POLITICS
COVER
Chief's
House Torched in Kanesatake
BIOGRAPHY
A
Christmas Story: Sharon Greyeyes' Original Bannock Shop
BOOKS
Carr's
Native Experience Reprinted
Telling
It Like It Is
BUSINESS
Diamond
Search Leads to Conflict-of-Interest Probe
ENVIRONMENT
Blueberry
River First Nations Launches $7.5 Million Lawsuit Against Gas Development
HUMOUR
Bee
in the Bonnet: Ten, Happy, New, Years
Bee
in the Bonnet: Point the Arrow
POLITICS
Wounded
Leaders, Wounded Nations
Ottawa
Announces New Fast Track for Residential School Survivors
The
2004 National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (NAAA)
Wounded Leaders, Wounded Nations cont'd
Hungry, homesick and punished
The natives Pratt lured to his school received a traumatic experience
in indoctrination in American ways, which is best understood as brainwashing.
When the students arrived at Carlisle they were forced to sleep hungry on the floor on their blankets. Pratt, his wife and the Carlisle teaching staff, immediately began their immersion until "thoroughly soaked" efforts at assimilation by removing all outward signs of Indian appearances. Confused and homesick, the Lakota children wept as their long hair was cut and fell to the ground. A collective wail rose up, creating a wrenching sounding echo around the campus.
The Carlisle school was organized in a fashion quite similar to his management of the Fort Marion prison. Boys were dressed in military uniforms and given ranks. As in his Indian prison, native officers were put in charge, rewarding those who sought Pratt's favor. Students practiced marching and drilling. They were given military style ranks. Marching was done to classes and to the dining hall for meals. Inspections went into considerable detail. They even tried to ensure that the regulation red flannel underwear, which many natives found uncomfortable, was actually worn.
Cells were built to lock up students as punishment for various offenses;
such as attempts to run away, a common offense.
The destruction of native languages was one of Pratt's key objectives.
Children began English lessons as soon as they arrived at Carlisle. Students
were punished, sometimes severely, if caught speaking their native languages,
even in private. The few parents who were able to travel long distances
to the school could only speak to their children in their native tongues
if permission was obtained from Pratt.
Eventually Carlisle became famous for its sports teams, especially in the area of football. This produced the professional superstar, Jim Thorpe. Native games such as lacrosse were never taught at any residential school in North America. Children who played Indian games were severely punished.
Climate change, separation anxiety and lack of immunity contributed to the death of many Carlisle students. More than 175 tombstones line the campus grounds today. Prayer cloths, strings of shell and beads and small bundles of sage and sweet grass embrace tree trunks in the cemetery. Those buried on the grounds represent only a small number of the natives who perished here. Most were sent home for burial, but some had no relatives who could make the arrangements. Several hundred died on route to their families after becoming critically ill.
Although the first students at Carlisle attended voluntarily, a few years after the school was founded, compulsory methods were used. Such harsh means were applied to the children of the followers of Geronimo, many of whom attempted to hide their children. Many of these students died and were buried at Carlisle.
Canada follows Carlisle model
Carlisle became the model for residential schools in both Canada and the
United States. Most had far more serious problems of sexual abuse, torture
and poor food.
While the Mohawk Institute, founded in 1829, was the first Indian residential school in Canada, it was a tiny scale operation, dependent on private British contributions, until the federal government decided to pour more money into the system.
Carlisle was founded at a critical time in Canada, 1879. This was the same time that buffalo shrank in such numbers on the plains from the deliberate extermination policies south of the border, that the shrunken herds could not support native communities on the prairies. To have education provide a means by which natives would not have to be supported by government rations was the reason that in 1879, the Conservative Party government of Sir John A MacDonald, had an inquiry into native education in Canada.
MacDonald's government embraced the agenda and methods of the new Carlisle academy following a report by a backbencher, Nicholas Flood Davin of Regina, to create Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds. Davin was especially impressed by the American policy of what he termed "aggressive civilization." MacDonald agreed with the approach of having the native child "dissociated from the prejudicial influence by which he is surrounded on the reserve of his band."
Fortunately for natives it took many decades before the Canadian government could impose the residential school model on the majority of natives. Anticipating native anger, schools were not formally made compulsory until 1895. Even after this step, in many parts of the country, the regulations were not enforced until 1933, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were officially empowered to act as truant officers. The system did not begin to become dismantled until natives were finally given federal voting rights in 1962.
In the United States where natives were granted the right to vote in 1919, the residential school system was wound done at a much faster rate, with Carlisle the model for the whole system, itself being closed down in 1918.
Even before natives were granted the right to vote in the United States, the fanatical assumptions that gave birth to the residential school system were under public attack. This resulted in the resignation of Pratt in 1903 from the control of the school he founded.
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