The massacre at Wounded Knee is a violent reality in the continued push of Manifest Destiny and the American hope of conquering the west. Although, this was also the same time that the formation of “Indian schools” had begun, which marked the beginning of more crimes against Native children.
The continued resistance of Native peoples across North America eventually led to an attempt at “forced assimilation.” The Campbell/Kean text mentions the “establishment of Indian schools, like the Carlisle School,” but it does not go into the detail of how these schools affected Native communities. I was upset that the book did not go into greater detail on this issue and instead filled a paragraph about the movie Smoke Signals. (51) Anyways, Captain Richard Pratt was the man who coined the phrase, “Kill the Indian and save the man,” as the mantra for the formation of “Indian schools” across Canada and the United States. Native children were, in many cases, forcibly removed from their homes, and taken to these schools, where they were mentally, physically, and many times sexually abused by their “care takers.”
In recent years, Canada has made public apologies and given “compensation checks” to the Native people who attended these institutions. On the other hand, what has the United States done?
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