The United States government began this brutal attempt at social engineering in 1879. Breaking rebellious Indians by indoctrinating their children in Anglo ways was considered a cost-effective alternative to war. Nearly half a million people have viewed it since the opening a year and half ago, and the museum expects to keep the display up 21738758 nike air max 09 for several more years.
Walking through the exhibition, it is easy to understand why Heard archivist LaRee Bates says the forced education program was "absolutely devastating" for the buy isabel marant sneakers children and their families. "They were literally kidnapped, loaded on wagons or trains, and all of them thought at any moment they were going to buy isabel marant sneakers die. When the children arrived at the schools, mulberry outlet uk it was the first time they'd been away from home." Many former boarding-school students, she says, including her own aunts and a grandmother, found their memories too painful to 87229249 discount nike air max discuss.
'Rehabilitated' with clothes, haircuts
Before depicting their ordeal, the exhibition starts with the sounds of innocence, the laughter of children at play. Soothing voices welcome visitors in Comanche, Navajo, Hopi, and Delaware languages, and we see the landscapes of native homelands photographed in their pristine beauty.
Then the journey of separation isabel marant shop online begins. A huge, daunting photograph of a railroad locomotive travels along one wall. Juxtaposed against it are the frightened faces of Chiricahua Apache children, newly arrived at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pa. Their hair is long, and they wear traditional, sometimes ragged clothing.
Another photo shows youngsters after their first few days of school. Their hair is neatly trimmed, and they wear stiff Anglo clothes - uniforms for the boys, neck-high dresses for the girls. Their faces have also changed; celine handbags fear appears to have been replaced celine bags by sad resignation.
These "before and after" photographs were propaganda tools, Ms. Bates says. They highlighted the program's effectiveness at "rehabilitating" Indians. One tiny girl, probably just 4 or 5 years old, holds a sign that reads "Haskell Babies," referring to the Haskell Institute, a Kansas boarding school.
In other images, we see sinewy members of "Fort Totten's Baseball team" who played "the mulberry sale fastest game in the state," North Dakota. Some young boys huddled around a TV set, presumably sometime in the 1950s or '60s, appear almost preppy with their knit shirts and short hair.
The photos are accompanied by a steady stream of taped oral histories. "When they 00581743 nike air max 95 womens first took us in school, they gave us government lace-up shoes," one woman says. "Then they gave us a number. My number was always 23."
"When you first started school," says another female voice, "they looked at you, guessed how old you were, set your birth-date and gave you an age. Then they assigned you a Christian name. Mine turned out to be . Fred."
Richard Pratt's oppressive plan
Hundreds of Indian boarding schools dotted the United States from the 1880s through the 1960s. The program was spearheaded by a zealous Army officer named Richard H. Pratt, who embraced the idea after working with Apache prisoners in St. Augustine, Fla. Pratt believed that removing Indian children isabel marant sale 01101965 hot pink nike shoes from their culture and subjecting them to strict discipline and hard work would force their assimilation into mainstream society.
Congress agreed, and in 1897 it gave Pratt roughly 18 students and the drafty barracks at a deserted Army college in Carlisle. mulberry uk Cynical politics buy isabel marant - and simple math - played into Pratt's plan. The government hoped to save millions of dollars, "because it cost anywhere from six to ten thousand [dollars] for the Army to kill an Indian," Bates says. "But if Indian children were put in schools and forced to change into 'Americans,' it would only cost a couple of hundred dollars per child."
Pratt's famous dictum was straightforward: "Kill the Indian and save the man." School officials prohibited children from speaking native languages, and punished transgressors. "Every school had a disciplinary jail cell," Bates says. Some even offered bounties for returned children. |
