Dissertation Research: Assimilation and Enculturation at Carlisle Industrial School

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This project involves the dissertation research of a cultural anthropologist from Stanford University. The project is to analyze records from the Carlisle Indian Industrial school, one of the first non-reservation boarding schools for American Indians which operated in rural Pennsylvania from 1879 to 1918. The project will focus on the lived experience of pupils, as revealed through school records and interviews with descendants of school alumni in three regions of the country: S. Dakota, New Mexico/Arizona, and New York. The project will examine how cohorts of students changed as the social conditions of the home communities changed over time. This research is important because it will provide a more complete picture of an institution through which the state shaped Indian identity. The information the study will generate can be used in a variety of educationally oriented materials showing the development of Indian identity with respect to the state. In the contemporary world the demise of the USSR has been associated with ethnic violence against a controlling state (i.e., Russia against the Chechens in 1994-95). Advances in our understanding of how ethnic identities are formed in response to state policies can help policy makers avoid mistakes in dealing with ethnic minorities.