Cooper, Michael L. Indian School: Teaching the White Man's Way Clarion, 1999 104 pages, b/w photos grades 4-6

The Indian boarding school era encompassed one of the most blatant expressions of racism in the history of North America—the wholesale taking of Indian children away from their large extended families and tribal nations and thrusting them into a foreign world, where they were abruptly, systematically and totally deprived of their Indianness. In the boarding schools, children's names, languages and clothing were taken away and their sacred objects destroyed. Their hair was cut to cut them off from their people. They were beaten and worse—even jailed within the schools—for minor infractions of rules they didn't understand. They were made to eat lye soap for trying to communicate with each other in their own languages. Many children died in the boarding schools, of disease, malnutrition, and broken hearts. For those who survived, brainwashing did not come easily, but when it did come, it was total. For the most part, the adults who came back to their tribal nations looked and acted like white people. They were no longer able to communicate with their families, they were rude to their elders, they did not know their place in the world. Neither brown nor white, they could not fit in anywhere, and many succumbed to alcohol or suicide. This legacy of hopelessness and despair still persists today, as whole Indian communities struggle to come to terms with—to heal from—the devastation of the Indian boarding school era.

The rationale for the boarding schools was, as Carlisle founder Richard Henry Pratt often said, to "kill the Indian and save the man." But the actual reason was economic: By taking away the children, the U.S. government was able to take away and maintain control of the Indian land base.

None of this is explained in Michael L. Cooper's Indian School: Teaching the White Man's Way, a poorly-written, shallow and superficial treatment of the boarding school era for fourth- to sixth-graders.

Here, Cooper defends the indefensible by making sweeping generalizations about Native peoples ("When they were teenagers, Native Americans married, had children, and went on the warpath"), patronizing statements ("The chiefs were still angry about losing the sacred land..."), simplistic historical analyses ("White people wanted Indians to replace their teepees [sic] with houses and their bows and arrows with plows"), rationalizations ("Not only were Indian names difficult to pronounce, but names such as Ota Kte, which translated as Plenty Kill, evoked a savage past"), and euphemistic language to soft-pedal daily atrocities ("Punishment was not always fair").

Cooper's sloppy research is apparent throughout, especially in his use of photo illustrations. Here, he unquestioningly parrots the disinformation put out by Pratt's publicity campaign. For instance, there is a full-page photo of a George Catlin drawing of a man participating in a Mandan ritual, in which he personifies O-kee-pa, the Mandan spirit of evil (Lonna M. Malmsheimer, "'Imitation White Man': Images of Transformation at the Carlisle Indian School," Studies in Visual Communication, vol. 11, no. 4, fall 1985). Pratt circulated this photo of a white-made drawing of a Mandan ritual as a representation of tribal life in general, and disingenuously called it "First Boy Recruited." Cooper's caption: "This drawing depicts how one boy, who had been participating in a tribal ceremony, looked when Captain Pratt first talked to him about attending boarding school."

Indeed, the cover of Indian School shows the famous "before-and-after" photos of Tom Torlino (Navajo), as he appeared upon entering Carlisle and three years later. In the first photo, the young man is dressed traditionally and his hair is long. In the second, he is dressed like a white man of the time and his hair is cut short. As in the other "before-and-after" photos, there is a marked contrast in skin color, apparently to show that acculturation had the effect of lightening one's complexion. Again, Cooper comments only that "Here is a Navajo student when he arrived, and the same young man three years later."

There is another photo, of a little boy in full military dress. How this child came to be at Carlisle is a story of great pain, and this story was available to Cooper. I will not tell it here; it is sufficient to say that this child was not a student. Cooper's caption: "The boarding schools accepted very young students. This boy was only four years old."

The other photos—and Cooper's captions—are equally offensive. A photo captioned "A Shoshone family in their teepee [sic]" shows a woman, a man and five children sitting on the ground under what appears to be a small lean-to, definitely not a spacious, enclosed tipi. Another photo depicts a young man in a loincloth, holding a drawn bow, posing in front of fake scenery. Cooper's caption: "An Indian boy before being introduced to the white man's way." Yet another posed photo shows a young man, maybe in his twenties, standing in a canoe. Cooper's caption: "Indian students, like this boy in a canoe, learned to spend their free time like other American young people." When photos are not mismatched (some of the "before-and-afters" are actually of different people!), they are generalized. In most, Cooper does not name the people or their tribes; they are just "Indians." In many, the reader is left to guess which boarding schools the photos are from. Even the two-page map of "Indian boarding schools" is confusing in that it fails to indicate the dates in which these schools existed, and which ones exist today.

Children today—all children—need to be given the opportunity to understand history, even the parts that illustrate one people's inhumanity to another people. In order for this understanding to occur, children need to be able to make a connection between the history being taught and their own lives. By dehumanizing Indian peoples in text and picture, by justifying the atrocities committed in the name of "civilization," by presenting Pratt's disingenuous propaganda as fact, Cooper makes this connection impossible, and adds to the vast body of disinformation being taught about Indian peoples.

Indian School: Teaching the White Man¸s Way could have been written fifty years ago, just this way. Containing no analysis, no insight, no critical thinking, it is an offensive mishmash of bad writing and sloppy research. It is unfortunate that teachers will probably use this book as the "factual" companion to Ann Rinaldi's atrocious My Heart Is On the Ground (Scholastic, 1999).

—Beverly Slapin

I thank Naomi Caldwell, Janeen Antoine and Barb Landis for their friendship and assistance. And I thank Lonna M. Malmsheimer for her important work.