Description
Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences is a collection of 10 essays first presented at the 2002 Boarding School Blues Symposium held at the Sherman Indian School marking the school's 100th anniversary of its opening. The papers present the current scholarship surrounding the complex issue of Indian Boarding and Residential Schools in North America. The history of abuse and confinement of Aboriginal children in these residential and boarding schools is examined in these thoughtful papers by leading and promising scholars in the field. One particularly moving paper is Putting Lucy Pretty Eagle to Rest by Barbara C. Landis. This essay clarifies the bizarre stories that surround this Lakota student who attended Carlisle Indian School for 3 painful months before she died in 1883. The myths that surround her death are corrected with rigid scholarship that debunks the stories about her ghost haunting the girls' dormitory. The remaining papers deal with Mountain Boarding School, Rapid City Indian School, St. Boniface Indian School, the Sherman Institute, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Margaret D. Jacobs compares the boarding schools and the removal of Indigenous children in the United States and Australia from 1880-1940. Other papers explore gender issues at boarding schools, Catholic indoctrination at one boarding school in California, and student experiences at these schools in the areas of sports, punishment, and the physical conditions of the buildings. The editors explain their overriding focus as one where the students of the schools are seen as heroes facing the overwhelming monster of the institution. They seek to explore the negative, positive and grey areas of the history of American Indian boarding school history. This is a valuable contribution to the literature about Indigenous education and boarding school history. This title is also available in hardcover format.