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 Indian Bording Schools 
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In class yesterday I thought it was very interesting to hear about the Indian Boarding Schools. I had never heard of this happening, and no where in any of my history classes had any teacher discussed that. Dr. Turner had mentioned that children were taken away from their homes and taught English. They were then returned to their homes years later, they were not able to communicate with their families. After reading some of the articles we were assigned this week about this topic, I was surprised that they had quotas for how many children were supposed to be in these boarding schools and that many parents were forced into letting their children go. I was just wondering what everyone else thought about this?

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Laura Davis


Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:26 pm
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I did not know about this either until my last semester history teacher talked about it. Its amazing how we thought that we needed to change who the Indians were to make them more like the "white people". I think it was wrong what we made them do and I hope the country learned for the "mistakes" of our fore fathers. It goes back to the statement that we talked about in class are we all equal and I think this is the perfect example of how we are not all equal.

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Alicia Yewcic


Sun Mar 22, 2009 3:53 pm
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Indian Boarding Schools are something I had not heard of until class. I think it's very shameful to make a certain race or group of people become something different. They did not need to become "more white." I think it's very wrong to impose personal feelings and thoughts when it is not necessary because that's what makes our world so different. We are made up of very different people and that is how I believe we learn so much from others experiences unlike our own.

Casey Gill


Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:28 pm
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My great grandfather grew up on the Cherokee reservation in western North Carolina and went to the federal school on the reservation during the late twenties and early thirties. The school he went to was on the reservation, but was staffed by white Americans. The Cherokee language was not only neglected in the curriculum, it was forbidden in the school. This form of cultural white washing continued for years. I got to attend a seminar last year given by a Cherokee man who was teaching at the school on the reservation. Today they speak and teach the language in the school, but when he was in school in the early 90s, it was still left out of the school.


Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:54 pm
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I think this class discussion was very interesting as well. I have heard about this is many of my classes, especially American Literature. My granddad has a friend who grew up and went to an indian boarding school and told him all about it when he would come home. He said that he hated it and that it made him feel very hateful to white people. I feel that many things that "we" as white people do to others to make them be more white actually makes them turn away from us, just like this example of my granddad's friend.

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Katherine Gray Nelli


Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:46 pm
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We talked about this in an Anthropology class I took my freshman year. My professor mentioned that when Native American students were handed a pencil, they usually weren't sure what to do with it. A white student would probably begin writing, but the Native American kids started to identify the wood it was made out of. That always stuck with me because I thought it was interesting. The boarding schools probably contributed to a lot of problems like Jo Vega from that one video had. It doesn't matter if you stick the Native American children in European clothes and make them speak English, they're still Native American, only now they probably won't fit in with their own people either. Usually I think forced assimilation just alienates people.

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Natalie Brady


Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:37 pm
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Native American history is one of my favorite things to study so I had heard about Indian Boarding schools prior to the class. I feel like Native Americans have been forgotten in a lot of our history and I personally feel like they are still being forgotten now. I worked in the elementary school on the Cherokee reservation over spring break and it was an amazing experience. Mrs. Panther came in my first grade classroom and taught students the Cherokee language. All throughout the school and on the reservation, there are English words and then under it the Cherokee words. I just love how they are integrating the language into the community because if they don't it will definitely be lost. It was very life changing to know that Indian children were once told to forget their culture and become "white" and now the Indian children are embracing their culture and they are so excited about it!


Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:15 pm
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I had heard about this many times before. I have to say that we as a nation have done many things to try to change or control who people are numerous times before. I think that this is very sad that we have done these things, but if you look at it in our fore fathers points of view maybe it was out of fear or trying to control situations or even trying to make some peace in society the only way they could think of to fix problems or what they saw as problems. I would hope that these problems or situations do not continue or repeat anytime in the near future.

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Danielle L Epley


Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:55 pm
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Indian Boarding schools and the whole practice of "Americanization" among Native Americans is certainly a black spot in America's history. but it is good to know that history runs in cycles. Now it is very popular to embrace your cultural roots and learn where you came from. It's certainly a backlash against the old mentality of erasing and culture that wasn't a European American.

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A. Kyle Whisenant


Sat Apr 18, 2009 9:37 am
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I had heard about these boarding schools prior to the reading as well. Like Casey said I think that this was very shameful and it is something in our country's history that makes you want to cringe. I didn't know much about these schools before the article but I had read about this when I was probably about 9 or 10 in a few childrens chapter books. I can't find the exact books that I read but when I searched on amazon there were pages of childrens books that were written about these schools. Since this subject is not discussed often I think that books about this would be great to include in a classroom library.

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Katherine Stover


Sat Apr 18, 2009 9:28 pm
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