A System of Neglect: Indian Boarding Schools

Dlugokinski, Eric; Kramer, Lyn

doi:10.1176/ajp.131.6.670

Cited by 18 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…As of 2006, the AHF indicated that some 86,000 ''survivors'' of the residential school system were then still living, while an additional 287,350 Aboriginal persons were estimated to have experienced the ''intergenerational impacts'' of these institutions. The adverse psychosocial correlates of indigenous matriculation to residential and boarding schools have been documented across several studies in both Canada and the United States (Boyce & Boyce, 1983;Corrado & Cohen, 2003;Dinges & Duong-Tran, 1994;Dlugokinski & Kramer, 1974;Irwin & Roll, 1995;Krush, Bjork, Sindell, & Nelle, 1966;Million, 2000), but it is in Canada where such attention has rendered the residential school experience a principal exemplar of HT for First Nations peoples (Assembly of First Nations, 1994; Bull, 1991;Miller, 1996;Milloy, 1999). In response, the mandate of the AHF was to disburse hundreds of millions of dollars to Aboriginal communities for support of local healing initiatives that would counteract the intergenerational legacy of abuse in the residential schools.…”

Section: Situating the Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Redressing First Nations historical trauma: Theorizing mechanisms for indigenous culture as mental health treatment

Gone

2013

Transcult Psychiatry

326

248

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Indigenous "First Nations" communities have consistently associated their disproportionate rates of psychiatric distress with historical experiences of European colonization. This emphasis on the socio-psychological legacy of colonization within tribal communities has occasioned increasingly widespread consideration of what has been termed historical trauma within First Nations contexts. In contrast to personal experiences of a traumatic nature, the concept of historical trauma calls attention to the complex, collective, cumulative, and intergenerational psychosocial impacts that resulted from the depredations of past colonial subjugation. One oft-cited exemplar of this subjugation--particularly in Canada--is the Indian residential school. Such schools were overtly designed to "kill the Indian and save the man." This was institutionally achieved by sequestering First Nations children from family and community while forbidding participation in Native cultural practices in order to assimilate them into the lower strata of mainstream society. The case of a residential school "survivor" from an indigenous community treatment program on a Manitoba First Nations reserve is presented to illustrate the significance of participation in traditional cultural practices for therapeutic recovery from historical trauma. An indigenous rationale for the postulated efficacy of "culture as treatment" is explored with attention to plausible therapeutic mechanisms that might account for such recovery. To the degree that a return to indigenous tradition might benefit distressed First Nations clients, redressing the socio-psychological ravages of colonization in this manner seems a promising approach worthy of further research investigation.

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Section: Situating the Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Redressing First Nations historical trauma: Theorizing mechanisms for indigenous culture as mental health treatment

Gone

2013

Transcult Psychiatry

326

248

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The literature has two main streams of focus. One looks at the formation of an educational policy intended to wipe out indigenous cultures through the use of federally funded, off-reservation boarding schools during the era of forced assimilation (e.g., Adams, 1995; Chalcraft, 2004; Dlugokinski & Kramer, 1974; Goodburn, 1994; Hamley, 1994; McBeth, 1983; Rubenstein, 1976; Szasz, 1999; Trennert, 1988). The second stream explores how Indian students and their parents experienced, negotiated, and, at times, resisted acculturation in the boarding schools during the Progressive Era (1930-1950; e.g., Bloom, 2000; Child, 1999; Collins, 2000; Davis, 2001; Ellis, 1996; Haig-Brown, 1988; Katanski, 2005; Lomawaima, 1994; Riney, 1999; Trafzer & Keller, 2006).…”

Section: The American Indian Boarding School Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visualizing Humanitarian Colonialism

Prado

2013

American Behavioral Scientist

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Photographs are powerful vehicles of ideology. Rather than simply documenting and reflecting a lived, material reality, photos express and retain traces of the belief systems that structure a time and a place. Photographs from American Indian boarding schools document a time and a place, but they also express the shifting ideological landscape of what Gerald McMaster calls "colonial alchemy"-the conversion of children from different sovereign indigenous nations into (U.S.) citizens. This article analyzes photographs from the Thomas Indian School located on the Cattaraugus Reservation in western New York taken between the 1890s and 1950s to illustrate the changing terrain of U.S. racial ideology. The photographs show how the goal of colonial alchemy remained consistent, but the knowledge systems that defined Indianness, citizenship, and the humanitarian mission of American Indian boarding schools changed over time.

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“…Kleinfeld and Bloom (1977) reported that as many as 75 percent of the Native children in an Alaskan boarding school experienced school-related social or emotional problems. The indictment of boarding schools was summarized in articles by Dlugokinski and Kramer (1974) and Beiser (197.4a) who consider such settings to promote a system of neglect and to be a hazard to mental health. Both articles describe the inadequate staf~ng ratio of a typical boarding school and emphasize once more the high dropout rates, which in some cases included 60 percent of the student body as compared to 23 percent in the majority population.…”

Section: Indian Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Indian Psychiatric and Social Problems

Shore¹,

Manson²

1983

Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review

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This paper is an overview of the past 15 years of research on American Indian psychiatric and social problems. Since the development of the first mental health program in the Indian Health Service (IHS) in 1967, there has been a significant increase in published articles on this topic. The number of relevant citations has doubled each decade, rising from 48 in the 1930s to 759 in the 1970s (Kelso and Attneave 1981). More important, in the past decade we have witnessed greater participation by American Indian scholars who have contributed significantly to the field with papers which put increased emphasis on indigenous syndromes, the relevance of service programmes, and the need for appropriate tribal sanction for research. The focus of recent investigations is shifting from anecdote and description to data-based studies covering many aspects of American Indian behaviour, including patterns of mental health and illness, socio-cultural determinants of behaviour, and developmental stages. In this paper we have included major contributions from all these areas.The paper is organized in ten sections. We first review the development of new Indian programmes and consider their impact on subsequent field studies and publications on Indian mental health.We then discuss emerging trends in mental health service utilization patterns, psychiatric epidemiology, and the renewed emphasis on understanding indigenous forms of illness and adjustment. Other sections consider depression and suicide, substance abuse and alcoholism, social pathologies, Indian children, prevention, and research approaches. Because of the importance of the subpopulation of Indian children, relevant studies concerning them are summarized separately. EMERGING NETWORKIn the mid 1960s, Bergman, Mindell, and Bloom were appointed as area mental health directors for the IHS on the Navajo and Oglala at University of Texas Libraries on June 6, 2015 tps.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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A System of Neglect: Indian Boarding Schools

Cited by 18 publications

References 5 publications

Redressing First Nations historical trauma: Theorizing mechanisms for indigenous culture as mental health treatment

Redressing First Nations historical trauma: Theorizing mechanisms for indigenous culture as mental health treatment

Visualizing Humanitarian Colonialism

American Indian Psychiatric and Social Problems

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