Special Navajo Program Students at the Stewart Indian School
In 1946, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) established the Special Navajo Program to rapidly educate and assimilate Navajo children between the ages of 12 and 18. Between 1946 and 1959, nearly 50,000 Navajo children were taken from their homes and sent to eleven off-reservation boarding schools across the U.S. Navajo students began enrolling at the Stewart Indian School in 1949, and by the time the program ended a decade later, almost 4,000 Navajo students had attended the school.
The establishment of the Navajo program was closely connected with the termination of Indigenous treaty rights and the relocation of Native peoples from reservations to urban areas. U.S officials framed termination as an expansion of Indigenous rights, stating that Native Americans were henceforth “entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States,” and that they were now “freed from Federal supervision and control.” In practice, termination began the process of nullifying almost two hundred years of treaties negotiated between the U.S. government and hundreds of sovereign Native nations. Though these policies were not formally adopted by the U.S. government until 1953, they first emerged in the late 1940s.
Below: Photographs of Navajo students from the 1950 Stewart Indian School Yearbook
How does this relate to the Special Navajo Program? U.S. officials deemed the Navajo Nation as unprepared for termination because of poor infrastructure and a lack of adequate educational facilities for young people. That these situations resulted from federal removal and allotment policies were not acknowledged; rather, BIA officials blamed the poor conditions on Navajo reservations squarely on the Navajo. In reality. The U.S. government had neglected its treaty obligations to establish education facilities within Navajo territory. The fastest way to prepare the Navajo for termination, according to U.S. officials, was to educate some students on the reservations and others at off-reservation boarding schools. Federal officials decided that older students, ages 12-18, would leave their homes to attend boarding schools.
The Special Navajo Program relied heavily upon assimilationist practices to educate students. It was designed to provide older Navajo students with academic and vocational skills over a five-year period, enabling them to get jobs upon their graduation. During their first three years in the program, students focused on “social skills, habits, customs, understandings, and attitudes,” as well as “the English language and numbers.” Students also participated in gendered “pre-vocational” training during this time. For young women, this meant generalized courses in home economics, and for young men, shop and mechanical classes. During their final two years in the program, students continued their academic instruction while also engaging in vocational training in a field offered at their particular boarding school. Additionally, Navajo students could participate in social clubs and athletics, and were required to attend assemblies that promoted good behavior and “poise, assurance, and good English-speaking abilities.” The first of eleven off-reservation boarding school to enroll Navajo Program students was the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California.
Like other schools that participated in the program, Stewart’s overall student enrollment had 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, thus creating space for Navajo students at the school. Special Navajo Program students at the Stewart Indian School spent time in the classroom and in vocational training, and were also engaged in the industrial labor required of the student population to keep the school running. They focused on learning English and rudimentary math skills, and were encouraged to adopt non-Native social norms and behavior. Students’ vocational training was mostly gendered, and female students in particular were encouraged to improve their domestic skills.
Below: Photographs of Navajo students from the 1950 (left) and 1956 (right) Stewart Indian School Yearbooks.
Students also attended church, participated in sports and other extracurricular activities, and found ways to have fun or express themselves when possible. They also rebelled – by criticizing the quality of their educations, stating their dislike for Stewart, running away, or refusing to come back and hiding with their families when new terms started. So many Navajo students left Stewart – either because they did not like it, they wanted to return to their families, or because they got jobs before graduation - that only eight percent of the almost 4,000 Navajo students who attended Stewart actually graduated.
With regard to termination and relocation, it is difficult to measure the impact of these policies as they relate to the Special Navajo Program in general or the Stewart Indian School in particular. Overall, before these policies were dismantled in the 1960s, they reshaped Native communities and their connections with tribal lands, and resulted in the relocation of over 100,000 Native Americans from reservations to cities throughout the United States, creating demographic shifts that continue to impact Native populations. Stewart student records from this period are largely inaccessible due to privacy concerns, as are the records of the relocation offices that operated in the 1950s and 1960s. It is therefore unclear how many Navajo students who attended the Stewart Indian School permanently left their reservations for jobs in urban areas.
Sources:
National Archives and Records Administration - Pacific Region
Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum - Online Yearbook Collection
