Watchlist: ‘Uncovering Boarding Schools’

By Kamiah Koch

Social media/digital journalist

In 1880, the federal government opened the second off-reservation Indian boarding school in the United States in Forest Grove, Oregon. This would later become Chemawa Indian School, which still exists today and has been located in Salem since 1885.

Oregon Public Radio aired a 90-minute documentary Monday, Nov. 3, called “Uncovering Boarding Schools: Stories of Resistance and Resilience,” which follows Oregon’s history with Indian boarding schools

Posted on the OPB website is more educational material on Indian boarding schools, including a shortened 8-minute version of the documentary.

“The way they went about disciplining kids for stepping out of line was really truly brutal,” Grand Ronde Tribal Elder and Anthropology & Indigenous Studies Expert David Lewis said in the video.

Klamath Tribal Elder Yvonne “Bonnie” Parazoo said she never considered the residential school she attended a school; she refers to it as a concentration camp.

“The off-reservation boarding schools were initially supposed to be industrial and agriculture training schools where the children who attended them could learn to be farmers and wagon makers and kind of have a more-or-less education,” Chemawa Indian School Historian SuAnn Reddick said. “They were supposed to learn to speak English, ideally they were supposed to be Christianized, but effectively they were supposed to become workers and this was their worker training.”

Accompanying what Reddick said, black and white photos of the Indian boarding schools are shown. Many of these photos include Native children in uniforms in classrooms, working outside a barn shoveling something into a horse-drawn wagon and young children digging in field while an older white man looks on. 

Researchers found that at least 270 children died at Chemawa Indian School. Educator Gabriann Hall said in the video that if this was happening to another group of people, it would have been considered a crime scene.

You can learn more about Oregon’s boarding schools by watching the short documentary at https://www.opb.org/promotions/boardingschools/ or find a screening of the full-length documentary at https://www.opb.org/promotions/boardingschools/.