*My mother was taken at the age of 12, and “instituted” in the Sherman Institute, without the consent of her parents. She was separated from her family and home, her brother and sisters… she was returned at the age of 16 to her tribe.

The Indian Schools...



I hate this place,
It took the Indian out of my mother,
And made her white,
Made her hate who she was,
Made her hate us,
For not being what she wanted...

They took her from her bed,
Her mother
Her home,
Her tribe,
Her sisters
And brothers
And taught her to hate
All that she was...

When they returned her,
Properly brainwashed,
To her parents
To her tribe,
To her home.
She couldn’t wait to get away,
Escape,
Become what she thought
She was supposed to be...

All these years later
The hate remains,
For her parents,
For her people
For us...

I am proud of who I am,
Wear my hair in braids,
Speaking a language
Few understand,
Teach my children
Who I am,
Who she was,
Who came,
And took her
And made her white,
And made her hate...

All I learned,
Of my tribe,
My people,
My culture,
My history,
I learned from
My grandmother,
Should have been my mother...

But now,
I teach a dying language,
To my children
Hoping to one day,
To make it live again,
And be proud,
And strong,
And brave,
And hate
The Indian schools,
That tried to seal our fate...





The primary purpose of the Sherman Institute was to assimilate Indians into the dominant culture. In the early days, therefore, students were not allowed to speak their own language at school, and men and women were not allowed to speak to one another.


Sherman Institute

1964, a U.S. Senate investigating committee wrote a denunciation of both federal and public education for Indian youth. Regarding the Sherman Institute, it stated:
Senate investigators visiting Sherman Institute reported finding an inadequate staff both administratively and academically. Other deficiencies there included inadequately identified goals, out-dated vocational training, a severe shortage of counselors, and little vigor on the part of the administration in defending the interest of the students. That year, newly readmitted California Indians could find little improvement over public schools in what an unnamed investigator termed the "rigid, uncompromising, bureaucratic, authoritarian, non-innovative federal barony that controlled Sherman." (U.S. Senate, Special Subcommittee on Indian Education, 1969:75)
Former students and boarding school historians say the methods were often violent and humiliating -- forcing children to eat lye soap for speaking their tribal languages, cropping their long hair, paddling them for having Indian medicine bundles.

"We were never going to be like the white man, no matter how hard we tried, but they forced us to try to be like the white man," said Jo Anna Meninick, a Yakama. She attended the government-run Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore., in the 1950s.

"They stripped us of our language. They stripped us of our religious beliefs. They stripped us of our family life, our family values. They stripped us from our culture."