Training Future Wives and Mothers: Vocational Education and Assimilation at the Stewart Indian School

My latest article was published on nursingclio.org. To read the entire piece follow the link below.

In 1879, the US government launched an expansive effort to restructure Indigenous lives by enrolling Native American children in off-reservation boarding schools. By the early 1900s, a network of federally managed boarding schools emerged across the country to “civilize” Native children. The architects of this system believed they had a mission to uplift and assimilate these children into white society by teaching them English, forbidding the use of Indigenous languages, baptizing them as Christians, and forcing them to adopt white, middle-class values. These schools also functioned as military academies; children were forced to march, participate in drills, and were subjected to violent punishments when they disobeyed their superiors.

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