Assimilation as Education

The Pocket Philosopher

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Assimilation as Education

Education and Indigenous Communities in America

Matt Malcom

Oct 20, 2021

*Note, today’s reading contains descriptions of forced education, abuse, and neglect in boarding schools and in war.

For two years I lived in southern Oklahoma. One of my daughters, in fact, was born there.

It was an interesting place to live and to start a family.

The land was seemingly barren, beautifully harsh, and confusingly hospitable. At first look, the strong winds, brown rocks, and sparse vegetation was only matched by the even more sparse human settlements and development.

In many ways it was and is a land frozen in a moment. In time, I would come to understand what moment that was.

I was curious about the state and more specifically the city in which I lived. Whom were the towns named after? Who were Geronimo and Quanah Parker? Who could ever make this land home?

In time I found that the seeming lack of hospitality was just a front. Anyone willing to look beyond the immediate found a ruggedly gorgeous land capable of supporting all types of life and lifestyles.

Not long ago, the land was filled with millions of Buffalo and other large animals, nourished by the rich and endless grasslands and mild climate.

The wind—I don’t think anyone ever gets used to it—but it becomes a companion of sorts. The music of the plains, so to speak.

And it was here in southern Oklahoma that I learned about the Commanche, The Arapaho, the Kiowa people. That I learned about the recent history of Oklahoma. Not as a state with intentions by the Euro-Americans to settle, but as the final battleground of a decades-long struggle.

The final holdouts resisting the sweep of US control over the American continent followed an intrepid leader named Quanah Parker. He led the Commanche, a people who refused to be conquered.

They resisted the Spanish invaders for generations. They were the first to acquire the horses that Spanish brought with them, and became deft riders outmaneuvering even the most experienced European riders.

In fact, some say that the portions of Texas which were initially sold to the US by Spain were done in the name of creating a buffer between Spanish land holdings and the Commanche—they had had enough.1

Some of the most epic and violent battles fought by the US military in the 1800s (including the American Civil War) happened on the plains of North Texas and Oklahoma.

Battle-hardened and lean units of American soldiers fresh from the US Civil War set their sights on finishing the “job” of uniting the American continent.

They slugged their way through an empty grassland, more often facing the theft of their horses and becoming lost than actually engaging their enemy—the Commanche, the Lords of the Plains watched them the whole time.

In fact, it wasn’t until Quanah Parker decided to give up arms voluntarily to become a businessman (at which point he became the most successful Cattle rancher in the region) that the war ended.2

Parker beat the Army and then he beat the business people at their own game.

But there was another, more insidious fight happening around the Commanche and other Native Peoples, who lived on and together with the land long before the United States was founded.

Between 1830 and 1850 tens of thousands of Indigenous people were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and relocated to Oklahoma in a tragic event now known as The Trail of Tears.

The US didn’t know how to handle the Commanche, so they blocked off Oklahoma as a large “reservation” waiting for a time and the means to finalize their conquest.

And it was during this era that the most tragic series of events unfolded. Because it occurred to the US that it was not with violence of force that they would take the continent—the Spanish and failed, the French, and the British—but with violence of thought and ideas.

I apologize for the grotesqueness of this quote but it captures the shift in thinking which led to the cultural genocide of hundreds of thousands,

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
— Gen. Richard Henry Pratt

There was a strong drive to end the resistance of all Indigenous People in America. But Oklahoma could not be taken. The Commanche people alone ensured that.

And so under the guidance of General Pratt, a new scheme was devised—a scheme to forcibly “assimilate” and “christianize” and “civilize” anyone who held to their ancestral beliefs.

The result was a system of “Indian Residential Schools” which lasted nearly 100 years.

In these schools language, culture, and heritage were forbidden. Children were forcibly taken and enrolled in the institutions and required (often by force) to adopt the language, names, and espoused worldview of their Euro-American captors.

A certain type of fundamentalist, protestant christianity was required by them, American culture and dress mandatory, even the adoption of European names.

And within a generation, the Kiowa, the Commanche, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne people were becoming a faint memory.

This process was also mimicked in Canada where today thousands of children have been found in unmarked graves, forgotten by all but their families. Disease and neglect, epidemics and depression ran rampant.

By 1925, over 60,000 students were in attendance at these schools all over the US.

It is important to understand that it was a philosophy known as Manifest Destiny which drove this violence to completion. A philosophical model not based on reason, compassion, or mindfulness but rather on superstition, on greed, and insecurity.

It is important to remember how the disciplines of academia were weaponized. Rather than being used in their true form—to cultivate empathy and understanding—they were used to destroy the identity of millions and perpetuate violence against those who refused to surrender.

Not only was one type of philosophy weaponized against a certain people, so too were the philosophies, traditions, and wisdom of others destroyed. The voices of those people have been excluded from the conversation for generations.

Thankfully, there are pockets of resistance which have remained through the years. Furthermore, in the last few years it seems there is an awareness and willingness to own the past. There is even a great movement among people from many Tribes to leverage technology, the pen, and courage to mine and cultivate the wisdom not yet lost to history.

I’ll paste some references to those below.

I’m grateful for your willingness to look at this past with me. To quote Epictetus,