her mind, she

cannot go back there. She is afraid of remembering; the pain is still there, many years

after she left St. Benedict’s.

As a society we must take responsibility to acknowledge past wrongs. We can honor our

ancestors by helping to heal the generations of broken spirits who are the descendents of

this removal era. We need to address these issues by working on restoring a sense of

tribal sovereignty that strengthens our identity as American Indian and Alaskan Native

people, recognizing that violence against women is not a part of our culture, it is a

learned behavior forced upon generations of Native children. It is only by telling the

stories and acknowledging the pain that we can trace the paths of domestic violence and

sexual assault to their beginnings and start to heal our communities.

http:/www.unr.edu/chgps/cn/fa99/03.htm.

http://www.lib.cmich.edu/clarke/indian/treatyeducation.htm.

1875-1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1993.

http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/tours/hopi/hopi-hl.htm. 2003.

Schools: Washington, D.C., March 19, 1890.

North Dakota, 1997. Kelley, Matt, Associated Press. “American Indian Boarding Schools: ‘That Hurt

Never Goes Away’”. http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSFeatures904/28_indians.html. April 28, 1999.

http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featbearchief_200.tm

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Experience: 1875-1928. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1998.

http:www.archaeology.org/online/features/phoenix/ March 27, 1998.

http://www.endlish.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/erdrich/boarding/carlisle.htm. 1996