The Harm of Minnesota Native American Residential Boarding Schools

By Maddie Schlehuber

History and Context:

In 1819, the newly formed United States of America put forth the Indian Civilization Act, a piece of legislation that was created to fully extinguish the unique cultures of the Native people, and inspired the establishment of hundreds of residential industrial schools for Native people in the next century. These schools brought hardships for families as their children were forcibly removed from them, made to assimilate into white culture, and punished for living their cultural practices in these schools. Many children died in these institutions, due to abuse or poor health, and their lives were disregarded and forgotten. Now, these institutions have been shut down, but few remember the impact they had on Native communities. One study from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABSHC) estimates that only ten percent of Americans are aware of these tragedies (1). Organizations and coalitions today are gaining awareness and researching the lives of the Native children who were held at these schools, given white identities, and were victims of the system. 

To give further context to the impact of these schools, they first opened and gained popularity in the late nineteenth century. Boarding schools can be traced back to 1879, when Captain Richard Pratt spearheaded the first one at a retired military barracks property-turned-school in Pennsylvania. Pratt famously stated his goal was to “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Carlisle Indian Industrial School is one of the most well-known institutions to take in Native youth in the peak of this experiment. It housed thousands of students before closing in 1918. Although Carlisle operated in Pennsylvania, it has a similar legacy and history to many of the schools that would follow its footsteps in other states, especially Oklahoma (83 schools), Arizona (51), and Alaska (33). By 1926, according to one study, “nearly 83% of Indian school-age children were attending boarding schools,” which was over 60,000 children in total (2).  

Many of the schools that sprang up across the country were Christian, specifically Catholic. In total, eighty of the schools historically acknowledged in the United States were Catholic-run, the vast majority. The next highest proportion was Presbyterian, with twenty-one schools. Because the government could just provide funding for these schools to have other institutions run them, many of the schools were run through churches, and the quality of these institutions fell with little oversight. Children were not educated as much as they were given jobs, prepared for a life of blue-collar work, hence the term “industrial schools.” At Carlisle school, as with  many others, there was a military influence. Boys did manual labor and farming, and girls did domestic work, cleaning, and similar tasks on an hourly schedule (3). In a report generated by the government in 1928 criticizing these schools, it reported that “those above the fourth grade ordinarily work for half a day and go to school for half a day,” which is incredibly unfair compared to the education white children would have been getting (4). 

The great plains states were  hotbeds for boarding schools due to the higher and more undisturbed populations of Native Americans. Minnesota ranks high on this list, behind the Dakotas, with at least 16 industrial boarding schools recorded, according to data from NABSHC. Focusing on the Minnesota Catholic schools is a much smaller number, but the sample can be representative of the experiences students faced at other schools during this time. A few schools stand out in the history, for example, a school run by the Benedictine nuns on the nearby White Earth Nation land. It opened in 1892 and closed in 1945, with a day school continuing for a few decades longer (5). These nuns, along with the monks of St. John’s Abbey, ran other schools on nearby Native reservations and in their communities to a larger extent. The treatment was horrible: one student at St. Benedict’s “recalled being punished by being made to chew lye soap and blow bubbles that burned the inside of her mouth” for speaking her native language (3). Other students suffered from sickness in the dormitories, malnutrition, injury, and emotional punishments. Currently, St. John’s University and St. Benedict’s College (‘sibling’ single-sex universities in north-central MN) are diving into this tragic history in their respective campuses, but it is coming very late. 

In as early as 1928, these problems were publicized. The U.S. government did an investigation into their federally funded schools and reported evidence of insufficient services, student labor, malnourishment, and more horrors. This caused the mass closure of many of the boarding schools, and a reliance on more day schools. As documentation about this time period is coming into focus, more stories of trauma, whipping, and even potential unmarked graves are being unearthed. 

Another prominent boarding school in Morris, Minnesota, was founded in 1887 by the Sisters of Mercy with funding from the government. The “Morris Industrial School for Indians” held more than two thousand students until its closure in 1909, and was no different in its mission to eradicate culture from their students (6). Currently, their campus (now a campus of the University of Minnesota system) is undergoing its own investigations, since no current gravesite exists from the school, meaning the higher likelihood of unmarked graves. In response, UMN Morris has provided information about their plans and reconciliations with local tribal leaders from Ojibwe, Anishinaabe, Sioux, and Lakota tribes, among others. The rich Native history in Minnesota to this day means that many are interested in this investigation, but there is so much information still in question. 

These tragedies, in Minnesota and throughout the nation, represent a pattern of disregard and disrespect for Native populations since the time of settler colonialism. The United States government’s mission to erase Native languages, culture, appearances, and break apart families was intentional ethnocide, meaning cultural genocide. What is especially awful is that these crimes were committed by Catholic organizations, many of which are still in operation today. Further, these boarding schools are a direct continuity from colonization themes in the early United States history with the English settlers. White people have  always attempted to force assimilation on Native people, rather than try to understand Native culture themselves. In early days, assimilation tactics were attempting evangelization and removal from land, or forcing people to participate in “prayer towns.” Part of the reason was a foundational misunderstanding of the values of Native culture by white settlers. The Indigenous peoples’ “supposed failure to “improve” [American] land was a token not of their chosen way of life but of their laziness,” writes William Cronon. So, the institutions to destroy and disregard Native American culture were in place before the United States was even independent. Further, he explains “colonists thus rationalized their conquest of New England: by refusing to extend the rights of property to the Indians, they both trivialized the ecology of Indian life and paved the way for destroying it,” encapsulating the minimal effort of white people to collaborate equally with Indigenous people (7). 

Ultimately, the historical relevance of colonization directly ties to the tragedies that occurred in Native American residential schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians are only recently uncovering the magnitude of evidence and aftermath of these experiences, and it will be a long time before they have the full picture. What they do know is that the experiences were comparable to modern slavery. Unpaid manual labor, abuse, and unsafe conditions contributed to the  Native people being stripped of their identities. The experiences in the industrial schools were harmful to their human dignity, and should never have happened. Not enough people know about the scale of these government-funded, Catholic-run organizations, and Minnesota is just a fraction of the amount of people that were impacted during the span of operation. The United States government says it best in their internal investigation of these schools: “The survey staff finds itself obliged to say frankly and unequivocally that the provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding schools are grossly inadequate” (4).

Visual Evidence: 

Few images express the severity of boarding schools than those from Carlisle. The differences in these individuals before and after assimilation is quite tragic. Additionally, I found a very interesting photo from St. Benedict’s school. 

Students in front of the St. Benedict’s Mission School on the White Earth Indian Reservation in the 1890s. (left) Star Tribune. 

White Buffalo (Carlisle student) circa. 1881, then 1882. (below)

From Carlisle School Indian Digital Resource Center 

Wounded Yellow Robe, Timber Yellow Robe, and Henry Standing Bear, before and after. (above)

“As He Entered the School in 1882, As He Appeared Three Years Later,” Tom Torling – Navajo. (right) 

Taken from Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.

Proposal of Reckoning:

The history of the Native American Boarding Schools in the United States is wrought with pain, trauma, abuse, sorrow, and loss. There is no sugarcoating what happened in these schools. For families who lost children, it is impossible to reckon with that truth and come to complete peace. However, there are many ways to properly acknowledge these assaults on humanity, especially in the name of religion. It is shameful that the Catholic Church specifically has not done enough to publicly apologize and take responsibility for the harms of these boarding schools, especially considering the pillars of Catholicism and christianity more broadly being love, justice, peace, and neighborliness. 

One start was in spring of 2022, when Pope Francis was the first to make any statement on the involvement of the Church in boarding school abuses. He later visited Canada in July of that year to speak with their Indigenous leaders more about the issue after hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered in recent years, according to the Associated Press (10). Canada had an even larger history of residential boarding schools, not unlike those in the United States. However, Canada has done much more to honor the native history and attempt to right their wrongs. The Canadian Council for Catholic Bishops has this statement on their website: “Bishops strive with pastoral solicitude to understand and engage issues affecting local Indigenous populations and likewise encourage all the faithful in their dioceses, including the members of religious institutes of consecrated life and of Catholic community organizations, to foster relationships in charity and solidarity with Indigenous Peoples,” solidifying this commitment (8).  They also have a council of indigenous representatives who traveled to the Vatican in 2022 to specifically work on this relationship. America could definitely follow in their footsteps. Pope Francis’s dedication to honoring their Indigenous culture and attempt to take responsibility for the horrific wrongs of these schools is important, but it is 2023. The last of these schools were operating just under one hundred years ago in the United States, and the lasting effects are still rampant today. With the well-known issues of poverty and substance abuse throughout many Native communities on reservations and in cities, there are clearly unresolved traumas that can be tied back to the boarding schools. However, many organizations are attempting to educate and support populations affected by this injustice. 

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is one Minneapolis-based, national-run organization supporting research and community outreach for Native people. It helps archive records of schools, conducts independent research, stays active in politics, and includes over 780 Native and non-Native members. In Minnesota particularly, the University of Minnesota schools (five total) offer full tuition coverage to all qualifying students pursuing any degree. There are also majors in American Indian Studies, Ojibwe Language, and Dakota Language as a Bachelor of Arts degree, where students can be engaged in history, culture, and racial justice while contributing and maintaining Indigenous culture. Rather than use education as a tool to commit further cultural erasure, it is important that Minnesota’s schools offer and encourage students to pursue cultural studies if they are interested. 

 Some local Catholic groups are also beginning to take action to help address the history of the boarding schools in Minnesota. Recently, the Benedictine Sisters (who ran schools as mentioned earlier) apologized for their involvement publicly. They offered a letter to the White Earth Nation in 2021. The prioress of the order wrote that “the ripple effect of that wound lingers in the memory, the culture, and the documented history of your people for all time,” acknowledging the pain and loss that the communities suffered as a result of their order’s involvement in boarding schools. According to a radio story, “a tribal official said it was one of the first direct apologies from a religious order to a tribal nation in the United States,” just emphasizing how delayed these actions are (5).  One representative from the monastery concedes, “you know, words in a sense are very cheap. It’s easy to say ‘I’m sorry,’ but it’s more challenging for me to say, ‘I will do this,’” said Kennedy, the monastery’s heritage coordinator,” from the radio interview (5). Luckily, additional projects are being set up by these groups to take oral histories from affected individuals before their stories are lost to time. A fund from St. Benedict’s College will aid in paying for the technology to search for graves, a project ongoing at multiple sites of residential boarding schools. Finally, the colleges on White Earth Nation’s tribal land will now require Indigenous education in the core curriculum. One professor stated in the radio interview that “from now on, all incoming students will hear about the boarding schools in their first year,” which helps raise awareness about the troubling history (5). Many of the people who experienced trauma in these schools are long gone, but there are still elderly people who can contribute to healing and educational projects. This is just the start of what is expected from the Catholic Church. 

With Pope Francis initiating contact between the Church and Indigenous leaders, there is great hope for work and progress in the future. Clearly, those acting in the boarding schools at the time were not acting within the mission of the Catholic Church. Many wrongs have occurred within the Church, and the horrific behavior at the expense of Native American individuals has been excused for as long as there have been settlers in the Americas. However, it is still timely to address these issues, even though it is so late. 

References

1. Lajimodiere, Denise. “List of Indian Boarding Schools in the United States.” The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Accessed May 7, 2023. https://boardingschoolhealing.org/list/.
2. Adams, David W. Education for Extinction. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995, 27.
3. Lajimodiere, Denise K., and Beth Hawkins. “The sad legacy of American Indian boarding schools in Minnesota and the U.S.” MinnPost, 2016. https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2016/06/sad-legacy-american-indian-boarding-scoools-munnesota-and-us/.
4. United States Department of the Interior. The Problem With Indian Administration. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press. Governmental Report, 1928. https://narf.org/nill/resources/meriam.html.
5. Gunderson, Dan. “St. Benedict nuns apologize for Native boarding school.” Minnesota: MPR News, 2021. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/10/26/a-reckoning-monastic-order-apologizes-.
6. “American Indian Boarding Schools in Morris.” University of Minnesota Morris. Accessed May 7, 2023. https://morris.umn.edu/about-morris/american-indian-boarding-schools-morris.
7. Cronon, William.  Changes in the Land : Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.
8.  “Indigenous Peoples.” Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops, 2023. https://www.cccb.ca/indigenous-peoples/
9. Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections. “Analyzing Before and After Photographs & Exploring Student Files | Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.” Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. Accessed May 7, 2023. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/teach/analyzing-and-after-photographs-exploring-student-files.
10. Winfield, Nicole. “Pope makes historic Indigenous apology for Canada abuses.” AP News, April 1, 2022.