Reviewed by: The Dakota Sioux Experience at Flandreau and Pipestone Indian Schools by Cynthia Leanne Landrum John R. Legg Cynthia Leanne Landrum, The Dakota Sioux Experience at Flandreau and Pipestone Indian Schools. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 243 pp. $55.00 (cloth). In the wake of the U.S.–Dakota War, Dakota peoples dispersed in different directions around their homeland, Mni Sota Makoce—the Land where the Waters Reflect the Skies. Once forced onto reservations, they found their children being coerced into boarding schools that subjected students to ongoing efforts to assimilate away from Indigenous culture and toward values of American economics, civilization, and Christianity. Historical studies of these schools focus on them as oppressive, violent, and destructive institutions that mistreated Indigenous children for the sake of allegedly bettering their lives. Cynthia Leanne Landrum's book challenges this emphasis, examining how the Flandreau and Pipestone Indian Schools served as beacons of Indigenous culture even though the broader Dakota diaspora extended far beyond its communities of origin. Landrum's book is organized into two sections—"History" and "Student Reflections"—which are part chronological and part thematic. Chapter subheadings help readers to understand the Dakota culture and to follow the formation of and interactions between the Flandreau and Pipestone schools. "History" focuses on Dakota and other Indigenous histories before, during, and after European contact. Landrum aims to show how Dakota peoples navigated educational systems, as compared to Algonquian peoples in previous centuries. One significant example from this section tells the story of Dakotas' connection to land, especially the Red Pipestone Quarry [End Page 84] in western Minnesota. Many Dakota leaders felt uneasy about preserving the sacred quarrying site, but, through its proximity to the two schools, the quarry provided a place for students to both reflect upon and protect their culture. "Student Reflections" addresses the process through which Dakota students embraced the education provided at the Flandreau and Pipestone schools. Even though children from other Indigenous communities, such as Ojibwe ones, attended schools like Pipestone, Landrum's book focuses on Dakota experiences above all others. Oral history interviews emphasize Dakota students' individual experiences, adding a distinctive voice and perspective to readers' understanding of life at both institutions. For the Flandreau school, Landrum's book recounts various themes in Dakota students' lives, such as communication, orphans and runaway children, and the differences between exceptional and undesirable students. Regarding Pipestone, however, Landrum addresses its importance to the Dakota beyond educational opportunities; the school possessed a strong connection to the land—the Red Pipestone Quarry. Unlike the students at Flandreau, those at Pipestone—both Dakota and Ojibwe—experienced the quarry with "reverence, humility, and as a united front, rather than as a divided, scattered, and powerless people" (236). Pipestone students' proximity to this sacred space allowed them to hold their culture close to themselves. This contrasted with the experience of their counterparts at the Flandreau school, which lay further away from the quarry; they faced the constant threat of erasure and assimilation. One of Landrum's interesting approaches involves looking past the idea and anthropologic term of settler colonialism by focusing on Dakota persistence over time. In highlighting that persistence, the book concentrates on how Dakota peoples "observe, test, and finally adapt to those transformative elements . . . of what denoted the long-term success of the [Dakota] culture" (xii). It is true that when scholars focus solely on settler colonialism, many fall into the trap of only emphasizing the term rather than the people affected by that process and deepening structure. However, readers of Landrum's book would have benefited from more clarity on this particular topic. A discussion of the violence and marginalization that Dakota peoples faced before the rise of both schools would have provided context to readers, enabling them to better understand settler colonialism and Indigenous responses to it. That said, Landrum's approach to using personal narratives illustrates persistence through a unique Indigenous perspective. [End Page 85] Landrum has produced an excellent monograph on the history of the Flandreau and Pipestone schools. The book demonstrates how Dakota peoples embraced the educational process at these institutions as a means to confront banishment, displacement, and attempted erasure by the U.S. government during...
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Sep 28, 2024
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