Changed Forever, Volume I

Book excerpt: The first in-depth study of a range of literature written by Native Americans who attended government-run boarding schools. Changed Forever is the first study to gather a range of texts produced by Native Americans who, voluntarily or through compulsion, attended government-run boarding schools in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries. Arnold Krupat examines Hopi, Navajo, and Apache boarding-school narratives that detail these students’ experiences. The book’s analyses are attentive to the topics (topoi) and places (loci)of the boarding schools. Some of these topics are: (re-)Naming students, imposing on them the regimentation of Clock Time, compulsory religious instruction and practice, and corporal punishment, among others. These topics occur in a variety of places, like the Dormitory, the Dining Room, the Chapel, and the Classroom. Krupat’s close readings of these narratives provide cultural and historical context as well as critical commentary. In her study of the Chilocco Indian School, K. Tsianina Lomawaima asked poignantly, “What has become of the thousands of Indian voices who spoke the breath of boarding-school life?” Changed Forever lets us hear some of them.