This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States

Abstract

Andrew Woolford examines in detail the history of four indigenous boarding schools, two in New Mexico and two in Manitoba, drawing upon official reports, available interviews with former students, and other sources. The study illuminates significant differences between American and Canadian policies and the implications for students and staff. The Canadian schools were entrusted to poorly funded denominational agencies with little guidance by government, while in the United States the schools were government institutions, but federal policy toward educating indigenous youth changed repeatedly. This Benevolent Experiment is a contribution to the field of genocide studies rather than to the history of education or indigenous history. Before Woolford turns to discussing the schools he provides nearly one hundred pages on “Settler Colonial Genocide in North America” and “Framing the Indian as a Problem.” The discussion of the four schools is consequently highly selective, seeking to prove the “genocidal” intentions of those who created the system of residential schools. If there were warm relations between staff and students, this is evidence of “the symbolic violence of kindness” (p.197). When a former student has good things to say about her school, we are reminded that “her sincerity should not lead us to ignore the symbolic violence at work in the schools” (p. 196). When indigenous arts and cultures are celebrated by Woolford's sources, “this communicated the sense that cultural practices were appreciated for being quaint … rather than culturally integral” (p. 193). If sloppy administrative practices at a school were replaced by careful records, students were “transformed into a biopolitical subject” (p. 178).