Note for instructors: This is a difficult and painful topic. Please carefully review all the material ahead of time to assess whether or not it is appropriate for your classroom.
For more than 150 years, Indigenous children in the United States were taken from their families and forced into faraway boarding schools. From the 1870s to as late as the 1960s, nearly 300 boarding schools, many government-run, operated around the country. Native languages, religion, and customs were forbidden. The goal was to separate Indian children from their homes and strip away their Indigenous culture. PBS Newshour Lesson Plan: Native American Boarding Schools and Human Rights
Directions:
Watch the edited clip from PBS NewsHour: Report on Brutality at Native American Boarding Schools. Then respond to the questions below.
Questions
Annotate this Image
Directions: Analyze the excerpt from The Indian Advocate, a quarterly newspaper put out by the Benedictine Order of the Catholic Church. Use the annotation tool to take notes on the following questions. Scroll to the third paragraph that begins with “The facial difference.”
See the Text Version below:
- What is the first thing you notice as you read this excerpt?
- Why was there an intense focus on “the Indian races merg[ing] into the white”?
- The Indian Advocate’s prospectus (description of itself) states that its goal was “the progress of civilization in the Indian Territory, by promoting the spiritual as well as the temporal welfare of the Indian race…It will appear in January, April, July and October, to plead the cause of the last remnants of the Indian tribes, and of the Benedictine Missionaries, who have consecrated their life to the evangelization of these Children of the Wilderness.” What do you think this means? Does the information contained in the excerpt above align with the Advocate’s prospectus?
- Who do you think might be the journalists for the Advocate? Who do you think might be the editors of the Advocate? Why does this matter?
Source: The Indian Advocate. 1902. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. June 01, 1902. Library of Congress
Use the toggle button above to switch to Magnify Mode. Magnify mode will help you see finer detail in the image.
Switch back to Annotate Mode to create your annotations with click and drag.
Your Annotations
Puzzler
Directions: Take a look at the different sections of the illustration one by one and answer the question that accompanies each section. At the end, you will see the completed image.
Source: Library of Congress
Cropped Image 1
What do you notice about this portion of the photo? Describe what you see.
Cropped Image 2
What do you think an illustrated newspaper is?
Cropped Image 3
What might be happening here?
Cropped Image 4
Use the facial expressions of the people to guess what kind of interaction is happening and how the people involved feel about this interaction.
