Native American Boarding School

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Advertised as a noble effort to show the Native American people a better, more fulfilling, and more civilized lifestyle, the boarding schools had a substantial amount of support and funding from not only the U.S. government, but by most of the population. There was a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning of the project, people were extremely excited to provide thousands of Native Americans the service of ripping away their culture, beliefs, and identities in exchange for the same white protestant beliefs that ruled the ideal America. Their plan was to take young children and teens from the reservation and move them into a boarding school designed to first take away “their Indianness” , then fill the cultural gaps with American culture, knowledge, …show more content…
Even these performances were deemed to be dangerous in the eyes of the Office of Indian Affairs, they encouraged the replacement of the Indian performances with American dances. An inadvertent skinning of yet another layer of identity, a perfect representation of the boarding school ability to strip the choice of defining one’s own identity as a Native American or an American, but with the complete disrespect of the cultures and distinction between the many tribes came the choice of identifying with one’s own tribe. One of the only chances to show one’s heritage was the Indian Club, sanctioned by the school as a way to provide students with the chance to not necessarily embrace their heritage, rather a chance to recognize its presence. Most of the families and tribes with children in the system opposed the treatment of the students and the abandonment of generations of tradition. The boarding schools’ slow and brutal process of stripping the Native American identity from their students was successful in Americanizing …show more content…
Their efforts were reminiscent of the Freedmen’s Bureau’s formation of school and legal aid systems. The German-Jews began their influx into America as early as the 1840’s; they worked tirelessly to improve their social status marked by their country and their faith. Slowly, they were able to build a reputable society within American borders, they were proud of their accomplishments. With their earned success, the German-Jews built the Educational Alliance in 1893, dedicated to preparing and teaching new immigrants how to live and thrive in America. The German-Jews did want to provide a safe haven for immigrants to learn English, writing, and philosophy, but it can be argued they truly wanted to assimilate the Jews escaping genocide in Russia. Beginning in the late 1890’s and continuing well into the 1910’s, Russian cities practiced pogroms. They would form mobs and destroy Jewish shops and homes, they would murder and set people on fire. A scene of true horror and violence, America was a beacon of hope and safety for thousands of Russian-Jew refugees. Having arrived many years before, the German-Jews made a name and respectable reputation for themselves. They resented the way their
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