Volume 35 Number 3
May 1996

This Special Issue of the Journal of American Indian Education recognizes boarding school as a "defining experience" for American Indians. In approximately the last twenty years, anthropologists, historians and other scholars have joined the thousands of American Indian people who already knew how important boarding schools have been in shaping their lives, families, homes, communities, and educational expectations and dreams. To the best of our knowledge, the first scholar who incorporated American Indian peoples' personal narratives of boarding school life in a description and analysis of the institution was Sally McBeth, in her seminal book, Ethnic Identity and the Boarding School Experience (1983). Prior to McBeth's work, many academicians had assumed that they knew what boarding school meant to Indian people, and that it was a simple, uncomplicated story of federal attack and Indian cultural disintegration. More commonly, scholars simply ignored or overlooked Indian people's experiences entirely in their focus on federal policies, policy makers, and administrations. Since 1983, more and more Indian and non-Indian scholars have begun to mine the analytical and emotional richness of boarding school life: Bell (1996), Hamley (1994), Malmsheimer (1987), and Ryan (1962) on Carlisle; LaCroix (1993) on Chemawa; Mihesuah (1993) on the Cherokee Female Seminary; Lomawaima (1993, 1994) on Chilocco; Dobkins on Greenville (in press); Ahern (1983), Hultgren & Molin (1989), Lindsey (1995) on Hampton; Child (in press) on Haskell and Flandreau; Trennert (1988) on Phoenix Indian School; Hyer (1990) on Santa Fe; Marr (no date) on Tulalip; Littlefield (1993) on training for -work; Coleman (1993) and Adams (1988, 1995) on federal policy and practice integrated with student experience; Carter (1995) on teachers. In Canada, similar work on residential schools has also flourished in the last two decades (see Furniss, 1995; Haig-Brown, 1988). In addition to these scholarly works, there are an abundance of autobiographies by American Indian authors who recount growing up in the institutional confines of mission and federal schools (see LaFlesche, 1978 for a classic account; see Brumble, 1981 for other sources; see Johnston, 1988 for Canada).

The inspiration for this Special Issue grew out of a meeting of consultants to the Heard Museum. Karen Swisher (Haskell Indian Nations University), Rayna Green (Smithsonian Institution), Tsianina Lomawaima (University of Arizona), and Brenda Child (University of Minnesota), were invited in 1995 by Curator of Fine Art Margaret Archuleta, under the auspices of a National Endowment for the Humanities Planning Grant, to help plan an exhibit on American Indians' boarding school experiences tentatively titled "Our Indian Schools" (scheduled to open at the Heard in the spring of 1999).

The articles in this Special Issue explore varied facets of boarding school policy, practice, and student experience. While focused on different topics, schools, and eras, they share a commitment to understanding American Indian experience by listening to American Indian people. Lomawaima focuses on an influential federal policy maker in "Estelle Reel, Superintendent of Indian Schools, 1898-1910: politics, curriculum, and land." A product of the racist philosophy of her times, Reel believed Indians were a "lesser" race, but that non-threatening, economically viable native crafts should be preserved. The Uniform course of study she developed for the schools, especially the domestic training curriculum, influenced generations of students. Reel's notions of the "lesser" intellectual abilities of Indians, based on her "racial" classifications, were shared by many Americans at the turn of the century. In "Show what an Indian can do," Bloom looks at sports in the federal Indian schools to demonstrate how Indians were seen as "racially defined, purely physical beings." Bloom also shows how school sports operated as sources of pride and identity for Indian students. School sports could and did provide a focal point of positive experiences for students, and positive memories for alumni. Another side of boarding school experience is explored by Child in "Runaway Boys, Resistant girls." Letters written by students and parents reveal the negative forces in school life that pushed students into fleeing for home. In "A nucleus of civilization," Buffalohead & Molin trace the links between student life at Hampton Institute and home life on the Omaha and Lakota reservations. The model home or model family program at Hampton hoped to train young married couples to take the messages of assimilation and "civilized living" back to their home communities.

We hope that this Special Issue will help stimulate continuing research, dialogue, and debate about American Indian people's experiences in, and opinions about, boarding school. It is clear that there is much that remains to be done. Large off-reservation schools, such as Sherman Institute in Riverside, CA, as well as many smaller schools, on and off reservations, remain undocumented. Most of the research to date has focused on the schools prior to World War II. The more contemporary era from the War to the present is wide open, inviting those with the interest and the commitment to help document, preserve, and understand the educational experiences of American Indian people. We are looking forward to what the future will bring.

K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Guest Editor