Native American Mission Schools

Apache Boarding School students
 

Today's post is written by guest author and Genesis winner, Kiersti Plog.
 

When I began a story set in 1911 at a Navajo mission school, I imagined a day school where children came in the morning and went home each night. But I quickly discovered boarding schools formed the vast majority of mission or government schools for Native American children during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

These boarding schools formed a cornerstone of the “assimilation” approach to the late 1800s so-called “Indian problem.” With the near-completion of westward expansion, the indigenous inhabitants were quickly being crowded out of their centuries-old homelands and way of life. Though armed resistance seemed mostly subdued after the 1890 tragedy at Wounded Knee, Native Americans’ traditional nomadic lifestyle seemed incompatible with white settlers’, and the United States government simply did not know what to do with them.

Some, including Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum, actually advocated for “total annihilation” as a solution. The more “humane” method adopted came largely through boarding schools. By taking Native children from their families and bringing them up in conformity to the dominant culture, they would lose their “Indian-ness” and be able to assimilate into white society—or that was the hope. “Kill the Indian, save the man,” Captain Richard Pratt called it. His Carlisle Indian School, founded in 1879 in Pennsylvania, served as a model for many boarding schools to come.
 

Navajo Tom - Before and after "conversion" 1882
 

When students arrived at school, their hair was shorn short—upsetting to the children, as hair cutting was reserved for mourning in most Native American cultures. Their traditional clothing was taken away, replaced with military-style uniforms. They saw their families only a few times a year. If caught speaking their native language rather than English at school, punishment came fast and often severe. A missionary who has worked on the Navajo reservation most of his life told me many Navajo elders today still carry bitterness and resentment over having their mouths washed out with soap at boarding school, merely for speaking their own language.

As I learned about these schools and the children who attended them, my heart began to be broken. No doubt many of those who founded these boarding schools and advocated for this approach meant well. But when one people automatically assume their ways to be superior and more God-given than another’s, damage is done. On the Navajo reservation, at least two entire generations of children were raised in the militaristic setting of boarding school rather than by their parents. These children themselves thus never learned how to parent, leading to widely disintegrating families today. The attempt to forcibly remove culture and language has also contributed to a deep identity crisis among many Native Americans.

 

Not all children had a bad experience at boarding school. For some who came from poor or even abusive families, school became a refuge of safety and three meals a day. But regardless, the impact of boarding schools on Native American society has been indelible. Many of these schools still exist as mission and day schools on reservations today.

 

 

Kiersti Plog
 

Kiersti Plog holds a life-long love for history and historical fiction and lived with her family for five years in New Mexico near the Navajo Reservation. Her yet-unpublished novel Beneath a Turquoise Sky is set at a Navajo mission boarding school and received the ACFW Genesis Award for Historical Fiction in 2013. She writes stories that show the intersection of past and present, explore relationships that bridge cultural divides, and probe the healing Jesus can bring out of brokenness. A member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Kiersti loves learning and growing with other writers penning God’s story into theirs, as well as blogging at www.kierstiplog.com