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Less Education, More Forced Labor

Less Education, More Forced Labor

What is the Meriam Report, and what role did it play in ending a corrupt program? In 1880, Richard Pratt opened the Carlisle School’s Outing Program. While the program had a rocky start, Pratt chose to expand the following year and eventually the program was practiced all over the country. Pratt framed the programs as an opportunity to give boarding school students real-world experience and cultivate practical skills they learned at school, but in reality, the Outing Programs were nothing more than indentured servitude. By the 1930s, most programs were so corrupt that they were discontinued. Were the programs nixed due to a sudden change of heart?

Thank you to our guest K. Tsiannina Lomawaima and some of the music in this episode was composed by indigenous composer R. Carlos Nakai.

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  • Host: Sharon McMahon
  • Executive Producer: Heather Jackson
  • Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder
  • Writers and Researchers: Heather Jackson, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, Kari Anton

Guests

Guests

Guest image for K. Tsiannina Lomawaima

K. Tsiannina Lomawaima

K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Mvskoke / Creek Nation descent), scholar of Indigenous studies, is retired from the professoriate where she served as faculty at the University of Washington (1988-1994), the University of Arizona (1994-2014), and Arizona State University (2014-2020). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Education. Her scholarship on the federal off-reservation boarding school system is rooted in the experiences of her father, Curtis Thorpe Carr, a survivor of Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, where he was enrolled from 1927 to 1935. Relevant publications include the 2018 special issue of JAIE (Journal of American Indian Education) “Native American Boarding School Stories” Vol. 57 #1; “To Remain an Indian”: Lessons for democracy from a century of Native American education (2006; with Teresa McCarty); Away from home: American Indian boarding school experiences (2000; with Margaret Archuleta and Brenda Child); and They Called it Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (1994).