They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School

by K. Tsianina Lomawaima

Book Overview

Established in 1884 and operative for nearly a century, the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma was one of a series of off-reservation boarding schools intended to assimilate American Indian children into mainstream American life. Critics have characterized the schools as destroyers of Indian communities and cultures, but the reality that K. Tsianina Lomawaima discloses was much more complex.

Lomawaima allows the Chilocco students to speak for themselves...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803279574
• ISBN13: 9780803279575
• Release Date: August 1995
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Indian Boarding School

K. Tsianina Lomawaima's "They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School" provides a bleak picture of the Indian boarding school and how it, in a way, was unsuccessful in eliminating tribal identity. Lomawaima, however, agrees that the boarding schools could be very influential, as they had an impact on the use of language, religious conversion, attitudes towards education, and more. Indina children, at such a tender age could easily be culturally transformed. She also discusses the various tactics the students used to adapt to and resist the school's agenda of changing them completely.Lomawaima, uses oral history heavily. It helps too, that her mother was a former student at Chilocco Indian School. I think this is a great book for Native American History students specifically, as she does provide valuable insights into the lives of these students and the use of "education" in the name of "civilizing" them.

About time we heard from the students themselves.

The book is very insightful for people trying to trace the history of the boarding-school experience among Native Americans. For too long, we have heard the story of this blight on education in this country from the perpetrators side only. This book goes far and away in advancing for the first time the views and stories of the people who lived it. Began as a way to "civilize" Native people forcefully, Chilocco soon becomes, after needed reform, a way of life for many Indian families till 1980. Racism was the antagonist after the 20's which forced Native people to send their children to these schools, not the government. Sometimes, these schools were their own choices for higher education for their children after grade schools. Clearly evident in this book is the nature of "vocational education" which was espoused by the boarding schools: that of subservience. They were not training these people to be doctors, lawyers, educators, and civil servants, they trained them to do for others and not to aspire to anything but. A great book to start your education into educational history of Native peoples. I highly recommend this!