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Summary
Summary
Boarding School Seasons offers a revealing look at the strong emotional history of Indian boarding school experiences in the first half of the twentieth century. At the heart of this book are the hundreds of letters written by parents, children, and school officials at Haskell Institute in Kansas and the Flandreau School in South Dakota. These revealing letters show how profoundly entire families were affected by their experiences.
Children, who often attended schools at great distances from their communities, suffered from homesickness, and their parents from loneliness. Parents worried continually about the emotional and physical health and the academic progress of their children. Families clashed repeatedly with school officials over rampant illnesses and deplorable living conditions and devised strategies to circumvent severely limiting visitation rules. Family intimacy was threatened by the school's suppression of traditional languages and Native cultural practices.
Although boarding schools were a threat to family life, profound changes occurred in the boarding school experiences as families turned to these institutions for relief during the Depression, when poverty and the loss of traditional seasonal economics proved a greater threat. Boarding School Seasons provides a multifaceted look at the aspirations and struggles of real people.
Author Notes
Brenda J. Child is an associate professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
Child, a Red Lake Ojibwa and professor of American Studies, uses her own recollections and those of others found in letters and diaries to render an emotional history of American Indian boarding schools in the early twentieth century. The boarding schools were begun in an attempt to "civilize" Indians but helped develop a sense of Pan-Indian interests by mixing various tribes, languages, and cultures. Child recounts the cultural and emotional toll the schools took on Indian families. Families were coerced into sending their children or face the withholding of rations and annuities. Child recalls individual and group rebellions against the schools, including the federal imprisonment of Hopi men who refused to turn over their children to the schools. But many others used the schools to shelter and educate their children when families suffered the vicissitudes of life. Letters between students and families reveal a history of "people who experienced forced assimilation," losing control of their lives and their land as changes in the law eroded tribal landholdings and traditions. --Vanessa Bush
Choice Review
Indian boarding schools, supported by the federal government to hasten assimilation, are a popular subject for research. Some researchers, like David Wallace Adams (Education for Extinction, CH, Apr'96), take a broad historical view, but others look more closely at specific schools or eras. Boarding School Seasons falls into the second category, using letters and other documents to illustrate the experiences of children at Flandreau, Haskell, and Pipestone boarding schools in the early years of this century. The book describes leaving the reservation, living arrangements, homesickness, illness and death, working for the school, running away, and graduation. Perhaps because the author relied on the letters to form the topics of the chapters, the coverage is limited. For example, the chapter on working for the school does not consider the academic curriculum but only the vocational programs, raising the question of what the students thought about learning English, studying math, and other subjects. Also lacking is a sense of the friendships, the romances, and the social activities that helped students survive the problems. Although a good introduction to how students and families regarded the difficulties of boarding schools, this book is only part of the story. General readers; undergraduates. M. J. Schneider; University of North Dakota
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. ix |
| Introduction the Legacy of Boarding School Letters | p. xii |
| Star Quilts and Jim Thorpe | p. 1 |
| 2 From Reservation to Boarding School | p. 9 |
| 3 Train Time | p. 26 |
| 5 Illness and Death | p. 55 |
| 6 Working for the School | p. 69 |
| 7 Runaway Boys, Resistant Girls | p. 87 |
| Conclusion | p. 96 |
| Appendix 1 Red Lake Students Who Attended Non Reservations Schools Circa 1929 | p. 101 |
| Appendix 2 Flandreau Enrollment Figures, 1893-1939 | p. 108 |
| Appendix 3 Flandreau Enrollment Distributions by Tribe and by State, 1937-38 | p. 110 |
| Appendix 4 Haskell Institute Cemetery Burials, by Tribal Name on Tombstone | p. 112 |
| Notes | p. 117 |
| Bibliography | p. 135 |
| Index | p. 139 |
