History of Native American Education in Kansas

This book is an important addition in the field of Indian educational studies because of its emphasis on interviews and first-hand accounts of experiences in the Indian boarding schools, particularly in its breadth.

The study focuses on Native educational theory, under the US government's auspices as well as what Native education scholars have written about what education - not just schooling - really means. The authors examine the implications of standardized testing and curriculum development for Native education. They also highlight recent successes in the development of charter schools and culturally responsive standards.

This is a classic in Native Education history. Szasz was among a few scholars int he 1970s who openly acknowledged the pernicious effects of the boarding school system, despite any good intentions of the US government.

Child is a Native scholar who specialized in using primary sources in her historical research. This book is one of the more influential studies of hers that uses letters, photographs, and diaries to depict life in off-reservation boarding schools.

Considered a classic the scholarship about the boarding school experience, Adams's book represents a step forward in writing about Indian history because he uses first-hand accounts and primary sources to paint an unvarnished look at life in some of the schools. Haskell students are featured here. Adams writes about the government's treatment of Native communities with all the criticism it deserves but the book is especially valuable as the reader gets a clearer picture of all the ways the Native students and their families survived.

Reverend William P. Ames and La Vergne Dale have written a report on the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, KS from 1884-1936. They cover the most impactful events that progressed and befell the institution during the first half-century of Haskell's formation. The entirety of the book is written in the perspective of government officials who state their ideals and practices upon young Native Americans.

Theresa Milk, a previous professor of the Indigenous and American Indian Bachelor's program at Haskell Indian Nations University, presents her Ph.D. dissertation about the lives of young Native American students in the boarding school era of Haskell. Taken from an Indigenous scholar's perspective, Dr. Milk breaths life into the lost histories based on letters, newspaper articles, photographs, and government documents which gives a narrative of the everyday life of a student at the Haskell Institute.

Miner and Unrau are two of the most important scholars in Native American history. Their time frame is important to understanding Native education in Kansas. 1854 marked the beginning of the Kansas equivalent of the “Trail of Tears,” a forced removal of over 10,000 Indians from their land. It officially ended in 1871 with the Indian Appropriations Act, that marked the US government’s intention to stop negotiating treaties with Indian tribes.

This book covers a short but critical time for the Indian tribes living in Indian country. In the aftermath of the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834, the Indians endured the US government's systematic carving up their lands and forcibly removing them, one small tribe at a time. In the span of three decades, their population was decimated by intentional government policy, before the first significant numbers of White settlers even arrived.

This book focuses on the small tribe of the Kansas, from their first recorded contact with White people in eastern North America to their forced settlement in what is now Kay county, in Kansas. It is an interesting, frustrating account of one small tribe's fight to stay together and survive. Which the Kansas do.

Building from the research conducted by Theresa Milk, Myriam Vuckovic's study on Haskell Institute develops a more thought provoking perspective from a non-Native scholar. Her research findings have been developed from student and staff perspectives via letters, newspapers, scholarly articles, books, and first hand accounts which helps give a more balanced narrative of the institution. Vuckovic goes beyond the boarding school era and writes about the evolution of the institution and concludes how the educational system has switched from a militaristic style to a more Indigenous style.

Although other books examine the history of Indian boarding schools, Warren's study of the contrast between the African American and Native American experience with US government education policy provides a valuable perspective. The book is more than a litany of all the ways White people and the US government oppressed these minority students and their families. It details many ways in which they resisted, rebelled and survived.