Education at the Edge of Empire: Negotiating Pueblo Identity in New Mexico’s Indian Boarding Schools

Abstract

Education at the Edge of Empire engages with scholarship on Indian education and boarding school historiography. John R. Gram shifts the narrative of boarding schools to contested spaces that are not necessarily “off the reservation” or completely removed from Indigenous communities. Although he focuses on Pueblo boarding school students near their home communities, he indicates how government officials and school staff buttressed the walls between the schools and Indigenous homes. He also examines the influences of other nongovernment agents and historical figures in contestations over Pueblo education and what it meant between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Gram connects the school representatives, students, families, communities, religious leaders, and even those whom he calls the “Romantics” in this web of boarding school histories.Gram embraces the term integration, especially in his chapter “The Integration of Worlds.” Indigenous scholars such as Marsha Small have critiqued the use of “integrate” and “integration” because of its opposition to recognizing certain distinctions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and their respective worldviews. This reader asks for more of a definition and clarification on how and why Gram uses integration centered in that main chapter. Gram’s language in his book reveals his position as an “outsider” to Pueblo communities, but he never identifies his relation to the Pueblo people. Although history is generally written objectively, the readers may seek to understand why he focuses on these distinct communities and to account for his general bias and perspective of these peoples with traumatic histories of colonialism and subjection. Elizabeth A. Fenn (2014), for example, has been clear about situating herself and voice in her narrative centered on the Mandan.In one of the few instances where Gram shares his perspective and experience among a Pueblo community, his language as an outsider becomes most apparent when he uses the term costumes in his final paragraph: “This was a Pueblo dance performed by Pueblo dancers wearing costumes of Pueblo design telling history from a Pueblo point of view and for Pueblo purposes” (175). He concludes the book with this brief thought, leaving several key questions. For example, did he speak with Pueblos about this event and performance and understand the terms and perspectives of Pueblos who exhibited this tradition of the conquistador at the Jemez feast day?Gram’s treatment of the tensions between Pueblo home and school proved most promising and insightful. He explores the depths of Pueblo students who had to navigate being close to both school and home, and he traces an array of experiences related to those circumstances. Yet the book lacks in-depth focus, discussion, and analysis of the Pueblo voices and sources, relying heavily on archival documents, which come primarily from non-Pueblo sources. Gram might have used more references, such as the “Autobiography of Juanita Crispin” (168), as a template for understanding student perspectives through journals and writing. Some of the book’s finest features are Gram’s extensive tables and figures based on such sources and their quantifiable information.Gram’s book offers powerful insights on Indigenous student experiences and the community involvement, claims, and contestations over space and education. This work stirs discourse of Albuquerque and Santa Fe as Indigenous spaces and border-town dynamics—spaces between the reservations and urban sites that Native Americans explore and cross. Gram complicates the narratives of Indigenous identity and boarding school experiences by contextualizing “education at the edge of empire” for Pueblos, contributing to the field of ethnic studies.