Speaker Celebrates Native American Heritage Month

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the Department of Society and Environment and SOAN 297, Introduction to Indigenous Americas, are sponsoring the lecture “Stealing Indians: The American Indian Boarding School Experience in the United States and Canada” at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6 in Magruder Hall Room 2001.

The lecture will feature Dr. John Smelcer, an enrolled member of the Ahtna Tribe of Alaska, where he served as the tribally appointed executive director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation. Among the last speakers of Ahtna and neighboring Alutiiq, Smelcer has written dictionaries for both endangered languages. He has interviewed hundreds of Indian elders from across America and Canada, collecting their witness accounts.

From 1889 until 1960, the United States and Canada tried to assimilate Indian children by removing them from their families and sending them to distant boarding schools. The stated policy of these institutions was to transform Indian children and to eradicate their cultural identity, so they could “fit in” with the mainstream. At its height, there were 153 of these schools. Generations of children were sent to the schools, including Smelcer’s father, grandmother and many second cousins.