Native American Boarding School Histories

Catalog description

Native American boarding schools, whose institutional motto was: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” were implemented as part the official US Federal Indian Policy in the late 1800s. This sophomore seminar highlights both the histories of these schools and their contemporary reverberations, especially as it has recently culminated in several organizing gains. Throughout this course students will trace the emergence of boarding schools as an integral component of settler colonialism. Students will also gain an understanding of settler colonialism as a structure that continues to dispossess Indigenous people from their lands, resources, and knowledges. As such, it is important to contextualize the boarding school system as a tool oriented toward achieving these same goals.