Book
Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education
by Brenda Child
📖 Overview
Indian Subjects examines the history of Indigenous education across North and South America through a collection of scholarly essays. The volume brings together research on educational systems imposed on Native peoples in multiple countries and time periods.
The book addresses topics including boarding schools, missionary education efforts, and Indigenous responses to colonial education practices. Essays analyze primary source documents, oral histories, and archival materials to document both institutional policies and lived experiences.
The contributors examine cases from Canada, the United States, and Latin America to highlight commonalities and differences in Indigenous education across borders. Research focuses on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of intensive government intervention in Native education.
This hemispheric perspective reveals patterns in how colonial powers used education as a tool of cultural assimilation while also showing Indigenous resistance and adaptation to these systems. The collection contributes to broader conversations about sovereignty, identity, and the ongoing legacies of educational colonialism in Indigenous communities.
👀 Reviews
Not enough reader reviews exist online to provide a meaningful summary of public reception. The book, published in 2014 by SAR Press, has:
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This scholarly collection of essays about Indigenous education in North and South America is referenced in academic works but hasn't generated significant public reader feedback online. A proper summary of reader reception would require more available reviews.
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Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences by Margaret L. Archuleta This collection presents firsthand accounts, government documents, and photographs from Native American boarding school students across different generations and institutions.
They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School by K. Tsianina Lomawaima The text presents oral histories from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma to reveal student experiences and resistance to institutional power.
The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe by Francis La Flesche This memoir from a member of the Omaha tribe recounts experiences at a Presbyterian mission school in Nebraska during the 1860s.
🤔 Interesting facts
🔖 Author Brenda Child is a member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe and has dedicated much of her academic career to studying Native American family life and educational experiences
📚 The book examines indigenous education across both North and South America, breaking away from the common U.S.-centric approach to Native American studies
🏫 Many of the boarding schools discussed in the book operated under a "kill the Indian, save the man" philosophy, forcing indigenous children to abandon their native languages and cultural practices
🌎 The collection includes perspectives from scholars across multiple countries, offering comparative views of how different colonial powers approached indigenous education
📖 The book reveals how some indigenous communities actively sought Western education as a tool for survival and resistance, while simultaneously working to preserve their own cultural knowledge systems