Boarding Schools

Assimilation policies also took the form of mandatory boarding schools, with devastating consequences that continue to reverberate today through out Indian Country. It is believed that the prevalence of Indian-on-Indian domestic and sexual violence in Native communities is rooted in the forced removal of Indian children from their homes and from their families and Tribes into religious and government-operated boarding schools.  I must add that some of the boarding schools were run by the military, for instance the Fort Totten Boarding School in North Dakota. This boarding school had grey nuns from Canada that were established on site and housed children from the age of five, forcibly taken from their families. The school it self is still standing today. Under the school is dirt sellers with bars where children were placed in solitary confinement.  Twenty inch paths from dorm to classrooms were patrolled by military on horseback carrying crops to keep children on the beaten path. Apache women had their garments adapted  (skirts) made wide and large, to attempt to hide their children from agents.

From 1879 through the 1950s,  more that 300 boarding schools across the county taught lessons of self hate, domestic and sexual abuse, gender stereotypes and patriarchal norms to Native children forced or coerced into attending the schools.

Children attending the boarding schools were not permitted to see their families, speak their own language, or follow their cultural practices or traditional religion, the children were expected to  stay for a minimum of four years.

It is believed thst the prevalence of Indian-on-Indian domestic and sexual assault in Native communities is rooted in the forced removal of Indian from their homes and from their families and tribes and into religious snd government-operated boarding schools. -Felix S. Cohen

Felix Solomon Cohen (July 3, 1907 – October 19, 1953) was a lawyer and scholar who made a lasting mark on legal philosophy and fundamentally shaped federal Indian law and policy.

Cohen was the drafter of the centerpiece legislation of this era, the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. In 1939 he became Chief of the Indian Law Survey, an effort to compile the federal laws and treaties regarding American Indians. The resulting book, published in 1941 as The Handbook of Federal Indian Law.

The trauma suffered from boarding school survivors is expressed today in substance abuse,  suicide, domestic violence,  pedophelia, sexual assault, and being passed on to further generations.