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Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences. Ed. by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. xiv, 256 pp. Clorh, $45.00, ISBN 978-0-80324446-7. Paper, $20.00, ISBN 978-0-80329463-9.)
For some pupils at Indian boarding schools the experience was devastating and even fatal, as large numbers died. For others, declares the preface of this first book of scholarly essays on this system of schools, the experience produced "fond memories, sometimes mixed with melancholy, sometimes with humor" (p. xi). The editors Clifford E. Trafzer and Jean A. Keller are historians, and Lorene Sisquoc, a member of the Fort Sill Apache tribe of Oklahoma, is a museum curator; they intend the book to address the many-layered meanings of this institution. Drawing on tribal story telling, they metaphorically depict the institution as a "monster," and depict the children who confronted it, "turned" its power, and made it useful, as heroes to their peoples (p. xiii).
The first in a series...