{"id":1666,"date":"2019-08-01T08:43:01","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1666"},"modified":"2019-08-01T08:43:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:43:01","slug":"laura-c-kellogg-on-indian-education-1913","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/17-conquering-the-west\/laura-c-kellogg-on-indian-education-1913\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura C. Kellogg on Indian Education (1913)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\nUnited States used education to culturally assimilate Native Americans. Laura\nCornelius Kellogg, an Oneida author, performer, and activist who helped found\nthe Society of American Indians (SAI) in 1913, criticized the cultural\nchauvinism of American policy. Speaking to the SAI, she challenged her Indian\naudience to embrace modern American democracy while maintaining their own identity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word education has several meanings to our race,\nand at the start I wish to clear up in our minds a common misunderstanding of\nthe term. To some of our Indians at home, going away to a government school\nmeans an education from which we may expect anything and everything. To some others,\nanything the Caucasian does is \u201ceducated\u201d and anything \u201cIndian\u201d is not. To\nthose who have gone the whole way of enlightenment, education has another\nmeaning. With them, there is a proper appreciation of the real values of truth\nwherever they may be found, whether in an Indian or Paleface. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are old Indians who have never seen the inside\nof a class room whom I consider far more educated than the young Indian with\nhis knowledge of Latin and Algebra. There is something behind the superb\ndignity and composure of the old bringing up; there is something in the\ndiscipline of the Red Man which has given him a place in the literature and art\nof this country, there to remain separate and distinct in his proud active\nbearing against all time, all change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want education, yes, we want to know all the\neducated Caucasian knows but we want our self-respect while we are getting his\nknowledge. In short, let us discriminate between the goods and bads of\ncivilization and the goods and bads of his own heritage; weed out as many of\nthe bads as we can and send him along the way a finer type of citizen than if\nwe turned him into a very average \u2018White man\u2019 just to have him \u201cwhite\u201d in\nculture. This is what I mean by recognizing the real values of truth whether\nthey are to be found in paleface or the Indian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are altogether 357 government schools; 70 of\nthese reservation boarding schools, 35 non-reservation boarding schools, and\n223 day schools. The enrollment in these schools totals 24,500 children.\nBesides these there are 4,300 children in the mission schools and 11,000 in the\npublic. Of the 11,000, the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma have 6,900. The\nnumber of children of the race in school in the country then is 39,800. The\nlast report shows an increase of nearly 2,000 [in] attendance over the year\nbefore. Yet, there are still 9,000 children without school facilities! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another objectionable feature of the boarding school\nis this matter of health. Where there are several hundred [students] together\nand a large percentage of them are afflicted with trachoma and tuberculosis the\nmeans for their segregation is not sufficient, the well children are open to\nthese dangers. Think of the danger of trachoma. No immigrant can land in New\nYork who has trachoma, but here we are exposing the youth of the race to an\nincurable disease. If this were done by one individual to another, it would be\na penitentiary offense. I hear someone defending the Bureau. Go to the Indian\nschools and say to the nurses and the doctors that they shall not lose their\npositions if they will tell you the truth about the conditions of the schools\nand we would soon enough find that the hospital equipment in the Indian service\nis nowhere near adequate to the demand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The white child comes from a well-established economic\nenvironment. That is, he has a home where the one idea in the community is to\novercome deficits of material well-being. This child is continually asking of\nhis parents to find a better means of support and accumulation. It calls for a\ncontinual effort toward improvement. The community life is organized; it\nproduces and has markets, and money is in circulation in it as a natural result\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Indian child\u2019s environment is the reservation, a\nworld of deficits. The group has really custodian care. There is no real\npersonal liberty in wardship; there is no incentive in the community for any\nspecial effort; there is no reward for doing the right thing; the social life\nis not organized. \u2026 There are no markets of their own making and their own\nresponsibility. There is no money continually in circulation. As Marvin Jack,\nin his paper last year said, when money enters the reservation, it loses its\nelasticity. When rations and annuities come, they come like spasms. There is\nnothing being learned by the adult population from necessity. What they do,\nthey do through their own sense of natural acumen or decency. The great wonder\nis not that at they accomplish so little, but that they are not all outlaws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our future is in the hands of the educational system\nof today. Those of us who have come thus far know how our youth have longed\nreach the summit of the mountain. Let us not forget our own yearnings and the\nprayers of our ambitious young for opportunity. Let us climb the highest\nmountain, without looking back till we have reached the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Laura Cornelius Kellogg, \u201cSome Facts and\nFigures on Indian Education,\u201d The\nQuarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians<\/em> (April 1913), 36-46. Available\nonline via Hathi Trust (https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=mdp.39015013515617&view=2up&seq=46<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States used education to culturally assimilate Native Americans. Laura Cornelius Kellogg, an Oneida author, performer, and activist who helped found the Society of American Indians (SAI) in 1913, criticized the cultural chauvinism of American policy. Speaking to the SAI, she challenged her Indian audience to embrace modern American democracy while maintaining their own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":368,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1666","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1667,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1666\/revisions\/1667"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}