The first exclusively Indian federal boarding school was opened in Carlisle, Pa., in 1879. Its mission: to civilize Native Americans, who were thought to be primitive and "slow." Its director, army Capt. Richard H. Pratt, often said about his students, "Kill the Indian in them and save the man."

Although many administrators were sympathetic to their students, they did not intend to educate future leaders, much less include Native American skills, beliefs and attitudes in their educational model. The United States government and the schools believed Indians were best suited for manual work and should have low expectations in a white world. So, early school programs emphasized farm labor, housekeeping, uniformity and military discipline.

In the 1800s, children often were kidnapped and taken to school by force. As public opinion and policy gradually changed, Indian parents became more willing to send their children to school in order to give them marketable skills and a chance to get along in white America.

"Dad put me in Chemawa for two years for vocational education…," explained Marguerite Arcasa Lentz, from the Chemawa Indian School in Salem. "Dad just signed the papers and said ‘you’re going’ and I went."

Predictably, school strategies did not work perfectly in practice. Many children and teenagers ran away.

"Before they [the runaway students] reached their homes, the Indian Police were sure to be waiting for them and in a very short time the unhappy children would be on their way back to school," said Frances LeBret, a former student at the Fort Spokane Boarding School in Washington.

And, like all young people, the boarding-school students found ways to rebel, to express themselves and to do what they wanted to do. Author Tsianina Lomawaima, who interviewed her father, Curtis, for her book on the now closed Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma, quoted him about his school experiences:

"Anytime you take a bunch of kids and you…try to control their thoughts and what they do and everything, it’s impossible! …I was gonna rebel, come hell or high water."

By the 1960s, the large off-reservation boarding schools in Oklahoma, Kansas, the Dakotas, Washington and California had either closed or changed. Two federal high schools remain today: the Sherman Institute in Riverside, Calif., and the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore.

Lomawaima said the federal government began trying to extricate itself from the "Indian business" in the 1960s. One of the trends from that time to now has been to close federal schools for Indians.

"The closing of these schools has often been protested by Indian people–at the point in history when the schools might be improved, and when Indian people have had some power to influence them, the government has decided to close them. Those schools that remain under Bureau of Indian Affairs supervision are certainly different places than the schools 30 years ago, but I’m not sure we could yet say they are devoted to ‘cultural preservation,’" the Native American scholar says.

Chemawa, the oldest off-reservation boarding school in the United States, started in 1880 with 18 students, most from the Puyallup Indian Reservation in western Washington. Today, it is a four-year, fully accredited high school with students representing dozens of tribes from 17 western states. The students in the Indian boarding school of the 1990s take required coursework on Indian literature and history, organize yearly pow wows and participate in classes in dancing, drumming and traditional Indian arts.

Guided by a school board representing the students, their parents and tribal leaders, Chemawa currently offers students broad academic and vocational opportunities ranging from classes for gifted, talented and creative students to agricultural and school-to-work programs. Also available are athletic and recreation facilities, including the Chemawa Challenge Course, and a strong personal guidance and support system for individual students.

"You (educators) have great potential power in your hands," said former Chemawa student Bearhead Swaney in an interview for the exhibit. "Create teachers who can understand people of different cultures and colors…. Indian tribes will survive if the melding of the two educational approaches is successful.

"Take advice from the native people," Swaney asks. "There are a lot of things of value in what we know."

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