♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein and I'm pleased to be in conversation today with Brenda Child, who is a professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota and the author of numerous books on the subject, including Boarding Schools Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900 to 1940.

Professor Child, thank you for coming to conversation with us today.

CHILD: My pleasure.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about, uh, make sure everybody knows your own background.

Uh, what is your background?

You have, uh, Indian, Indian ancestry.

Is that right?

CHILD: Yes, I do.

I am a citizen of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota, so I'm just one... We're just one group of Ojibwe in the United States and Canada.

Altogether, there are about 200,000 Ojibwe people.

RUBENSTEIN: How many total American Indians are there, right now, would you say?

CHILD: In the United States, I, um... We're not quite 2% of the population is my understanding.

I don't know what that is exactly, but we're a very small part of the US population, but of course, historically very significant.

RUBENSTEIN: And when you were growing up, were you living in an Indian reservation, or were you living in a more integrated community?

CHILD: Uh, both, actually.

I was born on the reservation.

Uh, and then my parents had different jobs and opportunities, so we moved around a little bit in the Midwest.

And so, as you were growing up, and you were getting your career underway, did you say, "I wanna specialize in things relating to American Indians and history," or how did you evolve yourself into a professor in this area?

I was one of those, uh, unusual kids that was always interested in history, and I remember reading Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee probably when I was 12, 13 years old, and it kind of sparked an interest, um, and I've always had an interest in studying history.

I'm unusual, I think, as well when I see my students and how often they change their majors.

I was a history and American Indian studies major from the time I was a freshman.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Well, let's talk a little bit about American history relating to American Indians.

CHILD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, one of the presidents of the United States who is, uh, best known for his, uh, I would say poor treatment of American Indians is Andrew Jackson.

CHILD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: What was the genesis of his dislike for American Indians, and what did he actually do that showed that dislike?

CHILD: I don't know what his, what Andrew Jackson's problem was exactly, or why he disliked American Indians.

He was an Indian fighter.

He was involved in wars with American Indians before he became the president of the United States, so he's particularly remembered for the Indian Removal Act, and in the 1830's, that was the policy of the United States.

So, he fought a lot of legal battles.

He was very involved in politics, um, as far trying to convince people in Congress to pass this Indian Removal Act, which eventually did happen.

RUBENSTEIN: And he then proceeded to implement it by moving Indians from the, from Florida and other places, uh, further west.

Is that correct?

CHILD: Correct, so the southeastern tribes, the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Creeks, the Seminoles, the Chickasaws, lived in what would become Florida, Georgia, um, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and it was Jackson's thought that, that Indian people should move out of the Southeast and relocate to the Trans-Mississippi West.

Eventually, that was, you know, Indian Territory and was Oklahoma, but I think... Another important thing to remember about Jackson, even though we associate him with this, uh, very damaging, uh, policy that caused a lot of, um, death in American Indian communities, removal had been talked about for several decades before Andrew Jackson, and if you recall, um, Jefferson also talked about an Indian removal idea along with the Louisiana Purchase.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when the Indians were removed from, let's say, North Carolina, or Georgia, or Florida...

They were told, "Go west."

Were they told, "This land will be your land, and you'll own this land, and just get out of our land," or were they just told, "Go somewhere, and you don't really own the land that you're gonna be going to?"

CHILD: I think there were a lot of promises made about what would await them in the Trans-Mississippi West.

I don't know that all of those goals were realized, but people talked for a time about there being an Indian state, uh, Oklahoma, but you know, when that removal or those many removals took place of the southeastern tribes, people called it the "Trail of Tears", like it was a very tragic event, but somewhat of a benign event.

But it really was, for decades, the policy of the United States to remove Indians to the Trans-Mississippi West, and I really like the way historians are talking about removals now because they're starting to think about it as the largest mass deportation in American history, this relocation of thousands of American Indians.

So, it's also important to remember, while we associate it most often with the southeastern tribes because those are kind of famous stories in our textbooks, it also was a policy of the Midwest, Indians living in Ohio, Indians living in Wisconsin, Indiana.

Many tribes were moved to the Trans-Mississippi West, and so it was a huge, mass deportation of, of many, many people.

RUBENSTEIN: When the tribes were moved west, did the tribes, uh, get along with each other, the Cherokees get along with the Iroquois or the Seminoles?

Did they get along with each other?

Or, they were very distinct?

CHILD: Well, I think the tribes were distinct from one another in a political sense, right, because that's what sort of a tribe implies, not just that you have a shared culture and language, but you are a government as well.

You are sovereign nations.

And so, it's difficult, um, sometimes to move into another, um, people's territory.

Look at the Middle East.

Look at areas where people have contests over territories, and so I think it's pretty easy to understand that Indian people moving from one region of the country to another were very concerned about the indigenous people who already resided there.

Would they be welcomed?

Would they be able to find a new homeland there?

Um, "What, what sort of relationship are we gonna have with the, with the indigenous people already living there?"

So, we don't think too much about that as part of the removal issue, but it surely loomed large, um, in the, in the minds of political leaders at the time.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let me ask you about, uh, one of the most famous incidents, Little Bighorn.

What was Little Bighorn?

What was that that actually occurred there?

CHILD: So Little Bighorn is a very important event in the 19th-century history of the Plains Indian Wars.

There were wars taking place against, uh, American Indians and the United States in the 19th century.

That was sort of an interesting event because it was an occasion when, um, a lot of Indian people got together and were militarily very united against one another, and of course, wiped out this cavalry division.

I think it caused a huge furor at the time, probably more anger against American Indians, but it was a difficult time for American Indians on the northern and southern plains.

Their economies were being destroyed by, um, the decline of the bison.

There was gold discovered in the Black Hills, and so the treaties that were negotiated with Indian people were not really being respected at that time.

So, there was, there was a lot of anger and a lot of, probably, you know, just reason for that conflict.

RUBENSTEIN: So, at Little Bighorn, uh, that's where General Custer lost his life.

In response to that, um, the American Army sent more troops out, eventually, and what resulted, I think, was something called Wounded Knee.

What actually was Wounded Knee?

CHILD: Wounded Knee happened a few years after the events at the Little Bighorn, and it was an event when the Lakotas and other tribes on the northern plains had largely settled and were living on reservations at that time.

They were very, um, despondent.

They were having a difficult time surviving because of the near extinction of the bison that had recently taken place.

They were living on government rations, and there was one group of people who, um, had a... You know, it was a terrible experience, but they were massacred by, um, US soldiers.

They were not fighters, as in the case of the Little Bighorn, and they were mostly, um, non-combatants, that is, children, women, older people.

It was an entire community of Lakota people who were massacred by the US Cavalry.

Um, it's regarded as bringing a kind of symbolic conclusion to the end of the Indian Wars of the 19th century, but it wasn't much of a war.

It was a massacre.

RUBENSTEIN: You mentioned the reservations.

When did the reservation system first start?

CHILD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: What did it mean to be on a reservation?

Did it mean you were a US citizen if you lived there, or you were not a US citizen?

Did the US government support you or did not give you support?

CHILD: Right on the heels of the, of the treaty periods.

So, um, where I'm from at Red Lake, we signed one treaty with the United States, and that was in 1863, and after that, I guess I would say that our reservation era began.

It was a time when most tribes had ceded, um, pretty large, uh, areas of land to the United States and were in a very disadvantaged position.

I know that our hereditary chiefs at Red Lake negotiated that treaty, and when they went out to the appointed place to negotiate with representatives of the United States, they found that they had brought with them a Gatling gun, and so they had kind of positioned the Gatling gun on the leaders from our tribe that were there to negotiate, and so they ended up ceding a large portion of land, um, along the Red River, almost over to North Dakota, and so that was, um, a very, you know, a very difficult time, but I often think how we owe our survival to the people of that era, who made difficult decisions, negotiated the best they could, and ended up, you know, in our case, preserving, uh, land for future generations of people.

RUBENSTEIN: At one point, the US government tried to get Indians to move to what is now Oklahoma, saying, "If you move there, you will get some land.

You'll own the land," and so forth.

Was that promise kept, or what did the US government ultimately do, um, when they realized that Oklahoma might be more valuable to the white, uh, population?

CHILD: So, there were tribes that were moved to Oklahoma, and a lot of them were from the Southeast or the area of the country that we used to call the Old Northwest, and those were the tribes that ended up in Indian Territory, uh, in the 19th century, but there were other tribes, like, say, my group in the upper Midwest, who, um, negotiated treaties, but they did not live, nor was there ever really discussion of their removal.

We were kind of out of the path of, of, of, uh, American settlement, and so there wasn't as much concern with, um, you know, moving people from northern Wisconsin, or northern Michigan, or Minnesota to Indian Territory.

So, there were tribes relocated but certainly not all.

That wasn't the destination or the plan for everybody.

There were too many Indians living all over the country.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, the Indians who were living on reservations or living elsewhere, were they granted US citizenship, and could they vote, uh, the way other Americans could vote or not?

CHILD: So, citizenship came along during the reservation era, uh, during the time period of the General Allotment Act, and so the federal government and policymakers at the time thought that, once Indians were settled on reservations, they would want to, um, eventually become citizens, but from the perspective of the United States, that could only be done if you owned your own property, and so, for example, my community, we never went to private ownership of property.

We, even today, own our land, uh, together in a communal sense.

So, that was the plan of the United States in the late 19th century, that Indians would eventually become citizens, and so there were people who became citizens with the taking of an allotment, but citizenship wasn't really widespread for American Indians until the 20th century, and voting was not, by any means, widespread, uh, for American Indians, and in cases like Arizona and New Mexico, Indian people were still barred from what you might think of Jim Crow type laws from, uh, voting up until after World War II.

RUBENSTEIN: The reservation system still exists.

Is that correct?

American Indians still live on reservations?

CHILD: Um, about 40% or less than half of American Indians in the United States live on reservations today.

Many of us, like me, I teach at the University of Minnesota.

I'm a citizen of my tribal nation, but I don't live on the reservation.

RUBENSTEIN: So let me ask you about, uh, the system of, uh, boarding schools.

You've written about boarding schools from 1900 to 1940.

So, so what were boarding schools, and were... CHILD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Was attendance mandatory for American Indian youth?

CHILD: Yeah, so boarding schools really came out of that allotment era, the era when the federal government wanted to privatize Indian land, and many people thought, at the time, that it was very difficult to change the attitudes or the ways of life of older generations of Indians, but they thought and reasoned that, if we get at the children we can, you know, uh, give them a whole new set of values.

They can become Americans.

They can become citizens of the United States, and so the first of the off-reservation boarding schools was created in 1879 out in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and after that, many schools followed, especially in the Trans-Mississippi West, where most of the Indian population lived, but it was very important, um, from the perspective of people who designed the schools, that kids would go to school far away from home.

Like, my grandmother was a student at one of the schools in South Dakota, and that was probably, you know, by train, hours away from her home community, and that was part of the idea, that you had to get children away from their families, communities, and tribes in order for this cultural assimilation to take place, but I really think the boarding schools, um, were not so much about so-called civilizing Indians as they were about, um, part of the whole larger plan to allot Indian reservations, which was a, a, another round of dispossession.

RUBENSTEIN: So, if you were, uh, growing up in, uh, on a reservation, would the US government come along and say to a parent of a child, boy or girl, "You need to send your child to a boarding school," and was there a lot of, uh, ability to say no?

CHILD: I don't think there was a lot of ability to say no.

There were compulsory attendance laws after, say, the 1890's in the United States.

There was a certain level of coercion to sending children to school.

RUBENSTEIN: And you point out in your book that there was a fair degree of malnutrition and, uh, other kind of health problems that these students had.

What was the, the cause of that?

CHILD: The schools were always, um, poorly funded.

and so, because they were so under funded, you know, nutrition was bad.

Healthcare was bad.

Tuberculosis was a tremendous health problem in the boarding schools at the time.

RUBENSTEIN: So, if you were, uh, let's say, a young boy that was in one of these schools, uh, and you didn't like the malnutrition or the health problems... CHILD: Oh, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Did you, did you tend to run away or go home, and what happened if you went home?

CHILD: You know, there was a lot of, uh, hopping trains, I think, in the early, uh, 20th century, and so it was a pretty common practice for students to resist.

I mean, that was the encouraging thing to find about the history of the government schools is that, even though policymakers and teachers were very committed to this idea of cultural assimilation, the Indian students in the schools were very resistant to the policies.

They had their own ideas about things.

The policy of the schools was for children to go away for four years before they returned home to see their families, so no vacations, no summer breaks, and kids hated that, and they wanted to see their mothers, and fathers, and family members, and so running away from school was, um, a persistent issue, and attendance was much higher in the fall than it was in the spring, and so kids evaded the rules.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when they were at the schools, and they were staying there... What were they being taught?

Were they being taught to get ready to, for medical school, or law school, or graduate school in engineering?

Or, what were they being taught?

CHILD: Well, it's interesting because there were some people who became engineers and doctors, like the famous, um, Charles Eastman, who was a Dakota physician from Minnesota who attended even Dartmouth, um, in the, at the turn of the century, but for most Indian people, expectations were low.

They were thought of as people who would become a laboring class.

There was even a woman who was the superintendent of Indian education in the United States who described the hands of children, Indian children, and she thought they were formed in such a way that they would only be good for manual labor.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about the, uh, reservation system today, um, and the education system today.

The boarding schools, uh, stopped.

CHILD: Right, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Young Indians who are living on reservations or not living on reservations, are they going to certain schools, or they go to the same kind of schools that non-Indians go to today?

CHILD: So, the history of this is that the boarding schools became very unpopular in the early 20th century.

Not only they, were they unpopular with, um, American Indian families and students themselves, but policymakers kind of turned against them, especially in the 1920's.

There were changing ideas about race in the United States, and people began to think, "Why do we", you know, "Why do we insist that American Indian children attend what were essentially segregated schools?"

Right?

There was this whole segregated system of Indian education in the early 20th century.

So, by the time that Franklin Roosevelt was, um, elected, he appointed some very interesting people into, you know, the, the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Uh, John Collier was, um, the head of the BIA under FDR, and he was what you would think of as a cultural pluralist.

He thought the boarding schools were something... His words were, "Out of the Dark Ages."

And so, it was under Roosevelt that Indian people in the United States began attending, um, public schools, and they all felt that public schools, you know... "Indians should go to public schools".

That was the logical thing, and so that has been the dominant, um, you know, form of education for American Indians since FDR.

There were some boarding schools that continued during the 1930's, but it was largely because of the poverty and unemployment of Indian families in the '30s.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has historically been in the Department of Interior in the US government... CHILD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been criticized by many people in the Indian community over many, many years.

Now, for the first time ever, a Native Indian, a former Congresswoman, is now the head of the Department of Interior.

Does that give hope to people in the Indian community that maybe things will change at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or really don't, they don't really know that that's likely to happen?

CHILD: We were very excited in Indian Country, and I think American Indian women...

I was part of a group that were, um, kind of celebrating by Zoom after she was sworn in.

We're very excited about Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo woman, becoming the head of the Department of the Interior, and so, when you think about Indian lands, federal lands, all these issues that have come to the Department of the Interior over the generations...

I don't know how long it's been around, 150 years or something like that, there's never once been an American Indian in the Department of the Interior in a leading position, so it's very exciting to, um, all of us in Indian Country.

RUBENSTEIN: So, I think when she was testifying for that, uh, position in Congress, in the confirmation process, I think she said something like her family has been part of America for 30 or 40 generations... CHILD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Which is a lot longer than most, uh, Americans can say.

In your own case, um, can you trace your ancestry back 10 generations, 20 generations?

How far back can you trace your ancestry?

CHILD: Yeah, I think Deb Haaland was referring to how long Pueblo people were living in the Southwest.

So, for my family, um, you know, it's kind of funny because we have, actually, very good genealogy records, uh, in our reservation communities because of the way we trace our tribal citizenship.

So, my ancestry goes back for generations in a couple of Ojibwe communities in Minnesota.

My grandmother, uh, was from the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation.

My grandfather was from another community, uh, Mille Lacs, and he was dispossessed of his... You know, they were trying to get Indian people out of central Minnesota, I always think of him as being kind of a political refugee within Minnesota, and fortunately for him, he met my grandmother in northern Minnesota and found a home, but he was essentially dispossessed, um, in the early 20th century, as was his father and his brother.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's suppose somebody is watching this, and they say, "I'm interested to learn more about American Indians, Native Americans, indigenous people."

Uh, what is it that you most would like people to know about, uh, American Indians, and what do you think is the biggest misconception that you find when you tell people that you are an American Indian?

CHILD: I've thought a little bit about this idea.

Um, a lot of it has come through some of my work with public schools or, um, I'm an textbook advisor to, um, new textbooks being developed for the Chicago Public Schools, and in that kind of work, I've also helped, um, write, over the years, some to state standards for history education in Minnesota, and I always think, "What do I want school children, in particular, to know about Indian people in Minnesota or in the United States?"

And it always comes down to, for me, that beyond just understanding or appreciating Native people having beautiful and interesting cultures, and languages, and so forth, this idea of sovereignty is very important, that we are small nations within the United States, and so that's the point that I always try to get across to, um, public audiences, as well as, um, school kids.

RUBENSTEIN: Professor Child, I wanna thank you for a very interesting conversation, and I appreciate your being in conversation with us today.

CHILD: Thank you.

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