Children at a Reservation School

The Phoenix Indian School. A typical early campus building where small groups of Indian girls would live together in cirumstances similar to the American family. (c.1890's)

Institutions founded for the education of American Indian children seldom had an auspicious beginning. Many of the Indian schools proved to be more political than educational foundations whose avowed purpose was the "civilization" and acculturation of native peoples. Primary and secondary schools were often located far from reservation lands and forced the uprooting of Indian children from their families and their cultural ties. The Carlisle Indian School, a boarding school in Pennsylvania, became the most famous of these federal schools and the model for subsequent Indian schools on numerous reservations.

In the mid-nineteenth century, philanthropic individuals and religious organizations began to found colleges for higher education specifically for Indian students. The Indian colleges were founded in regions with significant American Indian populations. Their mission was to train Indian teachers for segregated Indian schools and to teach American Indians an industrial trade. Many of these foundations were originally chartered as Normal schools and accepted both American Indian and Black students, two groups legally denied access to higher education in most of the country. Since the 1970's, individual Indian nations have taken on the responsibility of founding their own colleges.

Apache children on arrival at the Carlisle Indian School (Pennsylvania) wearing traditional clothing and again four months later.

Edmonia Lewis, The Arrow Maker

Edmonia Lewis (Ojibwe), named "Wildfire" by her mother, was trained as a neoclassical sculptor at Oberlin College and in Italy. She created more than sixty marble sculptures in her short career often extolling subjects from her Ojibwe and Black heritages. The male figures in her works exhibit strong ethnic characteristics while the female figures are often revealed through their costume.

University of North Carolina at Pembroke

Hampton University

Haskell Indian Nations University

Institute of American Indian Arts

Oglala Lakota College

Spirits of the Land Foundation