Beyond School Walls: Indigenous Mobility at Sherman Institute

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Whalen
Keyword(s):  
Sherman Institute

Profit and Loss: ‘Indian’ Art at Sherman Institute, a Native American Off-Reservation Boarding School

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Amanda K. Wixon
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
School Administrators ◽  
Native American Art ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Sherman Institute ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
Off Reservation

AbstractIn the early twentieth century, the US’s federal policies regarding the production of Native American art in off-reservation Indian boarding schools shifted from suppression to active encouragement. Seen as a path to economic stability, school administrators pushed their students to capitalize on the artistic traditions of Native cultures, without acknowledging or valuing these traditions as part of an extensive body of Indigenous knowledge. Although this push contributed to the retention of some cultural practices, administrators, teachers, and other members of the local community often exploited the students’ talents to make a profit. At Sherman Institute (now Sherman Indian High School) in Riverside, California, Native students of today are free to creatively express their own cultures in ways that strengthen their communities and promote tribal sovereignty. In this article, I will argue that the art program at Sherman Institute served to extinguish Indigenous knowledge and expertise as expressed through culturally specific weaving practices.

Indian School, Company Town

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-321
Author(s):  
Kevin Whalen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Company Town ◽  
Indian School ◽  
Sherman Institute ◽  
Indian Boarding School ◽  
Low Pay

During the early twentieth century, administrators at Sherman Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California, sent hundreds of students to work at Fontana Farms, a Southern California mega-ranch. Such work, they argued, would inculcate students with values of thrift and hard work, making them more like white, Protestant Americans. At Fontana, students faced low pay, racial discrimination, and difficult working conditions. Yet, when wage labor proved scarce on home reservations, many engaged the outing system with alacrity. In doing so, they moved beyond the spatial boundaries of the boarding school as historians have imagined it, and they used a program designed to erase native identities in order to carry their cultures forward into the twentieth century.

Embodying Hospitality and Paternalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-136
Author(s):  
Katherine D. Moran
Keyword(s):  
Hospitality Industry ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Meaningful Work ◽  
Labor Management ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Sherman Institute ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Junipero Serra

This chapter analyzes how mission writers and boosters imagined the mission era as a model for their own. It argues that mission writers and boosters cast Junípero Serra and his brethren as embodiments of premodern values of meaningful work and leisure and unbounded hospitality, positioning the Franciscans as precursors to Southern California's modern hospitality industry and exemplars of paternalist labor management practices. It also demonstrates how some mission boosters cast assimilationist campaigns and institutions, such as the Sherman Institute, as modern-day embodiments of the Franciscans' spirit. The chapter claims that, like the celebration of Jacques Marquette, the celebration of Serra provided an economic origin story for the region. It illustrates how Serra was imagined to be laying the groundwork for modern capitalist development.

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