It Was Bad or It Was Good: Alaska Natives in Past Boarding Schools

Abstract

In 2004 and 2005 my colleagues and I gathered information on the boarding school and boarding home experiences of 60 Alaska Native adults who attended boarding schools or participated in the urban boarding home program from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. From the early 1900s to the 1970s Alaska Natives were taken from rural communities that lacked either primary or secondary schools and sent to boarding schools run by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), by private churches or, later, by Alaska's state government. Some were also sent to boarding homes to attend school in urban places. Their experiences reveal a glimpse of both the positive and negative effects of past boarding schools. Many spoke with ambivalence about their boarding school experience, finding both good and bad elements. This article presents some of the findings of this study.