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Not all boarding schools bad

Story Published: Sep 29, 2009

Story Updated: Sep 25, 2009

Regarding the article “Thinking Indian at tribal colleges” by Richard B. Williams [Vol. 29 No. 11] I find his total indictment of Indian boarding schools to be troubling, especially his statement, “Our children were forcibly removed from home to be educated at boarding schools, where cemeteries are filled with the bodies of children who were starved, beaten and abused.”

As an 80-year-old, I can look back at my own childhood when I spent 10 years at the Pipestone Indian Training School from 1935 to 1945 and another five years at Haskell Institute from 1945 to 1950. I neither experienced nor witnessed any of the brutal conditions as reported by Richard Williams.

As a teacher and historian I believe Dr. Williams should clarify for your readers which of the 27 federally operated boarding schools carried out those alleged horrendous acts of cruelty and in what time frame did they occur? He fails to mention the education and job training skills we were taught in the boarding school system allowing us to compete in the dominant society.

– Dr. Adam Nordwall
Fallow Indian Reservation
Nevada

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cb in nd said on Tuesday, Oct 6 at 3:31 PM

I have a friend whose son was told by a white teacher that he'd grow up to be a no-good indian just like all the others. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening or never happened.

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anonymous said on Friday, Oct 2 at 10:38 AM

I grew up in a reservation public school in the 60’s and saw many physical abuse by white teachers, particularly boys from the 3rd-6th grade. They’d get poked on the head with pencils by the teachers & always boys react and get sent to the principles office for rubber hose beating that happened daily. I hate to say it but at least we got to go home to our parents everyday whereas boarding schools kids couldn’t. I believe the stories. Teachers were very racist especially white women teachers

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Weenuck said on Wednesday, Sep 30 at 12:02 PM

Dr. Adam Nordwall either must have selective memory or complete amnesia of his experience at Pipestone and Haskell. If not, he was probably one of the 'pets' or favorites at the schools and was probably one of the boys who snitched on the other kids.

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anon said on Wednesday, Sep 30 at 10:26 AM

As usual, the coward Nordwall is censoring the comments section.

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