What was life like for Stewart Indian School students during the postwar period? Last week I wrote about student life at the Stewart Indian School between 1890, when the school opened, and 1945. This week, part two focuses on the postwar years through the closure of the school in 1980. As I mentioned last week, Native students’ experiences varied depending on the time they attended the school. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Stewart students coming from Nevada and surrounding states had increasing amounts of freedom on the campus, while those sent to Stewart as part of the Navajo Special Program were placed separate programs that hearkened back to the strict assimilationist practices of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the Indigenous self-determination movement inspired Native communities across the country, boarding school students and their families increasingly pressed Stewart administrators to incorporate their needs and interests in the school’s curriculum and student programs.

And just a reminder: The Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum has a great exhibit describing how students’ lives changed over the 90 years the school was open. Since it is currently closed (and the sane among us remain housebound) I am including some images from the museum throughout this post. Please go see it for yourself when the world is open for business again!

Below photographs: Wikimedia Commons.

1945-1950s: The “Regular” and Navajo Programs

Stewart’s overall enrollment decreased in the 1930s and 1940s as more Native students enrolled in public schools, enlisted in the U.S. military, or went to work in the defense industry. Because of this, Stewart enrolled students from the Navajo Special Program beginning in 1947. The specifics of the Navajo Program are detailed in a previous post, so please head over there for more details. Although Navajo students began to outnumber all other Stewart students during this period, there were still many students from other Indigenous nations attending Stewart during the late 1940s and 1950s.

These students, primarily from the Paiute, Washoe, and Shoshone nations in Nevada, were described as attending the ‘regular’ program at Stewart. They were registered in the first through twelfth grades, used state-approved textbooks, and participated in an academic program that included four years of English, math, social science, and science, as well as vocational training. By the end of the 1950s, vocational training for these students expanded to include business management and a police cadet program.

Above Photographs: 1946 Stewart Indian School Yearbook.

By the 1940s, the student population had also changed in the years since the Stewart School first opened. Most children spoke English when they entered the Stewart School, and many had siblings or other family members who had attended Stewart, another off-reservation boarding school, or a local public school. They had a better idea what to expect at the school and what was expected of them.

Beginning in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, the school operated on a lettered pass system, with an ‘A’ pass distributed to those with the best behavior, and then ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D,’ passes moving downward in terms of behavior. Those with ‘A,’’B,’ or ‘C,’ passes were permitted to visit Carson City on Saturday mornings to shop or go to a movie, while those with ‘D’ passes had to stay back at the school. Interestingly, elected student council members made determinations about the pass system, and were also placed in charge of adjudicating disciplinary infractions at the school and investigating student complaints. In general, students were granted more leisure time than their predecessors, and had more opportunities for involvement in clubs and student government activities.

However, assimilationist practices also remained part of everyday life at the school. Christian baptisms still occurred, and religion consistently played a role in important school events. Stewart also continued to rely upon student labor to keep the school running on a daily basis, for example in the school kitchen, where students served food, handed out trays, and cleaned up after meals. Vocational work also remained largely gendered during this period, with female students focusing on domestic chores or care giving jobs, while male students farmed and worked in mechanic and woodworking shops.

1960s and 1970s: Inaction, Changing Demographics, and Indigenous Activism

During the 1960s and 1970s, the final two decades the Stewart Indian School remained open, school officials pledged to institute reforms pursued by Stewart students and parents. At the same time, they also continued to embrace aspects of their original assimilationist mission. Students recall a militaristic environment at the school, having to march to classes on the camps, and being forced to speak English at all times, but also having opportunities to express their Indigenous cultures and openly critique federal policies that impacted the Stewart School.

In terms of school curriculum and vocational instruction, at the outset of the 1960s, little had changed from the previous two decades. Basic academic subjects, including English, science, math, and social studies were taught at the school, but vocational training was still emphasized over academics. School officials also noted that Stewart’s curriculum focused on building good character, emphasizing citizenship, and teaching Native students to be economically self-sufficient.

During the ninth and tenth grades, students rotated through different vocational courses, and in eleventh grade, male students chose to focus on one of several different fields: agricultural work, painting, arts and crafts, woodworking, or carpentry. During the first half of the decade, female students focused exclusively on either home economics training, which included sewing, cooking, and housekeeping, or on nursing aide work, which incorporated many of the same skills offered in their home economics courses. By the late 1960s, female students were also able to train as beauticians and teachers. Beginning during the 1963 school year, all students were eligible to participate in the new Business Education program at the school, which included typing and general business courses for sophomores and juniors.

Stewart students also continued to participate in a variety of extracurricular activities. Students could join the student council, participate in a variety of sports, including basketball, football, and boxing, and attend social events on campus. Students could also spend time in Carson City on the weekends, if they were not working or under restriction, where they might attend a movie or go shopping. Students continued to attend church and participate in religious events, and religious officiants often participated in graduation ceremonies. At the same time, students participated in Indigenous cultural events at nearby universities where they shared aspects of their cultures with local audiences and formed tribal clubs.

Though the Navajo Special Program had ended by 1960, the school continued to educate large numbers of Navajo students, as well as hundreds of other young adults from tribal nations across the western United States. This resulted in the continuation of a trend from the 1950s: the enrollment of more Native students from outside Nevada than from inside the state. By the late 1970s, students from out of state Indigenous nations well outnumbered those from Nevada, despite ongoing protests from advocacy organizations like the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada. The school also gradually began to focus on educating older students in the 1960s. By 1963, sixth was the lowest grade available for enrollment at the Stewart Indian School, and by 1968, the school only accepted students in the seventh through twelfth grades. In 1969, Stewart transitioned into a high school and only enrolled students in the 9th-12th grades.

The 1968-1969 school year was a watershed in terms of activism within and around the Stewart community. In March of 1969, Lakota activist and educator Lehman Brightman visited the Stewart campus and later gave a talk about the school at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Brightman shared a series of student complaints about Stewart that focused on the curriculum and vocational opportunities available to students. In the aftermath of his speech, the Nevada State Journal newspaper, in collaboration with Native students attending UNR, questioned Stewart students, administrators, faculty members, and staff, and published a series of student complaints about the school. School officials pledged to do better in response to these reports. Throughout the 1970s, students continued to press school officials for improvements in the school’s curriculum, access to more modern vocational training, and the establishment of programs designed to help students dealing with substance abuse, often through the school newspaper, The War Path. This continued through 1980, the year the school closed.

Sources:

Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, RG 75; National Archives - Pacific Region (San Francisco).

Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, RG 75; National Archives and Records Building, Washington, D.C.

Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum Collection.