By Ray Lenarcic
Every time Labor Day rolls around, I’m reminded of that old ditty “school days, school days…readin, writin, rule days.” Then my mind drifts back to those halcyon times when my daughters, Carrie and Jennifer, went off to Barringer Road Elementary in Ilion. They must have been 10 and 7 respectively. I can still hear their excited laughter as they dressed for that first day. Then they’d rush down stairs, gobble down breakfast, throw their backpacks over their shoulders and skedaddle up to the bus stop. “Hey, what about that kiss goodbye?” Forget it. They were gone in a flash. I can also vividly recall their return home. Still giddy with excitement. They flew upstairs, changed their clothes and headed out to join waiting friends. Laughter abounded. “Hey, what about that kiss hello?” They turned, threw me one and went on their way.
Life back then was good for them. Good friends. Good vacations. Good food. Good health. Lots of love. Their teachers were for the most part exceptional, providing them with a solid foundation on which to build a successful life; Carrie as a writer (William Smith; Columbia) and Jen as a musician (Ithaca; Berklee School of Music). Their childhood was not the exception-millions of other white children from the middle class shared similar experiences.
The same cannot be said for two sisters who lived during an earlier time. They also went off to school, but instead of smiles, their faces were stained with tears. They were forcibly taken away from their parents who they’d not see again for a year. It could have been worse. Some of their friends would never see their parents again. Period. They were fostered out.
Before the first day of class, their beautiful, long black hair was shorn. They were crammed into an overcrowded dorm room, fed slop and introduced to an education the objective of which was to totally change who they were. Their teacher was dressed in a black and white uniform, her face masked in a mean scowl. For the slightest act of misconduct (e.g. whispering; speaking their language) their punishment ranged from a whipping to no food to solitary confinement. Their spiritually based religion was replaced by one which forced them to conform to a series of rigid rules, and their fate for not conforming scared the dickens out of them. Eternal life in a fiery pit. They faced hell twice-on earth and when they died. Ironically, this new religion was predicated on a basis of love and kindness to others.
As stated earlier, when my daughters came home from school, they changed their clothes and ran out to play. The two sisters and their classmates went to work, scrubbing floors, washing dishes and doing laundry. They often went to bed hungry and dog-tired, sleeping three to a bed. Existing in an unhealthy environment, including having to share towels, proved to be deadly for many. Contagious diseases including tuberculosis and measles had a field day. It wasn’t bad enough that these scourges took countless student lives (records of such either incomplete or missing), but they took numerous lives back home as well, transmitted by children returning from school.
The two sisters and tens of thousands of others, boys included, were victims of one of the cruelest institutions ever devised by man-Indian boarding schools. Established by the federal government and certain religions, Quaker and Catholic most prominently, they operated from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1970’s. Their purpose was assimilation. Create human apples. Red on the outside, white on the inside. “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Words spoken by a man whose boarding school would bear his name-Richard Pratt. Indian parents were reticent to have their children taken away, to have their culture-their religion, their language, their folklore-replaced by Christianity, English and Little Red Riding Hood. As will be detailed later, they had no choice. Efforts to “Americanize” the “heathen” failed dismally, successful only in visiting physical, emotional and sexual abuse upon the children.
Our present government’s removal of children from their parents as part of its newly implemented deportation of illegal immigrant policy has been loudly decried by many. But it isn’t the first time that this has happened. An 1891 federal government compulsory education law allowed authorities to withhold food rations from families or arrest parents who refused to comply. The law also permitted government agents to kidnap children in order to send them to school. Pouring salt in the wounds. Later, Indian parents were forced to pay for their children’s “education.” The money was taken from trust funds established as part of previous treaty agreements. Not enough to break over 370 of the latter in order to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for land of big business and cattle interests-had to go after the comparable pennies left to Indians in those accounts, administered not by them (weren’t considered responsible enough to do so) but by the feds.
The impact of the boarding schools on children (through 8th grade-that’s all the education the authorities figured they needed) cannot be understated. Most readers are familiar with the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s most often used in reference to a psychological condition resulting from combat experiences. It can also be applied to the survivors of boarding schools. I say survivors because studies as recent as 2024 conducted by our Interior Department have identified 74 burial sites at various schools containing the remains of nearly a thousand Indian children. Experts warn that this figure might only be the tip of the iceberg.
The trauma suffered by the two sisters and so many of the others can last a lifetime. A loveless environment, daily ridicule, made to feel inferior and overwhelmed with shame became hallmarks of an emotional prison impossible to escape. Like so many combat veterans, their solutions to the migraines, explosions of violent outrage and interminable nightmares were alcohol and drugs. And if they didn’t work, suicide.
Some were able to move on, marry and have children like Mary Annette Pember’s mother, Bernice, who attended St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Mission School. (Pember authored Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools-want to learn more about this subject?-order it!) Pember writes, “I can still see her as she tried to outrun her invisible tormentors.” She still bears the psychological scars resulting from her mother’s violent mood swings and inability to show affection. They beat love out of her. It’s taken Pember decades to come to terms with the demons. The boarding schools’ evils have been perpetuated generation after generation. In addition to Medicine River, the depiction of Indian girls at a Catholic boarding school in the TV series 1923 provides a chillingly accurate portrayal of what it was like to attend them.
Recently, you may have read that the government has initiated a policy to remove “bad things” from our history (i.e. in textbooks and museums), most involving people of color (e.g. Martin Luther King; civil rights movement) or those having a different sexual persuasion (e.g. Harvey Milk). I’m sure Indian boarding schools are on the list. Better to remember them as the “savages” depicted in the westerns of the ‘50’s than the victims of a system which left tens of thousands of children with permanent psychological damage, doomed to existences of hopelessness and despair. Better they remain “forgotten Americans” than reminders of our government’s worst moments. If they’re going to whitewash history, then they have to change the last words of our pledge to “liberty and justice for some,” and the term American history to America: His Story.
Note: In spite of efforts otherwise, Native Americans were able to maintain their cultures. For example, children attending Onondaga Indian School in Nedrow study their language and customs as well as English.
