Art, Craft, and Assimilation: Curriculum for Native Students during the Boarding School Era

Abstract

This article sets out to compare and contrast language and rhetoric espoused by Richard Pratt, founder and Superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School until 1904, and Estelle Reel, author of Course of Study for Indian Schools and Superintendent of Indian Schools between 1898-1910, pertaining to the educational philosophy of the Native peoples. The author contextualizes rhetoric of both Pratt and Reel in terms of mechanical and industrial education movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries while highlighting implications pertinent to both craft and artwork practices at Carlisle as embedded in Reel’s curriculum guide. The article employs critical social, economic, and racial lenses to analyze the gathered textual and pictorial data. Ultimately, the historical data elicit snapshots of events that worked to deculturalize the Native students. Both Reel’s curriculum and Pratt’s approach at the Carlisle school were paradoxical in their rhetoric: claiming to educate for independence while setting strict limitations on class position, employment, learned skills, and academic knowledge.