Oppressed and oppressor, civility and incivility: all social constructs that have established and erased cultures since the beginnings of the United States. The new colonies felt oppressed by the British and rebelled against their mother country through groundbreaking texts like “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” by Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” cartoon, and eventually the Declaration of Independence. Of course, the ultimate rebellion came to fruition in the Revolutionary War, but oppressed people’s texts have made vast strides for their cultures since even before the United States. Writing, language, and communication are what start, end, and perpetuate oppression, and the case of educating the Native Americans in the 1800s is no different. While Henry Pratt of the Carlisle School may not have thought of himself as an oppressor, the Native Americans of his time classify him and his teachings as such, and history further drops him into that category. Pratt aimed to civilize a group that didn’t believe themselves to be the opposite, but Zitkala-Sa’s narrative successfully speaks back against the oppression without making her or her narrative the oppressor.
This conflict of the oppressed becoming the oppressor is described in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed when he writes, “It is a rare peasant who, once ‘promoted’ to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself.” (Freire, 46) While this example is specific to Freire’s time, the concept is seen throughout history. For example, Fidel Castro attempted to “free” Cuba from the previous regime but became a communist dictator himself. Zitkala-Sa is successful in conquering this inherit conflict because in her piece, “The School Days of an Indian Girl” specifically, she tells her story from her perspective, whereas Pratt tells the Native American’s story for them, from his perspective.
The first clear example of this language difference can be seen in Zitkala-Sa’s “The Cutting of My Long Hair,” where she describes being hunted down and dragged out by the white girls and women at the Carlisle school.
“From my hiding place I peered out, shuddering with fear whenever I heard footsteps nearby. Though in the hall loud voices were calling my name, and I knew that even Judéwin was searching for me, I did not open my mouth to answer. Then the steps were quickened and the voices became excited. The sounds came nearer and nearer. Women and girls entered the room. I held my breath and watched them open closet doors and peep behind large trunks. Someone threw up the curtains, and the room was filled with sudden light. What caused them to stoop and look under the bed I do not know. I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair.”
Zitkala-Sa, “The Cutting of My Long Hair”
This narrative allows the reader to formulate their own opinion about the white people in the story, while Pratt defines the Native Americans as uncivilized for the reader. The clearest example of this in “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” is in Pratt’s reason for the school.
“Just now that land in severalty is being retired as the one all-powerful leverage that is going to emancipate and bring about Indian civilization and citizenship, we have another plan thrust upon us which has received great encomium from its authors, and has secured the favor of Congress to the extent of vastly increasing appropriations. This plan is calculated to arrest public attention, and to temporarily gain concurrence from everybody that it is really the panacea for securing citizenship and equality in the nation for the Indians. In its execution this means purely tribal schools among the Indians; that is, Indian youth must continue to grow up under the pressure of home surroundings. Individuals are not to be encouraged to get out and see and learn and join the nation. They are not to measure their strength with the other inhabitants of the land, and find out what they do not know, and thus be led to aspire to gain in education, experience, and skill,—those things that they must know in order to become equal to the rest of us.”
Henry Pratt, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” Paragraph 13
Pratt is deciding that the Native Americans are unequal, uncivilizes, and separate from the white people, and makes these strong definitions throughout his piece, while Zitkala-Sa doesn’t make strong stances on white people until “Retrospection,” which may be because she herself assimilated and became a teacher at the Carlisle school. This distinction between the two pieces proves that personal narrative is always more powerful than external opinions. Pratt doesn’t describe his personal experiences with the Native Americans or even claimed that he attempted another way of incorporating education and combining cultures. Pratt decides the Native American identity and acts on that, just as with every other historical episode of oppression including The Holocaust and The Slave Trade.
Further proof of personal narrative holding the power is seen in Mary Annette Pember’s “Death by Civilization,” where Pember describes her journey to uncover her mother’s past of attending one of the Native American boarding schools “created to strip them of their culture.” While Pember is detailing the horrors of her mother’s past and telling the story that her mother never could, she’s also telling her own story of finding that story, meaning she was also denied access to her native culture due to the oppressor. While Pember does define the school’s teachings as “awful,” “traumatic,” and “evil,” these words are all derived from the effects the school had on Pember’s mother, aligning her tale with the personal narrative format. What Zitkala-Sa and Pember’s stories have in common is experience which permits them to define their oppressors, which is something Pratt never had.
In lay-men’s terms, Pratt’s institutional mission for the Carlisle School would’ve been something along the lines of, “Indians do not have access to education that will encourage assimilation, so we must bring our education into their culture for their own good.” Of course, this updated mission is a modernized version of what Pratt may have said, but the idea is the same. Pratt is defining the Native American culture as “less than,” and isn’t willing to look past his own inherent biases to see that there is no problem that needs fixing.
Ultimately, Freire’s claim that the oppressed often become the oppressor in their work to rebel is accurate in this context. The colonizers were oppressed by the British and rebelled, then further oppressed multiple groups, not just the Native Americans. In this context, though, the Native Americans were almost entirely stripped of their culture because they were taught against it from a young age, so the culture couldn’t grow up with its youth. As modern readers, though, Zitkala-Sa’s piece against her education at the Carlisle school is clearly more powerful because it allows the reader to formulate their own opinions about the white oppressors and doesn’t actually define her schoolteachers and classmates as oppressors until the very end. Personal narrative is always more powerful than other forms of writing against or for oppression because stories are real and cannot be contested, whereas non-personal narratives do not fit that claim. In this battle for power, Zitkala-Sa has won.
Sources
“Kill the Indian, and Save the Man”: Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/
American Indian Stories. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/zitkala-sa/stories/stories.html
Pember, M. A. (2019, March 8). Death by Civilization. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/
Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
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