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Indian boarding school

[ in-dee-uhn bawr-ding skool ]

noun

  1. (formerly in the United States) one of many boarding schools established for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students, first by Christian missionaries and later by the federal government, with the aim of culturally assimilating Indigenous youth and giving them a Western education. Compare residential school ( def 2 ).


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Word History and Origins

Origin of Indian boarding school1

First recorded in 1870–75
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Example Sentences

Her mother and father met at the Indian Boarding School where they both worked.

Monica Lopez: One of five siblings, Aggie grew up at the Indian boarding school in Albuquerque and attended classes at St. Mary’s Catholic School.

“Some are survivors, some are descendants, but we all carry this painful legacy in our hearts. … My ancestors and many of yours endured the horrors of Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead.”

“Federal Indian boarding school policies have touched every Indigenous person I know,” said Haaland, an enrolled citizen of the Laguna Pueblo tribe.

“I’m caught between two generations,” Smith told me: that of her father, whose childhood experiences of being beaten at an American Indian boarding school made him feel like he “couldn’t say anything,” and that of younger Native artists, who “can say things that maybe we felt like we couldn’t,” Smith reflected, “I don’t think I have that freedom.”

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