With the start of November marking the beginning of Native American Heritage Month, the Office of Multicultural Student Services celebrated the start with a documentary screening in the David L. Eisler Center building.
“Our Spirits Don’t Speak English” gave historical context as to what life was like for Native Americans as they attended school for the first time.
The 2008 documentary discussed boarding schools for Native Americans from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.
Senior Diversity Inclusion and Strategic Initiative Officer Colleen Green hosted the event as an educational opportunity to give students a deeper understanding of Native American culture and history.
“This month, our focus is on Indian boarding schools that were created to Americanize Native American people,” Green said. “Ripping away their culture, their history, their heritage, making them forcing them to speak English, having Americanized names, teaching them the ways of the colonizers that came into the new world.”
Green talked about how the initial goal of these boarding schools was to conform the indigenous population into acting like colonists, stripping them of their native language and culture.
This included learning jobs such as metalwork, cooking, cleaning and other jobs of the early eighteenth century, as well as having their hair cut short, forcing them into Christianity and being told their belief system was “superstition.”
The documentary mentioned the first Indian Boarding school founded by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, who advocated to“kill the Indian and save the man.”
Nursing freshman Samara Turner attended the documentary as part of her seminar class and gave insight into how Native American history is overlooked.
“I chose this one because I think it’s important to learn about, and I don’t think it’s taught enough in schools,” Turner said. “I think the Native Americans don’t get enough attention, and how their culture was taken from them. I think it should be taught more and I think it should be a more talked about topic, so people get more information on it.”
Turner also expressed how surprised she was at how recent history has been.
The people interviewed in the documentary shared their experiences attending these boarding schools. Most attended because their parents could not take care of them or had initially thought they were receiving higher education.
Students who attended the documentary helped themselves to some snacks and water as they remained glued to the screen. They left with a wider perspective and acknowledgment as the documentary ended.
Criminal justice senior Quartez Shah shared his thoughts about the documentary.
“Well one thing about it, I like to be able to support when it comes to certain events, especially when it comes to Native American Heritage Month, is just to understand what really goes on when people like them come to schools here and you know they have different approaches on school than we do,” Shah said. “We want to be able to at least know how to communicate with as far as like how to be cool and how to get people to understand what this history brings.”
As time continues, it is unbelievable to think that people have come so far. What started as something intended to destroy a culture, boarding schools had the opposite effect.
The boarding schools were the colonists’ way of “normalizing” the Indigenous people, but that never lasted. Because of the skills they learned from the boarding schools, despite their original purpose, Native Americans could read and speak English and thus read the treaties with the U.S. government that were initiated and do something about it.
As a result, tribal colleges have emerged with their own cultures within those institutions.
Green is of Tribal Affiliation with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. She continued to talk about how it is important to be mindful of other cultures, no matter what culture you were brought up in.
“You can look at the different educational components that we have in our ways of life, being mindful that everybody has been raised in a different culture, and it’s not just the dominant society’s culture. If you look historically at all our cultures across the world,” Green said. “ We all bring something to it, and understanding that everybody has their own way of doing things is a good start to a conversation to make sure that we’re all doing what’s right by each other as opposed to thinking that their way is the only way.”