Children, who often attended schools at great distances from their communities, suffered from homesickness, and their parents from loneliness. Parents worried continually about the emotional and physical health and the academic progress of their children. Families clashed repeatedly with school officials over rampant illnesses and deplorable living conditions and devised strategies to circumvent severely limiting visitation rules. Family intimacy was threatened by the school's suppression of traditional languages and Native cultural practices.
Although boarding schools were a threat to family life, profound changes occurred in the boarding school experiences as families turned to these institutions for relief during the Depression, when poverty and the loss of traditional seasonal economics proved a greater threat. Boarding School Seasons provides a multifaceted look at the aspirations and struggles of real people.
"A skillfully written, welcome addition to the scholarship on American Indian experience in federal boarding schools. Professor Child brings an important and revealing corpus of materials into public view and treats those materials with understanding and sensitivity."
—Tsianina Lomawaima, author of They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School
Overview
Children, who often attended schools at great ...