success

After watching the documentary ‘Sherman Indian High School: 100 Years of Education and Native Pride’ I was surprised but also suspicious. In the speech that was given at the opening ceremony of the Sherman High School in 1901 the speaker introduced the school as “redemption of a race that will enable the Indian who can no longer exist in a wild state to meet the requirements of modern progress.” The school was designed to forcefully assimilate American Indians into mainstream American mainstream culture by removing all vestiges of their traditional culture. From the day of their arrival American Indian students were immersed in the discipline, uniformity and routine of the school and native language, dresses, and culture in general were strictly forbidden. After listening and seeing the alumni my first impression was that the school was very successful with the assimilation of American Indians. The system was so successful that most of the experiences were very positive. Over the years, the school, perhaps as a result of the initiative of American Indians, included more and more of the native culture. But can this be seen as a success of preserving their culture or again as ultimate success of assimilation? Perhaps, by the time the school started to include Indian culture the assimilation over generation was already at such a advanced stage that a little bit of native culture would not be harmful for the original purposes of the school. Why were most of the testimonies positive even though the school was founded on such negative and oppressive ideas. Here, I think it is important to note that most of the positive testimonies came from the standpoint of successful assimilated natives. Thus, the documentary shows for the most part the multi-layered success of the indoctrination in boarding schools over many generations.