Chemawa Indian School in Salem is the oldest continuously operated boarding school for Native students in the United States. It started in 1880 as the United States Indian Industrial and Training School on the campus of Pacific University in Forest Grove. It is run by the Bureau of Indian Education, one of four off-reservation boarding schools in the United States. From its beginnings as a school designed for assimilating Indigenous children and teenagers into the dominant white culture in the nineteenth century, Chemawa has evolved into a source of Native knowledge, solidarity, and pride, with alumni of all ages gathering at pow wows throughout the West.
Indian boarding schools were set up in the 1800s to take Native children from their families and cultures and force them into white culture and Christianity. Officials went to reservations and forcibly took students to the boarding schools. Students were not allowed to wear the traditional clothing or hairstyles they arrived. They were issued clothing by the school and had their hair cut or styled like white people of the time. In most boarding schools, students were not allowed to speak any language other than English, even though many students arrived not knowing English. For decades, these boarding schools were the only options for Indigenous students in the United States, because state schools did not allow Native children to attend, and there were no schools on the reservations.
Chemawa’s Origins
Chemawa started with 18 students from the Puyallup Reservation in Washington, and by 1885 had 300 students from around the West. The first class graduated from sixth grade (the highest level possible) in 1886. The school later added grades up to 10th grade. Chemawa needed to expand, but the residents in Forest Grove protested, so the school pursued land north of Salem. Students at Chemawa worked and put in money for the new site, believing it would belong to them and their tribes. But that wasn’t the plan of the administration, which bought the land in the name of the U.S. government. Other expansions of the school were also paid for through the labor and financial contributions of the Native students.
The early curriculum included both academics and agricultural and industrial labor. Boys learned skills like masonry, blacksmithing, drafting, dairying, and stock raising. Girls were taught household skills like cooking, sewing, cleaning, and eventually nursing. Outside of classes and the on-campus jobs all students were expected to have, there were athletics, clubs, and a band. By 1926, Chemawa had added eleventh and twelfth grades and had close to 1000 students. The school discontinued its elementary program, and in 1927 became a fully accredited high school.
Changes in Native Education
Starting in the 1930s, education for Native students began changing. Chemawa was threatened multiple times with closure, usually for economic reasons. But the school continued, with the support of Oregon’s congressional delegation and interested officials in the state government. Alumni of the school and journalists were also essential in keeping the school going. According to the school, “The 1940s and 1950s brought other changes, including a unique program for Navajo students and changes in policy to bring back Northwest students, particularly those from Alaska.”…