Why is it important to teach students about the residential schools?
The residential Indian schools are part of our history — not just Native American people’s history, but all of ours. It’s also important to understand this part of history in order to understand the social issues that people live with on the reservations. What happened was, one generation of a family went to boarding schools, and the next generation lived on the reservations and went to public school. The parents had grown up away from their families and communities in an environment where they received a very poor-quality education and were often abused. When they came out of those schools, there was no transition and no healing. Today on the reservations, there’s a high rate of alcoholism and drug abuse, as well as a high rate of suicide, especially among boys aged 19 to 25. It has been only recently that the community has recognized that there is a need for healing. What cultural differences need to be considered in working with Native students? Although this is a generalization —
