Report to the Department of the Interior

Poems

Diane Glancy

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780826355713
• eBook ISBN: 9780826355720
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia

Constructed as a series of reports to the Department of the Interior, these poems of grief, anger, defiance, and resistance focus on the oppressive educational system adopted by Indian boarding schools and the struggle Native Americans experienced to retain and honor traditional ways of life and culture.

ONE CALL AWAY

The Office of Indian Affairs was established March 11, 1824

as part of the United States Department of War.

In 1847, the Office was renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In 1849, the Bureau was moved to the Department of the Interior

because Indian affairs now focused on what to do with land

that had been inhabited by the Indians.

Soon after, reformers and missionaries began the slow attempt

to assimilate and evangelize the different tribes

whose land it had been.

Indian education began in prison

in boarding school

in upheaval

in defeat.

It was one call away from death.

The Book

It sat on the table

silent as a rabbit.

We could not leave the room.

We had to stay there with it.

We were inhabitants of their promised land.

The ears long as clouds.

The paws the rampage of waves.

Postscript:

In 1875, after the last of the Plains Indians Wars,

Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt took seventy-two prisoners

from Indian Territory [later Oklahoma]

to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida,

where he began educating the prisoners.

Afterward there followed a proliferation of reservation

and boarding schools including Carlisle Indian

Industrial School in Pennsylvania established by Pratt.

To Say from Their Way

The schools were soon up

and required overseeings of the upmost kind

to acquire competence and meet expectations.

Whatever they said

was said in government reports

and filed in drawers that might be read again.

But schools cannot be contained on pages.

Dear Sir, if only you were here

you would know the conditions.

A forest of closed doors

behind which there is a breaking into people

with a world not theirs.

Reports (2)

Report from Ouray Agency Boarding School, July 1, 1898

Miss Estelle Reel, Superintendent of Indian Schools

The attendance has been very small throughout the year. These Indians

are still bitterly and unreasonably opposed to education. When asked to

give their children a chance to learn something, they always have excuses

ready.

I am, respectfully yours, H. J. Curtis

Truant report: reason for opposition, July 1, 1898

We sat on hard wooden benches in the classroom.

We ate at long tables.

They stood over us when we went outside.

We slept in a room with rows of beds.

The room was locked at night.

We were counted every morning.

They never turned their heads.

Respectfully yours, Nathan Moving Bear

Annual Report of the Department of the Interior, for the Fiscal Year

Ended June 30, 1898, Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C.

Report of Red Lake Agency, Minnesota

Eight schools in bad repair are located in this agency, 7 boarding schools

and 1 day school, the average attendance being 442. If better school

buildings are erected, more pupils could be accommodated. Congress

has appropriated funds for the erection of school buildings at Red Lake

and Leech Lake. Both places are badly in need of new buildings,

although the superintendents of the schools have kept up the attendance

to the capacity of the present buildings.

John H. Sutherland, United States Indian Agent

Truant report: reason for opposition

We were expected to learn something unrelated

to anything we understood. We would have to learn the structure

before we learned the meaning the structure held.

But the structure was not explained.

[No name attached to this report.]

Those Old Voices Always Are with Me

If they could have taught velocity as an arrow shot at a buffalo running

multi-directionally in varying prairie winds from a moving horse—

If they could have said 1 buffalo + 0 buffalo is still 1 buffalo—

If they could have said all would disappear, yet return in different form,

and we just had to recognize the variables of its transformation—

If they could have said that time-space was visiting relatives a three-day

journey away by train as we lay in our beds in boarding school—

If they had just said how it takes more than one name to name a person—

If they could have said the marks of their numbers on the blackboard

explained the changing force of a vision quest—

If they could have explained thermodynamics as our visions during a

sun dance—

If they would have said the black hole was a boarding school.

Report on Indian Education from the Indian

Pis’kun [buffalo jump]

H...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Report to the Department of the Interior
• Bull Head’s Wife
• Spotted Tail’s Daughter [1848–1866]
• One Call Away
• Squeezing Through The Narrow Door of The Boarding School
• The Visions of Father Philip Bernard
• The Shootings At Red Lake Reservation
• Report (4)
• The Origin of Law
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography