Native American Education

Over the years, the Euro-American race has butchered and bullied the Native Americans by stripping them of their land and treating them like animals hunted by bounties, rather than as human beings. It was not always this way. There was a time when the first contact between the Euro-Americans and Native Americans was a positive channel of learning from and sometimes about each other. This did not last long; soon the Euro-Americans imposed their own culture, religion, and language on native peoples. Language was a crucial issue for the Native Americans because their language was what kept their tribes alive from generation to generation.

Enforcing European culture on the Native Americans has posed a threat of extinction for some Indian languages. The removing of Indian children from their homes and placing them in far away boarding schools created a major concern for all Indians as it threatened their future existence (Trout 589). In Louise Erdrich's Indian Boarding School: The Runaways, she expresses the pain and eagerness all Natives held in common and portrays the dilemma of students who tried to escape from school, only to be returned by the student authorities. The Indian belief that "home's the place we head for in our sleep" (Erdich 625) was a very emotional desire for a return to the ways of their past.

Before white civilization's intervention in the 17th century, Native Americans ruled this land successfully. Abruptly, the Euro-Americans claimed all Indian lands within little time. Once the land had been taken, the Federal Government began the education of Indian youth. This education resulted in an almost total destruction of their ancient culture and identity. Today in Louisiana, there is some evidence to indicate the Indian Tribes are struggling to bring back some of the values they once held. For an example, the Chitimacha of Charenton, Louisiana once held around 5,000 square miles, while today their reservation is restricted to an estimated six square miles. Now they are working toward bringing back some of what they lost, especially their language, through the efforts of Rosetta Stone, a language company. Rosetta Stone is currently being used at the school on the reservation (Darden).

Educating Native Americans to read, write, and speak English caused a risk to the survival of their tribes because "when children no longer speak the language of their parents or grandparents, that language disappears"(Trout 588). In Luther Standing Bear's At Last I Killed a Buffalo, there is a description of how education in the Native American culture had once worked. "Native Americans have always educated their children and were taught skills for practical survival and producing artistic work and proper behavior for rituals and ceremonies" (Trout 589). Indians were content with their education, but after the Euro-American missionaries introduced Jesus Christ to them, the English language and American culture fell hard on them. The Native Americans were forced to learn a new way of life that completely disregarded their heritage. Several also struggled with identity and self-worth because they were introduced to this harsh environment at such a young age. They did not have the ability to see family members for months causing conflicting problems with their original culture. In Zitkala-Sa's The School Days of an Indian Girl, she speaks of how her happiness soon turned to sadness after her arrival at the school in the East. She was deaf to the English language and pleaded, "I want my mother and brother Dawee. I want to go to my aunt, but the ears of the palefaces could not hear me" (Zitkala-Sa 615). Upon returning home after three years, she felt she had no place and no one understood her feelings.

Additionally, Native Americans were not always guaranteed a good education. In Luther Standing Bear's First Day at Carlisle, the school began as an institution for Indian prisoners to see if they were able to learn. The project soon turned