Kill the Indian, Save the Man

"Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools" is a 2004 book by Ward Churchill. It traces the history of removing Native American children from their homes to residential schools (in Canada) or Indian boarding schools (in the USA) as part of government policies, 1880s-1980s, which the author views as genocidal.

The book is titled after the stated objective of the government program, as articulated by the architect of the U.S. system, Richard Henry Pratt.

Publishing information

It was published by City Lights Books in 2004 as a 158-page paperback (ISBN 0-87286-434-0).

ynopsis

The book is primarily an extended essay, titled "Genocide by Any Other Name," tracing the history of the mandatory transfer of Native American children (from their families) to residential schools. It analyzes this as a process of genocide (forced assimilationist policies including the prohibition of the use of any national language or religion) and catalogues the terrible conditions present in the schools (starvation, disease, forced labor, torture, and predation) resulting in the death of half of the children and traumatization of the survivors (who have suffered from a high rate of alcoholism, suicide, and "the transmission of trauma to successive generations" leading to social disintegration).

The author describes the book as an attempt to compensate for "perhaps the most serious" of the deficiencies of his 1979 book "A Little Matter of Genocide" in which the system of residential schooling was covered with only three sentences.

Included in the book are a number of photos and a list of these schools in the US and Canada.

Quotation

:"...of all the malignancies embodied in twentieth-century U.S./Canadian Indian policy, the schools were arguably the worst. The profundity of their destructive effects upon native people, both individually and collectively, not only in the immediacy of their operational existence but in the aftermath as well, was and remains by any reasonable estimation incalculable." (xlv)

Dedication

for little Charlie Wenjack,

and all the other youngsters, then and now,

lost to the residential schools

External links

* [http://www.citylights.com/pub/catalog/BCkillindian.html "Kill the Indian, Save the Man"] at the publisher's site.
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBX/is_2_39/ai_n13463668 Review of "Kill the Indian, Save the Man"] by Patricia Moore, in "Kliatt" (March 2005)
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0RGS/is_2005_March/ai_n12938206 Review of "Kill the Indian, Save the Man"] by "Wisconsin Bookwatch" (March 2005)
* [http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=190552-1&template=4 Speech by the author on "Kill the Indian, Save the Man"] on C-SPAN's BookTV.