Prairie Edge
Out of Print Book: Promises of the Past (A History of Indian Education) - 1st Edition
Author: David H. Dejong
Book Details: Hardcover with dust jacket, 1993, 1st Edition, 286 pages
The out of print book is relatively in good condition. The dust jacket is intact with some wear and tear and the blue cloth hard cover and pages have a little wear and tear.
Fascinating excerpts from government documents, court decisions, letters from commissioners of Indian affairs, and eyewitness accounts trace the white man's effort over the years to educate and assimilate Native Americans into the Euro-American culture.
Beginning with a description of Indian education before contact, DeJong's highly informative and readable selections dramatize a struggle that continues today-a struggle ultimately aimed at the control of a people.
From the first tentative efforts of the missionaries, to the successful schools of the Five Civilized Tribes, to the shocking inhumanity of the boarding school era, these readings reveal in minute detail the dark past of Indian miseducation.
The reader will come to understand how decades of cultural ignorance on the part of white society has affected the past, present, and future of today's tribal nations.