In 1879, Richard Henry Pratt, a former United States Army Officer— who had served as the warden of the United States “Prisoner of War Camp” at Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida—at the behest of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, founded the Carlisle Indian Vocational Boarding School, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Pratt was chosen to establish the first, of the 300, Indian Vocational Boarding Schools, because of his success at “breaking”, many of the Indian POWs, the most belligerent, fiercest recalcitrant of the Plains Indian-Warriors who were captured during the U.S. Army’s decades-long military campaigns whos’ mission, was to subdue and remove from their lands, the Nomadic, free-living, Native-American tribes.
November 1, 1879, Richard Henry Pratt, at the behest of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, founded the Carlisle Indian Vocational Boarding School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Native American children between the ages of four and fifteen years who were living with their families on government reservations, were forcibly “rounded-up”; taken from their families and transported to the numerous, government-created and government-sanctioned, Indian Boarding-Schools.
The intent, the cornerstone of the Pratt-Method, adopted by the Indian Boarding Schools for the “civilizing” of the Indians, was that of forcibly requiring that the Native American children learn, and embrace the Euro-American culture.
This was to be accomplished by removing the children from their homes, from their parents, and to “Americanize” them, by stripping from them their language, their heritage, their culture, and replacing these with American-Euro-centric religion, and cultural values.
In the words of Richard Henry Pratt:
The purpose, the goal of the Indian Residential Schools, was to:
“Kill the Indian, Save the Man”.
This century-long practice (1879 to 1980), of forcibly removing Native American Children from their families, placing them into Indian Residential Schools and depriving them of their heritage, resulted in nearly half of the five consecutive generations of Native American Children, who attended the schools…, half of the children, did not survive their time as students, in the American Indian Residential Schools.
“The Road to Hell is often paved with “Good-Intentions”
On February 19, 1942, three months after the December 7, 1941 attack on the U.S. Navy Fleet by elements of the Naval Forces of the Empire of Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and issued; Executive Order 9066.
This executive order authorized and resulted in, the incarceration of nearly 112,000 United States citizens, of Japanese Ancestry—approximately 93% of the 120,000 population of U.S. citizens, of Japanese Ancestry.
These American citizens were evicted from their homes and forced to live under guard, in the cramped facilities of American Relocation Camps. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children were ostensibly charged with and found “guilty” of, the “crime” of being American Descendants, of Japanese Ancestors.
On December 11, 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy, the remaining “big two” nations of World War II’s Axis Military Alliance, had declared war against the United States.
Of the millions of German and Italian American citizens residing in the United States, not one, not a single German and/or an Italian American citizen, was forced to spend a single minute in an American Relocation Camp because of his/her ancestry.
American citizens of German and Italian ancestry, were not subjected to the treatment imposed by the U.S. Government, upon their fellow countrymen…, their fellow American citizens, of Japanese Ancestry?!
“Why”
“Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history, are doomed to repeat them.”