Janet Pavlons Pekin Community High School

They Called It Prairie Light unravels the hidden curriculum of federal schools for Indians and exposes the plight of Native Americans as they struggled to survive culturally and economically in the first half of the last century. K. Tsianina Lomawaima creates an insightful glimpse of Indian education through interviews with Chilocco alumni that included her own father. The hidden curriculum of federal Indian schools imposed a deliberate program to remove Indian cultural traits and replace them with mainstream white cultural traits. One might wonder why Indian families were willing to send their children to federally sponsored boarding schools if parents understood that the end result meant a loss of cultural identity. Through the interview process, the author gleaned a response to this puzzling question. Most students attended Chilocco due to economic hardships. During the Great Depression, families sent one or more children to Chilocco to ease their financial burden. Single parents with limited resources had few other options. Clearly, financial pressures caused Indian families to seek Chilocco as an answer. More difficult to discern is the extent to which Indian families understood the hidden curriculum of Chilocco to desocialize their children.

Chilocco was a total institution that controlled and manipulated the students. The end purpose of this control and manipulation was to bring about permanent change. Desocialization of the Indian students was an attempt to destroy old self-concepts of personal identity. Students were encouraged to stay at the school and work through the summer leaving little time to renew bonds with their families. In addition, the process of desocialization was initiated through the replacement of personal possessions with standard issue items to promote sameness among the students. Indeed this very process of creating sameness brought Native Americans from many tribes a unity that would not have otherwise existed. This unintended unified Indian identity that crossed tribal affiliations played a significant part in the resocialization process of students at Chilocco.

Once the self-concept has been broken down, resocialization can begin. The purpose of resocialization is the adoption of new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors to replace the old ones that have been discarded. Students at Chilocco were encouraged to develop new self-concepts through a reward and punishment system typical of all total institutions. Rewards included extra food and special responsibilities. Punishments for non-conformity involved shaming, loss of privileges, physical punishments, and isolation. The success of this resocialization was circumvented at Chilocco by the movement of pan-tribalism. This blurring of tribal affiliation led students to adopt norms, values, and folkways of other tribes along with some mainstream behaviors. Indeed, the process to destroy Indian cultural traits actually fostered the creation of a new Indian subculture.

They Called It Prairie Light provides an excellent framework for Sociology students to delve into a unit of study on the process of socialization. Of particular interest are the unintended effects of total institutions. For American history students, a comparative study of white boarding schools during that time period would either substantiate or refute the author's premise that the main purpose of Indian schools was the destruction of Native American culture. Obviously, the author's interviews of those who remember Chilocco Indian School renders the social science student of today a rich primary source for further study.

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