Subject :  The Phoenix Indian School Project Web Site and Questionable
Conclusions

Regarding your site:
 

As the University's Archaeology Department has taken it upon themselves to provide opinion as to the importance, and the pertinence of Indian boarding school merits, I will hope that a contradictory view will be accepted.  None the less it is proffered.

While from an archaeologic and anthropologic view one can see the significance of this site excavation, it leads one to wonder at the missing pieces.

You state:
"The Phoenix Indian School was one of over a hundred boarding schools for Native American childrenestablished at the turn of this century. The Institution served as a coeducational boarding school for American Indian primary and secondary students between 1891 and 1990. It was an mportant instrument of the federal government's education of Indian children, and to a large extent it assistedin bringing Native American tribes into the 20th century by providing the means for them to interact with and be a part of the larger American culture."

An important instrument..........

In relation to the"Americanization" and value of the education Indian
students were subjected to, official reports of the Indian Bureau noted
in 1897 that {students} "return to their respective reservations merely
to relapse into so-called Indian savagism, in most cases, in aggravated
form."  The popularly termed Merriam Report of 1928 by the Institute
for Government Research concluded that the conditions in boarding schools
were shocking, deemed overcrowded and grossly inadequate.  It
noted that some were supported by labor of the students and some teachers
were ill qualified.

As early as 1744, Canassatego, an Onondaga representing the Iroquois in negotiations with the British, refused offers of education for the young noting their ineptitude with the normalities of daily living upon their return.  Also noted was their inefficiency with their native language after education in English.

The writing of Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) in the Atlantic Monthly 85 (1900), spoke poignantly of the trauma of this new experience of "school".

"I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's! In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder."

In the book Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog (with Richard Erdoes), Mary speaks of her personal view point, after her boarding school education, "I think such children were like victims of Nazi concentration camps trying to tell average, middle-class Americans what their experience had been like.

Where are the artifacts of the abuse, the degradation and the inhumanity that students of the boarding schools were subjects to?  Where are those testimonials and representations?

Yes, assimilation, adaption.

Your site goes on to state:

"Artifacts recovered from the school's dump indicate the school's attempt at Native Americanassimilation policy did not lead to simple conformity. Although the assimilative goal was to thrust the Indian and non-Indian together in an context devoid of "Indian" culture,values, and idenity  inorderto remake the individuals into "non-Indians," the outcome was educatedIndian children who incorporated parts of a school-learned American identity with theidentity they brought with them."

These conclusions based upon your findings at the site, are questionable and somewhat deceptive.  You note that the aboriginal religions of the students were banned, that cultural items were forbidden and yet kept, hidden away.  What identity was actually thrust upon them, an identity that under the circumstances was impossible to reject?  There is a difference between incorporation and indoctrination.  What of this so-called school-learned American identity.  Most students returned to their homelands, unfit for Traditional life, at least for a time, returned to economic, cultural, and social conditions that were in direct opposition to their new education.  The reservations had and continue to have the most extreme and dire poverty within the confines of this country, to speak nothing of  direct results, such as alcoholism. What American value did this education hold for the Indian students?   Even those brought into the mainstream of society continued to feel the weight of oppression.

"The government Indian boarding school provided the first place where many Indian people learned of the existence of the diversity of other Indian tribes and their separate, "special" treatment by thegovernment. More than any other institution, these schools, actively orpassively, created theenvironment that cultivated and strengthened the idea of an "Indian" identity apart from one'sindividual tribal identity."

Were the Indian People then ignorant of each other, as individuals, Tribes, Nations, separate and unique cultures?  Were there no ties and separations, either political or cultural between the indigenous Peoples of this Land?  What document or history of America would lead one to such a conclusion?  The oral histories of the various Nations, even those documented by the incursion populace, speak of the relations and relationship between Nations.  As to "special" treatment, the mainstream individual is ill-educated as to the realities of the treatment of the Indian Peoples both historically and presently.  To imply that one should appreciate being ripped from their family and tribe, placed in an institution, victimized and indoctrinated, and rationalize it with the term "special" is ludicrous and insulting.

"Excavations at the Track Site differed from many archaeological projects because of the historic nature of the site. In addition to artifacts, archaeologists also had written records and even surviving former students to consult in order to help with interpretation of the finds. A variety of artifacts were collected and analyzed. Each item provides a particular perspective on daily school life and how that experience modified the students' identities."

Where are the scissors used to cut the children's hair?  Where are then switches used for their "correction".  Are these written records of the nature that were "safe" for finding by a teacher or administrator, if written by the student or a true record of the events of the days?  And what is it these records say?

There are many individuals that have come out of the boarding school system and carried on well, in spite of the methods of education.  There are some that may truly have appreciated it, but to generically glorify a system that has such a history of abuse and trauma to so many is immoral and degrading to those that have suffered at it's hands.

Jody Peiffer Willett - Nokwisa Yona
swillett@ro.com
 

References

Phoenix Indian School http://archaeology.la.asu.edu/vm/iSchool/index.htm http://archaeology.la.asu.edu/vm/iSchool/traditions.htm

Indian Bureau and Merriam Report notes The Native American Almanac, A Portrait of Native America Today by Arekebe Hirschfelder and Martha Kreipe Montano, Prentice Hall 1993

Canassatego Native American Wisdom, edited by Kent Nerburen, PH.D. and Louise Mengelkoch, M.A., The Classic Wisdom Collection, New World Library 1991

Zitkala-Sa http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgibin/browse-mixed?id=ZitGirl&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/lv1/Archive/eng-parsed

Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes,Grove Weidenfeld 1990