Domesticity in the federal Indian schools: the power of authority over mind and body
- 1 May 1993
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in American Ethnologist
- Vol. 20 (2) , 227-240
- https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1993.20.2.02a00010
Abstract
This study of off‐reservation boarding schools for Native Americans illustrates how Indian students contested federal authority. Analyzing domesticity training and notions of proper dress for female students, it sheds light on the relations of power within the schools as the U.S. government tried to train Indians for subservience according to 19th‐century racist theories of their circumscribed physical and mental development. Archival records document federal practice; narratives by alumni of the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma provide student perspectives. The bloomer story, an important shared narrative, symbolizes student cooperation within (and competition between) gender‐defined peer groups. [American Indians, education, women, boarding schools, power relations, resistance, ethnicity]This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Michel Foucault: The Will to TruthPublished by Taylor & Francis ,2003
- Nineteenth Century Women and Reform: The Women's National Indian AssociationAmerican Indian Quarterly, 1990
- Fundamental Considerations: The Deep Meaning of Native American Schooling, 1880-1900Harvard Educational Review, 1988
- Oral Histories from Chilocco Indian Agricultural School 1920-1940American Indian Quarterly, 1987
- Body of Power, Spirit of ResistancePublished by University of Chicago Press ,1985
- Education in Hues: Red and Black at Hampton Institute, 1878–1893South Atlantic Quarterly, 1977