We Americans decided to take it upon ourselves to rid an entire culture of their identity by establishing “Indian Schools” whereby the students were taken from the only culture that they knew and forced them into a society they knew nothing about. We then expected them to speak the language of these people as well as adopt their ways. When the students did not, they were often punished severely.
And then there were the schools such as the Indian School also known as the Intermountain Intertribal School in Brigham City, Utah and the Indian Village School of Marion, Ohio where the students not only wanted to attend but rallied around the State legislature in an effort to keep the school open as was the case in 1984 with the the school in Brigham City. These students marched from Brigham City, Utah to Salt Lake City, Utah to convince the state leaders to keep the school open. Not one leader showed up!
Following this blog are several articles related to their cause as well as pictures. In other parts of this website are the actual yearbooks from the schools, including the 1984 yearbook from Brigham City.
It is also interesting to note that Utah as well as most Mormons celebrate July 24th as Pioneer Day, the day that the Mormons entered the Salt Lake Valley to escaper persecution from back east. However, to the Native Americans, this was just the opposite. In honor of these good folks, I can not, with a decent conscience, celebrate this day, despite the fact that my own ancestors were part of that escapade. Many narrowly escaped with their lives and many did not make it here. I will always honor them. I have even buried sand from the Pacific Ocean with a couple of them since they were never able to make it to that beautiful place. However, the Native Americans lost their lands and paid a hefty price for ideals that they could not understand. And then to have leaders from that very faith NOT EVEN MEET WITH THESE FAITHFUL KIDS after all of their efforts to maintain their school is unfathomable and just plain savagely wrong.
This year, 2023, also marks the first year to celebrate Native American Heritage Day on November 1st. I join with them in this very important day by presenting to you this collection of histories and more as they become available.
Some Native American perspectives on Pioneer Day
Pioneer Day
By Sydnee Gonzalez, KSL.com | Posted – July 22, 2023 at 5:22 p.m.
The grand entry dance at the 28th Native American Celebration in the Park at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City on July 23, 2022. The celebration is held each Pioneer Day weekend. (Laura Seitz, Deseret News)
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SALT LAKE CITY — Attending church on Pioneer Day weekend has never been something Shoshone leader and historian Darren Parry says he has looked forward to.
Many of Parry’s ancestors of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1870s. As a six-generation Latter-day Saint, Parry says the church’s culture and doctrines are all he’s ever known. But that doesn’t make the holiday any easier for him.
“I hate going that week because I just sit and hear these pioneer stories, and not once have I ever heard somebody say, ‘You know, we displaced these people that were here and sorry about that.’ I’ve never once heard that from the pulpit by any descendant of a pioneer,” Parry said. “I’m not holding out hope that that will ever happen — but man, how cool would that be if it did, so I’ll just continue to go and grin and bear it.”
The Beehive State is home to eight federally-recognized tribes whose Shoshone, Ute, Goshute, Paiute and Navajo ancestors lived in Utah and surrounding states for millennia. The arrival of the Mormon settlers was a watershed moment that signaled the end to a way of life for many Native Americans.
“I’ve always said the coming of the pioneers was kind of a blessing but also a curse,” Parry said. “While I’ll celebrate all day with my pioneer friends who have ancestors, I wouldn’t mind seeing just a brief pause and reflection on at what cost it came to Native American communities in this beautiful state that we call home.”
Indigenous activist Carl Moore has never bought into the idea of Pioneer Day. But growing up in a Latter-day Saint family in Orem, he says he saw performing at Pioneer Day events in Provo as a way to share his Hopi roots, as well as his testimony of the church.
However, as an adult who is no longer affiliated with the church, he says his views on the holiday have changed drastically. Now he sees the day as a day of protest. For example, he and other activists have jumped into the Days of ’47 Parade in the past with banners reading: “Illegal is a colonial concept” — referring to the connections between Indigenous peoples across the Americas that existed long before European settlers established borders.
Native Americans recall torture, hatred at boarding schools
MISSION, S.D. — After her mother died when Rosalie Whirlwind Soldier was just 4 years old, she was put into a Native American boarding school in South Dakota and told her native Lakota language was “devil’s speak.”
She recalls being locked in a basement at St. Francis Indian Mission School for weeks as punishment for breaking the school’s strict rules. Her long braids were shorn in a deliberate effort to stamp out her cultural identity. And when she broke her leg in an accident, Whirlwind Soldier said she received shoddy care leaving her with pain and a limp that still hobbles her decades later.
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“I thought there was no God, just torture and hatred,” Whirlwind Soldier testified during a Saturday event on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation led by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, as the agency confronts the bitter legacy of a boarding school system that operated in the U.S. for more than a century.
Now 78 and still living on the reservation, Whirlwind Soldier said she was airing her horrific experiences in hopes of finally getting past them.
“The only thing they didn’t do was put us in (an oven) and gas us,” she said, comparing the treatment of Native Americans in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries to the Jewish Holocaust during World War II.
“But I let it go,” she later added. “I’m going to make it.”
Saturday’s event was the third in Haaland’s yearlong “Road to Healing” initiative for victims of abuse at government-backed boarding schools, after previous stops in Oklahoma and Michigan.
Starting with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the U.S. enacted laws and policies to establish and support the schools. The stated goal was to “civilize” Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, but that was often carried out through abusive practices. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the schools received federal funding and were willing partners.
Most closed their doors long ago and none still exist to strip students of their identities. But some, including St. Francis, still function as schools — albeit with drastically different missions that celebrate the cultural backgrounds of their Native students.
Former St. Francis student Ruby Left Hand Bull Sanchez traveled hundreds of miles from Denver to attend Saturday’s meeting. She cried as she recalled almost being killed as a child when a nun stuffed lye soap down her throat in response to Sanchez praying in her native language.
“I want the world to know,” she said.
Accompanying Haaland was Wizipan Garriott, a Rosebud Sioux member and principal deputy assistant secretary for Indian affairs. Garriott described how boarding schools were part of a long history of injustices against his people that began with the widespread extermination of their main food source — bison, also known as buffalo.
“First they took our buffalo. Then our land was taken, then our children, and then our traditional form of religion, spiritual practices,” he said. “It’s important to remember that we Lakota and other Indigenous people are still here. We can go through anything.”
The first volume of an investigative report released by the Interior Department in May identified more than boarding 400 schools that the federal government supported beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well into the 1960s. It also found at least 500 children died at some of the schools, though that number is expected to increase dramatically as research continues.
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition says it’s tallied about 100 more schools not on the government list that were run by groups such as churches.
“They all had the same missions, the same goals: ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,'” said Lacey Kinnart, who works for the Minnesota-based coalition. For Native American children, Kinnart said the intention was “to assimilate them and steal everything Indian out of them except their blood, make them despise who they are, their culture, and forget their language.”
South Dakota had 31 of the schools including two on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation — St. Francis and the Rosebud Agency Boarding and Day School.
The Rosebud Agency school, in Mission, operated through at least 1951 on a site now home to Sinte Gleska University, where Saturday’s meeting happened.
All that remains of the boarding school is a gutted-out building that used to house the dining hall, according to tribal members. When the building caught fire about five years ago, former student Patti Romero, 73, said she and others were on hand to cheer its destruction.
“No more worms in the chili,” said Romero, who attended the school from ages 6 to 15 and said the food was sometimes infested.
A second report is pending in the investigation into the schools launched by Haaland, herself a Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico and the first Native American cabinet secretary. It will cover burial sites, the schools’ impact on Indigenous communities and also try to account for federal funds spent on the troubled program.
Congress is considering a bill to create a boarding school “truth and healing commission,” similar to one established in Canada in 2008. It would have a broader scope than the Interior Department’s investigation into federally run boarding schools and subpoena power, if passed.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50495976/native-americans-recall-torture-hatred-at-boarding-schools
This interactive map details Native American boarding schools in Utah and beyond
SALT LAKE CITY — A new map gives more insight into over 650 Native American boarding schools in the United States and Canada — including a handful that operated in Utah.
The nonprofit National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition recently launched an interactive map that provides the locations and basic information of the schools. Hundreds of thousands of Native children — some as young as 4 — were sent to the schools between 1819 and the 1960s as part of a government policy to “Kill the Indian, save the man,” as the founder of the first such school in the U.S. put it.
Students experienced “rampant physical, sexual and emotional abuse, disease, malnourishment, overcrowding and lack of health care,” according to a 2022 Department of the Interior investigation into the schools. Some students never left the schools, including 12 whose graves were recently found near the former Panguitch Indian Boarding School. Many who did survive the schools left with a lifetime of trauma.
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“It was the damnedest thing I ever did in my life,” Diné survivor Mark Maryboy said during a panel discussion on the schools last fall in Salt Lake City. He often wonders how his life would have turned out without that trauma. “Going through that experience has a huge impact on you. It’s a lifetime sickness that goes into your mind.”
Children from tribes within Utah were also sent to schools outside the state, sometimes hundreds of miles from their families and homes. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition identifies eight schools that existed in Utah and when they were in operation.
- Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City from 1950 to 1984.
- Uintah Boarding and Day School in Whiterocks from 1880 to 1951.
- Ouray Indian School in Randlett 1885 to 1905.
- St. George Southern Utah Boarding School in St. George from 1901 to 1904.
- Panguitch Boarding School in Panguitch from 1904 to 1909.
- Aneth Boarding and Day School in Montezuma Creek from 1935 to present.
- Navajo Faith Mission in Aneth from 1899 to 1919.
- St. Christopher’s Episcopal Mission Residential School in Bluff from 1943 to 1952.
Some operated for only a handful of years, while others housed students for decades. Many of the Utah schools closed in the early or mid-20th century with two exceptions: the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City and Aneth Boarding and Day School in Montezuma Creek. Intermountain closed in 1984, while Aneth is still open. Today the Aneth school, now called Aneth Community School, is operated by the Bureau of Indian Education and serves a mix of residential and day K-6 students.
The earliest Utah schools were established by the Episcopal Mission in the 1880s on or near the Uintah & Ouray Reservation in Northeastern Utah. There are at least dozens of Ute children who died from accidents, disease and other causes.
At one point, the Intermountain Indian School was the biggest Native American boarding school in the country and housed students from over two dozen tribes. Unlike their peers at other schools, graduates from the Intermountain Indian School have publicly spoken about their time at boarding school fondly. As part of an annual tradition, some graduates gather to repaint an “I” for the school on a nearby hill.
“It taught us how to become independent and become a part of society,” Ute Bear Dance Chief Aldean Ketchum, who attended the school from 1979 to 1981, said during a panel. “We kept our language and our culture and they encouraged us to keep that up. That was the unique thing about attending boarding school at that time.”
Learn more about Utah’s Native American boarding schools through the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
Related stories
- Graves of Indigenous children found at Utah Indian boarding school
- Researchers seek lost Native American boarding school graves
- ‘It never went away’: Utah tribal elders share boarding school experiences
- Native Americans recall torture, hatred at boarding schools
Plan To Shut Indian School Sparks Outcry
By Anne Bridgman — April 11, 1984 14 min read
https://www.edweek.org/education/plan-to-shut-indian-school-sparks-outcry/1984/04
The federal government’s decision to close a Utah school that is one of the few remaining boarding schools for American Indians has sparked a legal battle and charges that the closing will place the future of its students–many of whom are dropouts from other public schools–in grave jeopardy.
In an action supported by 46 Indian tribes nationwide, the Ute Indian Tribe will file a motion in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a preliminary injunction to block the scheduled closing of the Intermountain Inter-Tribal School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school in Brigham City.
Charging that the closing of the school will severely limit the educational opportunities of its 300 students, the Utes are scheduled to file the motion early this week.
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At least three other Indian boarding schools–of a total of eight still in existence–have been or are targeted to be closed by the bia for the same reasons–rising costs and declining enrollments.
The conflict in Utah has been described by one Ute official as “the modern-day version of the government stealing the Indians’ land.” But, according to Donald W. Mendez, chairman of the Intermountain Inter-Tribal School Board, “this time, it is the story of the government stealing our education.”
“Closure of that school is not the issue in and of itself,” said Forrest S. Cuch, education-division head for the Ute tribe. “This is one of the major efforts of the bia to get out of the business of educating Indian children. They want to get out of the education business and we don’t want to allow them that luxury.”
Services Threatened
Ute officials maintain that closing the Intermountain school will force students to transfer to schools that do not offer the mental-health services needed by the 300 American Indians who attend Intermountain School. Without those services, argues a researcher who has studied the schools, as many as 90 percent of the students may drop out of school.
Most of the students at the boarding school are public-school dropouts; more than half were sent to the school by juvenile courts or social-service agencies because local programs failed to address their needs, according to Glenn I. Latham, director of the Exceptional Child Center at Utah State University.
But the issue of tribal survival also figures in the dispute. The Ute tribe, which was established by an executive order of President Lincoln in 1861, now has fewer than 1,700 members, and tribal officials contend that inadequate and inappropriate schooling has contributed to high rates of drug and alcohol abuse in the tribe. The Utes are leading the fight to save the school because many members have benefited from its services, according to Mr. Cuch.
Several Ute officials have also alleged that several members of the Utah Congressional delegation agreed to support closing the school in return for a $7-million waterworks project. Spokesmen for Utah members of Congress, however, deny those charges.
Other Injunctions Obtained
In at least two other cases, Indian tribes have obtained injunctions preventing the U.S. Interior Department from closing schools.
In May 1982, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction, at the request of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes of Oklahoma, prohibiting the closure of the Concho Indian School, an elementary school in Concho, Okla., according to James C. Martin, assistant director of the office of Indian educational programs. The school was closed the following year.
During the same year, the Sioux tribe in North Dakota obtained an injunction from the same court prohibiting the closing of the Wahpeton School. That school remains open.
A bill that would require a detailed procedure for closing any bia-funded school was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Dale Kildee, Democrat of Michigan, last month. Scheduled for a hearing by the House Committee on Education and Labor early this week, the bill calls for the bia to “ensure a study of each child’s educational and social needs and guarantee adequate alternative services.” If passed, the bill would affect any school operated by the bia as of Jan. 1, 1984, including Intermountain.
Schools Closed
Intermountain School is one of eight off-reservation boarding schools still in operation in the United States. The schools, known as orbs, were established by the Snyder Act of 1921 to educate Indian youths who did not have suitable day-school educational opportunities in their communities, or who had behavioral or social problems. Few schools were set up under the law until 1974; from 1974 to 1978, the bia operated 15 such schools.
The Intermountain School served as a military hospital in the 1940’s and was converted to an off-reservation residential school for 1,300 to 2,350 Navajo students in 1950, according to a school history. Inter-mountain became multi-tribal in 1974, administered by the bia, with a limit of 800 students.
Students who attend the school, which is fully accredited, must be at least one-quarter Indian and must be 14 to 19 years old. Graduation requirements include the completion of 15.5 units of required coursework, 75 hours of supervised work experience during one semester, and demonstrated functional competency in basic skills or “independent adult functioning,” said school officials.
Between 1974 and 1978, several commissions recommended that the school develop social-service programs to address the needs of Indian students not otherwise being met. The school now has programs geared specifically to deal with drug abuse and dropouts, both significant problems among American Indians.
Consolidation Recommended
In 1978, the U.S. General Accounting Office recommended that the Indian-affairs bureau consolidate its orbs system and close schools that were underused, according to a September 1983 report by the gao From 1978 to 1982, five of the 15 facilities were closed.
Last April, the bia proposed and the Congress approved the closing of four of the remaining 10 orbs by the end of the 1984-85 school year, according to the report. Mount Edgecumbe (Alaska) High School and the Concho Indian School were closed last summer, and Intermountain School and Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, Okla., are scheduled to close at the end of this school year.
“There are no current plans to close any of the remaining seven orbs,” said Mr. Martin of the bia
The Congress appropriated no money for either the Intermountain School or Sequoyah High School for the 1984-85 school year.
Last December, Brigham City received a $200,000 grant to fund a socioeconomic study of how Intermountain School will be used once it is closed. Presented by John W. Fritz, deputy assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, the money will be spent to find alternatives for the use of the property, said Mr. Cuch.
Closing Temporarily Blocked
The bia recommended in 1981 that Intermountain School be closed by the end of the 1982-83 school year. To keep the school open, the Intermountain School Board attempted to pursue a contract with the bia under P.L. 93-638, the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975, according to Mr. Cuch. When the bureau did not act on the contract request, Mr. Cuch said, several tribes filed a successful injunction to temporarily block the school’s closing.
In the 1982-83 school year, Intermountain School had a budget of $3,745,450 and enrolled 390 students, a 57-percent decline from the 898 students that were enrolled during the 1978-79 school year, according to the bia
Bureau officials have said the closing of the Intermountain, Mount Edgecombe, and Concho schools will save an estimated $60 million, according to the National Congress of American Indians, an advocacy group for American Indian and Native Alaskan tribes. The recommendation to close the schools earned William D. Bettenberg, the Interior Department’s deputy assistant sec-retary of policy and budget, a $20,000 merit-personnel award, according to the National Congress.
“It is not clear how the Administration arrived at the $60-million figure,” the Congress noted. bia officials declined to comment.
Facts Left Out
The bia has omitted some important facts from its arguments about high costs and declining enrollments, Intermountain board members maintain. The board members point out that enrollment at the school has declined because bia officials in 1982 imposed a 400-student enrollment limit on the school. That limit was imposed, according to Mr. Martin of the bia, because the bureau thought it was inappropriate to begin a freshman class while they were planning to close the school.
Intermountain board members also note that the school has always had a waiting list of students. The enrollment level imposed by the bia also raised the per-pupil cost, the board points out. And the school’s programs designed to serve special needs of Indian students also increase the costs.
“There is ample evidence to show that the bia has manipulated the data and has imposed restrictions on the school to assure an unfavorable image,” a September 1983 issue paper released by the Intermountain school board states.
Lack of Special Services
The major objection voiced by Ute and other tribe members to the closing of the school is that the special services the school provides to Indian students will not be available at the schools to which the students will transfer.
Mr. Latham of Utah State University studied the effects of transferring students from an Indian boarding school to a public school that does not provide special services. “We have found that 91 percent of the student body at Intermountain School is at either moderate or high risk in terms of academic success in virtually any other setting,” Mr. Latham said in an interview.
“Fifty-two percent of the students enrolled at Intermountain are there because they were referred there by the courts or some local jurisdiction because there was no local program to meet their needs,” he said.
Concentration of Problems
Of the students who attend the school, 70 percent have dropped out of the public schools and about half are four or more years below grade level in academic achievement, according to school records. In addition, 53 percent of the students require the intensive residential guidance program, 75 percent have unstable family lives, and 50 percent have family incomes below the poverty level. An additional 12 percent or more are eligible for services for handicapped students.
In the Ute tribe, 60 percent of all deaths are related to alcoholism, according to tribal officials. And the 29-percent dropout rate of American Indians is the highest in the country, along with that of Alaskan Natives, according to the National Center for Education Statistics’ study, “High School and Beyond.”
Mental-health services at the school include individual and group counseling, psychological testing and evaluation, a program for unmarried mothers, a family-education unit that includes sex education and prenatal counseling, an anti-shoplifting program, a drug-rehabilitation program, and an intoxicant-education and care center, according to school documents.
Effective Programs
According to school officials, the special programs have been effective. Fifty-four percent of the 1980-81 graduates found employment, 34 percent continued their education, and the other 12 percent joined the military, married, or are unemployed, according to the school board. In addition, the absenteeism rate at the school, they maintain, is below 3 percent.
“Moving already troubled students from the best education, mental-health, and Indian health programs to minimal or nonexistent programs because it is convenient or politically expedient for the bia decreases or eliminates the students’ chances for educational and personal success,” the school board argued in a September 1983 issue paper.
“Students cannot benefit from programs that are nonexistent,” the paper continued. “Neither reservation health services nor other off-reservation boarding schools have yet developed health or education programs for problem youths of the quality that Intermountain School has. Yet, these existing programs, which are successfully contributing to the education and human-development process and are recognized for their high achievement, are about to be destroyed.”
Transfer of Programs
bia and other federal officials who support closing the school have said that some of the programs will be transferred with the students.
The 300 students who attend the school have been given the choice of moving to a private, public, or boarding school, according to bia officials. In addition, federal officials have indicated that three new nonboarding high schools will be built to handle the transferred students. According to Mr. Cuch, most of the students are expected to transfer to Phoenix Indian School in Arizona or to Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, Calif.,–two Indian boarding schools that remain open.
But Mr. Latham of Utah State University contends that the bia plans to close Phoenix Indian School at the end of the 1984-85 school year. The school was originally targeted to be closed by the bia at the end of this school year, but in July 1982, the bureau announced it would not close the school.
“There is some Congressional interest about the possible closure of Phoenix after the completion of Papago and Hopi [schools]” on Indian reservations, said Mr. Martin of the bia The new schools are currently being designed, and Mr. Martin estimated that construction will begin in 1984 or 1985.
Position Changed
The assurance that the programs will be transferred to the schools that the Indian students will attend is the reason that Representative James V. Hansen, Republican of Utah and an initial supporter of keeping the school open, has decided to support closing it, said Kathleen E. Gallegos, his legislative aide.
“The programs were being upgraded [in the schools that would receive the Intermountain students], great strides were being made,” said Ms. Gallegos.
In a letter sent last October to Mr. Mendez, the school-board chairman, Representative Hansen promised to monitor the progress of improving the social-service programs at the two schools to assure they were ready for the students by the 1984-85 school year.
Mr. Mendez responded in a November letter; calling Mr. Hansen’s letter a “serious misunderstanding of the facts,” he pointed out the difficulty of transferring special programs from one school to another.
“You fail to recognize that effective programs are the result of years of development, refinement, and staff expertise,” he wrote. “We would hope you will not allow the bia to close the school until programs are verifiably in place and that the Bureau lives up to its promises of schools on our reservations.”
Mr. Latham of Utah State University agrees that it will be almost impossible to transfer the programs successfully. As an example, he cited an attempt to replicate the vocational-education program at Intermountain School at Phoenix Indian School; $600,000 was allocated for the project. “The budget is now down to $200,000 and nothing has been done,” he said. “They’re transferring programs into oblivion.”
Water Project
‘Some Lost Their Lives, Some Found Their Lives’: Remembering The Intermountain Indian School
KUER 90.1 | By Jon Reed
Published August 6, 2021 at 5:00 AM MDT
Not much is left of the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah. The once-sprawling campus is now mostly barren fields of dying grass. A giant white letter “I” fades away on the nearby mountainside.
Just a few buildings remain. One sits empty and abandoned. Two others have been converted into an upscale furniture store.
But for Lorina Antonio, the memories are still clear. She first arrived in 1967 when she was 12 years old.
“First time when I showed up here they had Greyhound buses lined up all the way around the campus,” she recalls, tracing the line with her finger. “They had 2,000 students that they were bringing in.”
On a hot, cloudless day this July, she was dressed in a traditional Navajo outfit with a purple blouse and turquoise jewelry. Back in 1967, she came with very little. She had two sets of clothes in a plastic bag. She knew no one, barely spoke English and was 400 miles from home.
“I was scared because I didn’t know where I was,” she said. “I didn’t know when I was going to go home. I didn’t know what to do.”
To escape homesickness, Antonio said she threw herself into activities. She played sports and joined the student council. She became homecoming queen in 1974.
In all, she spent about a decade of her life at Intermountain. She said the school taught her personal responsibility and gave her opportunities she didn’t have back home.
“We were away from a lot of alcohol,” she said. “We were away from a lot of drama going on on the reservation. We had counselors and we had teachers that cared about us. Every day they would talk to us, ‘What do you want to be in life? What do you want to have?’”
Lots of students report experiences similar to Antonio’s. Intermountain alumni are active on Facebook groups and they hold reunions.
But for historian Farina King, a citizen of the Navajo Nation who is writing a book about the school, Intermountain remains part of the troubling history of native boarding schools in the U.S.
A Dark History
Many Americans are just learning about schools like Intermountain, following the recent discoveries of hundreds of Indiginous bodiesburied in unmarked graves outside residential schools in Canada.
Similar schools existed throughout the U.S., and the U.S. Department of the Interior is now investigating the country’s boarding school system. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez has called this an important step towards confronting the country’s discrimination of Native Americans.
Native advocates in Utah hope schools here will also be investigated, including Intermountain.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs opened Intermountain in 1950, transforming a former military hospital into what would become the largest Native boarding school in the world. That was decades after other federally-run programs around the country had earned reputations for brutal practices, such as forcibly shaving student’s heads and physically and sexually abusing them.
While Intermountain was not as harsh, King says federal officials had the same goal in mind.
“They wanted to assimilate them, integrate them, and they wanted to cut off the ties [to their land],” King said. “I mean, this is in BIA records of how they designed this school.”
Intermountain grew out of a kind of bargain between Navajos and the federal government, King said.
Navajos had long been skeptical of government schools. But they were also facing a major economic depression following World War II — mostly because of earlier Federal policies according to King. They began to see these schools as the better of bad choices.
“It’s always a balance because Navajos have never given up their sovereignty, have always seen the significance of their peoplehood, culture, language,” she said. “But as a strategy of survival, they realize we need more schools for our children.”
What Intermountain Was Like
So on a cold day in January 1950, 526 Navajo students arrived in Brigham City. Like Antonio, few spoke English. Some had reportedly never seen a shower before.
Students learned math and English. Older students also had vocational training, which, particularly in the school’s early years, was mostly in gendered, low-level trades that didn’t offer much upward mobility, according to USU history professor Colleen O’Neill. Girls, for example, tended to go into occupations like cleaning houses and boys trained in agriculture or as car mechanics.
By the early ‘70s, a darker side began to emerge. In 1972, a student died by suicide in a Brigham City jail after being arrested for public intoxication. He was not the first.
The year before that, a group of students filed a lawsuit to shut the school down. They alleged administrators drugged students with Thoraznie to sedate them, that the school illegally segregated students and provided an inferior education.
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. The lead plaintiff declined to speak with KUER for this story. Former teacher Hal Reeder said the allegations weren’t true.
“I can think of one instance in all the time I was there that an employee laid hands on a kid in a violent way,” Reeder said. “There were skirmishes among the kids, especially when we had our famous riot. But that was blown up.”
Shortly after the school started admitting students from other tribes in 1974, several riots broke out.
But Reeder said it was mostly a standoff between Navajo students and students from other tribes. And no one got seriously hurt. He said the police and surrounding community made a bigger deal of it than it was.
And that, to him, was always the bigger problem.
“People are racist,” he said. “And a lot of people in town weren’t necessarily nice or friendly to the Indian kids.”
A Balancing Act
Reeder taught at Intermountain for close to 20 years, until it closed in 1984. He said teachers cared about the students and did their best to make them feel comfortable. But he said many students came from difficult backgrounds and he recognized that it could be difficult for some to be so far from home in a strange, new culture.
He remembered escorting students back to the reservation on the bus at the end of the year. When they were almost home, the students began taking off their school clothes and changing into their “Navajo clothes.” He said the students seemed to be afraid their friends and family would think they had been white-washed.
“I think [the students had] an ambivalence about, ‘what will make me happy here,’” he said. “I think they came with a lot of Navajo culture. And they tried to adapt the best they could.”
Unlike earlier boarding schools, students at Intermountain could express themselves and their culture. They had bonfires and traditional dances, made fry bread in the kitchen and painted native artwork on their dorm walls.
When BIA officials planned on shutting down the school due to limited funding and declining enrollment, students rallied to keep it open. They organized a 24-mile run from Brigham City to the Federal Building in Ogden to speak with Utah’s federal delegates, including Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and Republican Rep. James Hansen. None of them showed up.
“I think Intermountain offers a lot more than many of the boarding schools, the ones I’ve been to by a far shot,” said student Darrell Bradley in a video of the event.
Remembering Intermountain
Antonio said she saw students struggle with staying connected to their culture while attending the school. But it wasn’t something she had a problem with.
She still speaks Navajo. But she never moved back to the reservation. She went to Salt Lake and worked in construction.
“What happened in Canada is very sad, but I would never put that for Intermountain,” she said. “We were away from home. We were away from our family, but we were brought here to learn an education and learn about ourself. That’s the way I look at it.”
Antonio is helping to organize the next reunion in September and trying to get a group together to repaint the letter “I” on the side of the mountain.
Even though most of the school is now gone, she said she wants people to know it existed and remember the students who went there.
Tags
Race, Religion & Social Justice Indian CountryIndigenous Issues
Angel Prairee 