Carter County - Boarding Schools in Montana
Background Info / Historical Story
In 1894, Ijkalaka and her younger children went to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation for the winter. Her older sons, Ben, and John were already at the Pierre Indian School, a boarding school in Pierre, South Dakota. After that winter, their siblings, James, Will, and Kate joined them at the school. According to one local history, Ben “attended school at Pierre but became so homesick that he coaxed his brother, Jim, to run away from school and return home. This they did and they crossed the Missouri River in a boat then walked all of three hundred miles to their home in Montana. This took them nine days.”
The following is an excerpt from Dr. Sabre Moore’s doctoral dissertation:
Founded in 1891, the Pierre Indian School is included among the list of 408 federal Indian boarding schools that provided on-site or overnight lodging, formal academic or vocational trading, received federal government funds and was operational before 1969. It was one of thirty-one schools identified as having operated in South Dakota. At the time Ben Russell attended the school, it consisted of separate dormitories for boys and girls and other buildings on a 20-acre tract of land. Initial enrollment was five students. Later, the school purchased an additional 160 acres. The entry on the school in the Investigative Report is short, however, a dissertation by Edward Keith Welch illuminates the early history of the Pierre Indian School as related through interviews with former student Oscar Howe. The Pierre Indian School, Welch relates, “operated on a military basis with a curriculum designed to teach American Indian children the English language and basic industrial skills in an education system created to completely wipe away American Indian cultural identity.”
In 1926, Hubert Work, a medical doctor and then secretary of the interior, initiated informal talks regarding the possibility of the Institute for Government Research undertaking an independent survey of Indian affairs, “embracing particularly the educational, industrial, social, and medical activities maintained among the Indians, their property rights, and their general economic condition.” In 1928, this survey, published as the Meriam Report, found that “the main disruption to the Indian family and Tribal relations had come from the Federal Indian boarding school system. This report sparked changes in the Indian education system, including the addition of more culturally relevant curricula. At Pierre, this involved the publication of the school newsletter Wontana Waste and the introduction of informal art education programs, which included beadwork, drawing and other courses.
In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Education reexamined the Pierre Indian School and renamed it the Pierre Learning Center. This involved consultation and input from the fifteen Indian tribes and communities serviced by the school, which served to change its purpose to meet the needs of Indian students who were homeless, identified as socially maladjusted, or academically behind with high rates of absenteeism and truancy. This transformation of the Pierre Indian School to the Pierre Learning Center is one of a handful of boarding schools that remains in operation.”