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The
Reservation Boarding School System
in the United States, 1870 -1928
By way of introduction:
The Reservation Boarding School System was a war in
disguise. It was a war between the United States
government and the children of the First People of this
land. Its intention was that of any war, elimination of
the enemy. The reason this war is difficult to recognize
is because it was covered by the attractive patina of a
concept called "Manifest Destiny." Manifest
Destiny was a philosophy by which the white european
invader imagined themselves as having a divine right to
take possession of all land and its fruits.
The reason that the Concept of Manifest Destiny was
so effective was because, as it steam rolled across the
land, it dragged the masses with it. The hooks that
dragged these masses were many and were forged by
Christianity and the Christian imprimatur. Although the
fuel that energized Manifest Destiny was economic, the
inspiration was in its alignment with divine will. This
quote from the essay "God and the Land"
illustrates this alignment:
"Although many natural historians and most
natural theologians saw a specific signs of God in
nature, few of them, however, would interpret the
evidences of divine design as specifically as did John
Archdale in his 1707 "Description of
Carolina" in which he wrote, "And courteous
Readers, I shall give you some farther Eminent Remark
hereupon, and especially in the first Settlement of
Carolina, where the Hand of God was eminently seen in
thinning the Indians, to make room for the
English....it at other times pleased Almighty God to
send unusual Sicknesses amongst them, as the Smallpox,
etc., to lessen their Numbers..."
The reservation school movement was
"invented" by the descendants of those who
rode the Manifest Destiny band wagon. Educating Indians
was the refinement of the times, a continuation of the
process, its effort was to confine Indians to sedentary
life and open more land for use by whites. The
"reformers" of the 1890's were just another
group of torchbearers...doing their part in this ongoing
process of cultural genocide and providing additional
strands to strengthen the rope that forms the noose of
genocide around the neck of Native people.
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