Turning the Tables on Assimilation: Oglala Lakotas and the Pine Ridge Day Schools, 1889-1920s

Abstract

This essay examines cultural contestation between Anglo assimilationists and Oglala Lakotas in the federal Indian day schools of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. It argues that Oglalas adeptly subverted the academic, manual, and moral goals of these institutions, transforming them from agents of cultural destruction into agents of Oglala persistence.