Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest

Essay and link to the University of Washington digital collection of photographs and documents on  American Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

Indian Schoolgirls, Fort Spokane. University of Washington, Digital Collection, Indian Boarding Schools- American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Web. March 2013.

To watch a video from Films on Demand off-campus, you just need to enter your student id.

"Many Americans who set out to change the West found the West changed them instead. This program explores a broad panorama of western experiences: those of Great Plains homesteaders and farmers, Chinese immigrants and Hispanic townspeople in California, Mormons in Utah, Buffalo Bill Cody, cowboys during the fall of the great ranching boom, African-American sharecroppers seeking a “promised land,” and Native Americans on the reservations." 

You can watch the entire documentary or go right to the segment "Indian Children at Boarding Schools."

"Indian children were historically sent to boarding schools with white children where they were forcibly stripped of any cultural influence."

"Archival images and personal stories bring to life the devastating experiences of some of the over 100,000 Indian children who were sent to one of the 500 boarding schools scattered across the United States"