Hearing History
by Julie Johnson

The history department brought in affiliate scholar Susan Dominguez last Tuesday for a lecture entitled “Casting Word Arrows: Learning Literacy at Carlisle Industrial School, 1879-1914.” Dominguez is currently a graduate assistant in American Indian Studies at Michigan State University and is one of the leading scholars researching the history of the Carlisle Indian School, one of the original boarding schools for Native Americans. Focused on one specific school within a larger system of boarding schools, the talk magnified the absence of Native American studies in Oberlin curriculum. Many attending the lecture felt a lack of a more critical sense of the larger cultural impacts of the boarding school system on the Native American community.
Dominguez’s talk focused on the institutional aspects of the Carlisle Indian School, established in 1879 by Col. Richard Pratt. During the Civil War, Pratt had been in command of a troop of buffalo soldiers, which marked the beginning of his life-long interest in educating Native Americans. His philosophy of education, indicative of the larger trend in educational facilities for Native Americans can be synopsized in his famous quote: “Kill the Indian to save the man.”
“Most of her talk was dealing around this figure Pratt, the paternal white male…and [Carlisle’s curriculum] was portrayed as this great educational practice that now they could write their stories, but write their stories for who?” sophomore Ilana Turoff said.
The school, which was in operation until 1918, was, according to Dominguez, one of the most progressive boarding schools of its kind. The curriculum emphasized the importance of academics incorporated with music, the arts and sports. One of the most famous graduates was notable football player and Olympic champion, Jim Thorpe. Carlisle was one of the first Native American schools to emphasize literacy as an essential component of education, opening more doors for communication.
“What I didn’t like about the history lecture, and a lot of the lectures that I’ve heard, is that when conveying ethnic studies, they don’t convey the pain of individual stories which is so much a part of ethnic studies and part of history,” sophomore Ilana Turoff said.
“There are really two purposes to the talk. One was the talk itself, which is of course a very interesting topic,” Steven Volk, History Department Chair, Latin American studies Committee Chair and member of the Educational Plans and Policies Committee, (EPPC) said. “And the second was we’re trying to see ways in which to build a little more sort of camaraderie among the history majors. They’re a big group of people who don’t get together as much as in smaller departments.”
The talk left many wanting a more critical examination of the effects of the cultural assimilation forced upon Native Americans on a larger scale, and the growing need for critical Native American studies, above and beyond the information that can be gleaned from a lecture or an occasional course. The creation of a Comparative American Studies department, currently under consideration by the EPPC, is a step in building support for a more comprehensive, inter-disciplinary approach to American history, could also be an essential step in incorporating Native American Studies into Oberlin’s curriculum. However, at present, such studies are not built into the proposal. As it stands, without a place for Native American studies within CAS, there are, as of yet, no definitive plans to create a more permanent place for or consistent coursework in Native American Studies at Oberlin.
“It would be useful to add to the curriculum, but whenever you’re thinking about these things you think about what seems to have a greater demand, what seems to make greater coherence to the curriculum,” Volk said. “The last addition to staff that we got that we’re working on right now is history of Africa and we have nobody who is really doing African history, so we felt that was important…We do offer some courses in Native American history…but the point is, no, we don’t have anyone in the curriculum that specializes and has studied Native American history so we do try to take make use of opportunities to bring in other people.”

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