Film from 9/24

Today we watched the film on the Indian Boarding schools, and I think possibly the one the stood out to me that was the most striking was how some of the children would really embrace the whole boarding school thing. I mean do understand it as being a way for survival to just go with the flow in order not to be beaten or seem weird, but I wonder how others felt about those who easily when along with the "kill the Indian" ideology. There was a girl whom really embraced this and she played the lead when they did Hiawatha where they would wear "traditional clothing" and this would be one of the only times it would be acceptable to be Native. There is a book by Tim Giago called Children Left Behind...where he recounts his time in boarding school, and all of his memories of interaction with the white people who ran it were nothing but negative. He would talk about how names were changed in order for acceptance in white culture and to get rid any ties to ones former, and the notion that your history begins when we say it begins. They were taught to forget everything before even coming to the boarding school because it should not be apart of whom they are today in "killing the indian ideology". He also accounted for when the children were bathed how they were to almost bathe in kerosene...would this be like the cleansing process for the women of the fur trade-how they were to be cleaned in order to be accepted....anyway all of this makes me want to explore on negative and positive associations with indian boarding schools...lemme know what ya'll think...

Charla


I feel as if I were in this situation were being Indian was acceptable when white people felt like it(which was never) I feel I would resist...but really how could I say that. Would I just need to conform to cultural genocide....what would others do?