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Book sheds light on government schools
6:52 PM
7/26/02
Susan Lampert Smith Wisconsin State Journal
indentMost non-Indians can't fathom the devastating effect that government boarding schools had on American Indian culture, language and families, says the author of a history of Wisconsin tribes.
indentThe boarding school experiences of Wisconsin's 12 current Indian nations figure prominently in "Indian Nations of Wisconsin," UW-Madison assistant professor Patty Loew's new book.
indent"The motto of the boarding school was: "Kill the Indian, save the man," said Loew, a member of the Bad River band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. "The idea was to wipe out (Indian) culture, wipe out the language, wipe out the religion and wipe out the artistic expression."
indentDavid Beaulieu, a UW-Milwaukee professor who studies Indian education, agreed that the destructive influence of government boarding schools can't be overemphasized. The heyday of Indian boarding schools was from the 1880s through the 1930s.
indent"Think of taking a child off the reservation in South Dakota at the age of 5 or 6, and putting him on a train across the country, and sending him to a school where they shaved his head, and put him in a military uniform and made him march around," Beaulieu said.
indentOften children weren't allowed to go home at all until they became adults - severing ties between the students, their families and their culture.
indentLoew said the Indian boarding schools produced a generation with "half an education." They learned to read and write. The girls were trained as domestics, the boys as laborers and farmhands. But they lost the language and skills important to their own culture.
indent"They were the first generation of screwed up Indian kids," Loew said. "They didn't know who they were and many of them turned to alcohol. They were a lost generation."
indentBeaulieu said the tragedy created a generation that didn't know how to parent children because they themselves were raised in institutions.
indentMany Wisconsin Indian children were shipped off to large government boarding schools in Carlisle, Pa., and Flandreau, S.D. Others stayed closer to home, at government schools in Lac du Flambeau, Tomah and Hayward.
indentThe Lac du Flambeau boarding school was built in 1895. While it had nice buildings, it also had a reputation as a harsh place where children had to wear uniforms, participate in military drills and often fell sick and died.
indentIn 1909 alone, Loew wrote, six children developed tuberculosis and four of them died. Between 1910 and 1917, 22 percent of the 135 children enrolled had health problems serious enough to be noted on their official records: whooping cough, measles and tuberculosis were routine.
indentAlbert Cobe, who attended the school as a boy, told Loew about being beaten for running away and about a friend who was punished for the same crime. "When morning came, we all filed downstairs for the shower, and found him on the floor, crying," Cobe told her. "His hands and knees were all bloody."
indentLife was better at the government school in Tomah, where many Ho-Chunk children were sent. The school was crowded and dilapidated, but the children were healthy and the superintendent, L.M. Compton, was appreciated for including Indians on his staff, and for belonging to the Indian Rights Association. The Tomah school closed in 1934.
indentThe Hayward school, near the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation, had a bad reputation. Loew found a 1915 local newspaper story about a 14-year-old student there who was forced to chop wood while wearing a ball and chain.
indentBoarding school students were routinely beaten for speaking their native language - and wiping out language also helped wipe out culture and family bonds.
indentFor example, Loew said Ojibwe has four or five words for different types of cousins, an example of how important family ties are in a culture that was traditionally mobile and faced uncertain lives. Those bonds helped ensure that someone would raise the children, but those raised in boarding schools were deprived of that cultural knowledge that was embedded in the language.
indent"Family relationships are really important to our people," she said. "To understand our culture you really have to know the language."
indentAll of this explains why some older Indians view schools and education with mistrust, said Scott Beard, a Ho-Chunk who is administrator of the Portage campus of the Madison Area Technical College.
indent"Education was seen as taking people out of their culture," he said. "When you had grandparents who came out of the boarding school generation, they didn't see education as a good thing."
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