Dickinson College Indian School Digital Resource Center
- Carlisle Indian School Resource Center
Premier primary source materials from the school. Images and other things of interest
Online from CCBC Libraries
Carlisle Indian Industrial School by
The Carlisle Indian School (1879-1918) was an audacious educational experiment. Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt, the school's founder and first superintendent, persuaded the federal government that training Native children to accept the white man's ways and values would be more efficient than fighting deadly battles. The result was that the last Indian war would be waged against Native children in the classroom. More than 8,500 children from virtually every Native nation in the United States were taken from their homes and transported to Pennsylvania. Carlisle provided a blueprint for the federal Indian school system that was established across the United States and also served as a model for many residential schools in Canada. The Carlisle experiment initiated patterns of dislocation and rupture far deeper and more profound and enduring than its founder and supporters ever grasped. Carlisle Indian Industrial School offers varied perspectives on the school by interweaving the voices of students' descendants, poets, and activists with cutting-edge research by Native and non-Native scholars. These contributions reveal the continuing impact and vitality of historical and collective memory, as well as the complex and enduring legacies of a school that still affects the lives of many Native Americans.
Call Number: eBook E97.6.C2 C365 2016
On the Shelf from CCBC Libraries
To Show What an Indian Can Do by
The Carlisle Indian School and the Haskell Institute in Kansas were among the many federally operated boarding schools enacting the U.S. government's education policy toward Native Americans from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, one designed to remove children from familiar surroundings and impose mainstream American culture on them. To Show What an Indian Can Do explores the history of sports programs at these institutions and, drawing on the recollections of former students, describes the importance of competitive sports in their lives. Author John Bloom focuses on the male and female students who did not typically go on to greater athletic glory but who found in sports something otherwise denied them by the boarding school program: a sense of community, accomplishment, and dignity.
Call Number: E98.G2 B56 2005
Native American Boarding Schools by
A broadly based historical survey, this book examines Native American boarding schools in the United States from Puritan times to the present day. Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans are estimated to have attended Native American boarding schools during the course of over a century. Today, many of the off-reservation Native American boarding schools have closed, and those that remain are in danger of losing critical federal funding. Ironically, some Native Americans want to preserve them. This book provides a much-needed historical survey of Native American boarding schools that examines all of these educational institutions across the United States and presents a balanced view of many personal boarding school experiences--both positive and negative. Author Mary A. Stout, an expert in American Indian subjects, places Native American boarding schools in context with other American historical and educational movements, discussing not only individual facilities but also the specific outcomes of this educational paradigm. * Draws upon actual student letters and documents relating to boarding school experiences * Presents biographical profiles of such key figures as Col. Richard Pratt, founder of Carlisle Indian School; and Jim Thorpe, American athlete and Carlisle graduate * Provides a chronology of Native American boarding schools in the United States from the 1600s to the present * Supplies an annotated bibliography of key research resources on Native American boarding schools * Includes a glossary defining hundreds of terms relating to Indian culture and history
Call Number: E97.5 .S76 2012
The Lost Ones:Long Journey Home
- Indian School: Stories of SurvivalProposing to “kill the Indian and save the man,” U.S. Army captain Richard H. Pratt envisioned an educational system that would erase Native American culture and “civilize” the continent’s indigenous people. His chosen method? Removing children from Pennsylvania’s tribal communities and confining them in barracks-style schools—initially the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which Pratt founded in 1879. In myopic terms it was a remarkably effective strategy, and Carlisle became a cruel model for institutions all over the U.S. and Canada, including Michigan’s Mount Pleasant Indian School. Subjected to emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse, Mount Pleasant students were inevitably alienated from their families, native languages, and tribal religions. This film combines archival materials with present-day interviews to make clear just how inhumane the system was. Survivors from Tlingit, Chippewa, Choctaw, and Lakota communities describe in raw, unflinching terms the impact on First Nations across North America. Contains occasional profanity. (41 minutes)
On Video
Our Spirits Don't Speak English
"Imagine you are a child, taken from your home, your family, taken from everything you know. In 1869, the U.S. government enacted a policy of educating Native American children in the ways of western society. By the late 1960's, more than 100,000 had been forced to attend Indian Boarding School. Told from the native American perspective, this documentary uncovers the dark history of the U.S. government policy and will give a voice to the countless Indian children forced through the system."--container.
Call Number: Media E97.5 .O97 2008
