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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>
  • To: <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>, <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Boarding schools, was Who attacked whom?
  • Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 21:52:12 -0800

Bob, you are the one that said you friend was "white" and thought of himself as "white." That would make him an apple. Then in this e-mail you turn around and say how proud he is to be Cherokee. I based what I said on what you had said.

And, no Bob, I'm not as "white" as anyone else on this list and it isn't only on one issue.

As to the reunions at the boarding schools, you have heard of Munchausen Syndrome, haven't you? A lot of the folks who go back for the reunions do so because the government considers them a success. The "making them white" and "making them civilized" took. However, I know some folks who go back so they can spit on the buildings and other things a tad more, hmmmm, demonstrative? To flaunt that it didn't take.

And, yes you do have a major Indian hospital. Remember the references to IHS. Well, the original hospital taught a whole bunch of doctors how to do tubal ligations, visectomies and hysterectomies!

Also, you are rather confused as to what makes a person an apple or pan Indian. When the only thing about you that is red is your skin, then you are an apple. hanging around with folks who have the same interests as you doesn't change who you are or make you what they are. Just means you have the same interests. I mean, using your logic, then all of us should be star gazers (Bev), fiercely independent (James) or Indian (me <g>).

What makes me "red" is that I think differently about a lot of things than you do. I instinctively know some things and understand some things which you will never know or understand. I get Indian humor without anyone having to explain the jokes to me. I get what a 49 is. I get the humor of a rez rocket. I know what Indian time is (and it does exist <g>).

Just like James has explained in the past, you can go and live where he lives. Be a neighbor for 50, 75 or even a 100 years and you still won't be one of them.

Sorta like while I understand more about the South than most outsiders, can agree with them on a whole bunch of issues and have an accent that can come back in a heart beat that is thick enough to cut with a knife, that doesn't make me Southern.

So, no, we don't approach things from a similar angle. We can agree on all kinds of things but you will never understand the innate me. Doesn't mean we can't be friends. Doesn't mean we wouldn't get along IRL. Just means we come to this with a world of different experiences and thousands of years of different heritage memories.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: "bob ford" <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>


Lynda, I doubt my friend would like being called an "apple". but, by that definition, other than on this subject, you are as 'white' as all of the rest of us (that is not a perjorative, coming from me).

My friend was proud to be Cherokee. Maybe as a middle aged man , he is more like you are now, I don't know. Just a normal Southern boy growing up; I see nothing wrong with that. His daddy could be a mean SOB (He pulled me over for speeding once -- he didn't ticket me but chewed me out).

By the wasy, they have had big reunions at the Indian School here. Indian School Road is one of the major roads in Phioenix. Indians come from all over the country for the reunions at the school. They seem to be proud of attending the school. It is a park, now. But, when I moved here, it was still a school. We also have a major Indian Hospital, where you must be an Indian to be seen. I don't really know how it wqorks, I've never been there.

I have a famous artist friend, last name Yazzi, so you know he is Navajo (D'Naia - sp?). He served a couple of tours in the Marines. very well educated and hangs out with the hipster artists, because he is an artist. He certainly wouldn't like to be called an apple.

I live in Phoenix, for goodness sakes, I have known, mostly casually, a lot of Indians. You know that Barry Goldwater had more influence in this state than any one man and he was a great friend of the Indians all of his life. I've also been to more than one rez, they can be rough. They have not only poverty , but gangs and drugs just like the city.. I don't think you should generalize about all Indians. They have very different experiences just like all other peoples.

What makes you so much different than me, as far as "red" and "white". Except for this issue, I agree with you on as many things, and approach life from a simiar angle to you as anyone else on this list and most of us, as far as I know, are white as apple pie ;-) ..........bobford

---------------------------------------------------------------


--- On Fri, 12/5/08, Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net> wrote:

From: Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net>
Subject: [Homestead] Boarding schools, was Who attacked whom?
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Friday, December 5, 2008, 3:00 PM
The whole boarding school thing went on in the U.S., Canada
and Australia.

Now, speaking of a violent nation, you might be interested
to know that the
Office of Indian Affairs (later to become the BIA) came
into existance in
1824 as an office of . . . drumroll here <g> the
United States Department of
War! Kinda tells you right off the top exactly how the
government felt
about the Indians. And one of their first acts was the
Indian Relocation
Act of 1830. I would think most folks are familiar with
the Trail of Tears
(4,000 dead) which is a direct result of the IRA.

So, around the 1850s the head honchos in the BIA decided
that there should
be a policy of "Americanization" of Indians
(hmmmm, interesting how they
wanted to make the First Americans into Americans). That
plants a seed and
pretty soon the good Christians are out in force with their
missionary
schools with the intent of "Christianizing" the
"heathens" and "savages."
Grant comes along and wants the Indians to "embrace
the only opportunity
which is left them to avoid extermination."

Next step was prison for 30 years for practicing
"heathen rituals." Indians
needed to "assimilate" and folks such as
Bob's friend were the result,
"apples" (red on the outside, white on the
inside).

When all of this didn't work, they invented the
boarding schools. Carlisle
is the most famous (infamous?). It was founded by Richard
Henry Pratt who
said, and I quote, "A great general has said that the
only good Indian is a
dead one. In a sense, I agree with this sentiment, but
only in this: that
all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill
the Indian in him
and save the man." He believed in "assimilation
through total immersion"
and commented that "as slavery has assimilated
Africans, removing Indians
entirely from their cultural surroundings will result in
their
assimilation." Did I mention that he was an Army
captain and that he
practiced his "techniques" on prisoners before he
opened his boarding
schools?

In general, the children were rounded up and forcibly
removed from their
homes. They were not allowed to take any personal items
with them.
Generally, families were broken up and children from a
family were sent to
different boarding schools. Family and friends were
*discouraged* from
visiting. Upon arrival at the schools they were issues
uniforms and their
hair was cut. Buster Brown was the hair cut of choice
because many tribes
considered "shingled" hair to be a sign of
weakness and worn by cowards.
They had their names changed so their "pagan"
past could be erased. A lot
of the schools dressed the girls up in white dresses or
white pinafores over
their dresses. Native languages were not to be spoken.
Punishment ranged
from having their mouths washed out with lye soap to
beatings to loss of
food. Religion classes and church attendance was required
daily. Getting
the white dresses dirty resulted in beatings. Most of the
schools hired out
the boys as day labor. Girls were required to learn
"womanly arts" and put
to work in the local homes as maids. Some of the schools
ran their own
industries and farms.

The usual brainwashing tactics were used -- no privacy;
going to bed and rising was done by signal;
they wore uniforms;
they marched to and from activities;
they were arranged into "companies" under the
command of student captains
and majors;
they were only allowed to bath once or twice weekly in
groups;
students were expected to spy on each other and pitted
against each other by
administrators and teachers;
they were "taught" that the Indian way of life
was "savage" and "inferior"
to the white way;
they were taught they were being "civilized" or
"raised up" to a better way
of life;
they were told that Indians who retained their culture were
"stupid,"
"dirty" and "backwards;"
they were taught that those who most quickly assimilated
were "good"
Indians;
they were taught that those who didn't assimilate were
"bad" Indians;
they were shamed and humilated for showing homesickness for
their families;
flogging or kneeling for extended periods of time were a
frequent
punishment.

Here's a poem written by one of the boarding school
students:

Six o'clock in the morning,
Our breakfast comes around.
A bowl of mush and molasses,
Was enough to knock you down.
Our coffee's like tobacco juice,
Our bread is hard and stale,
and that's the way they treat you
At Mt. Pleasant Indian Jail.

My aunts and uncle plus a few cousins were sent to the
Hoopa Valley Indian
Re-Education Center which was run, in part, by Shakers.
Traumatic, not only
in that they were taken away from home but traumatic
because people didn't
"go up the mountain where the crazy Indians
live." Hoopa Valley is HOT,
dry, dusty and there's a world of difference between it
and the coast. The
Hupa (the valley and the tribe are not spelled the same)
kids were sent down
to Riverside, for the most part.

For the most part, the Wiyot were sent to Arizona. The
Yurok were sent to
Oregon. Somehow, probably knowing important people in high
places, Grampa
got his kids sent to a school he and Gramma could get to to
visit them. And
he did visit which was way against the rules. Again, he
got white folks in
high places to give him rides up to the rez (he never did
drive). My uncle
died when he was 12. Auntie Florence was 14 and Auntie
Elsie was 11. A
week after Sonny Boy died my grandparents were informed of
his death. I'm
not sure they would have been notitied that soon if Auntie
Elsie hadn't
become hysterical. There was nothing they could do to calm
her down.
Grampa got the message, called Old Man Carson and headed up
the mountain to
collect all three kids. Sonny Boy was buried in the
cemetary we own.
Auntie Florence never talked about the time at the boarding
school and
Auntie Elsie spent the next 50 years telling everyone she
was W-H-I-T-E!
She married a very blonde man and was quite upset when 2 of
her 5 kids had
dark hair.

Sonny Boy had appendicitis. He was beat with a rubber hose
and told to stop
whining. That if he'd become a good Christian instead
of a being a dirty
heathen, this evil wouldn't be coming out of him. He
was sent to his bunk
without food (probably would have been a good thing). A
couple of days
later, the doctor made a routine visit to the school and he
was diagnosed
with acute appendicitis. They operated in the infirmary.
His appendix had
ruptured. They removed the appendix, cleaned up the
abdominal cavity, sewed
him up and promptly moved him to the little room off the
main room. The
next morning someone went to check on him. He'd rolled
off the bed and bled
to death. No one watched him as he came out from the
anesthesia. There
were no rails on the bed.

O.K., that's the boarding school part. I'll put
the tribe history in
another e-mail. I'm inclined to write books instead of
short e-mails <g>

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: "EarthNSky" <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>

I'm glad you brought this up..I was actually thinking
about it today.
I would like to learn the whens, whos, wheres and whys of
this..if you
would oblige..
I would like a brief tribe history.

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