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ABSTRACT
Extracurricular activities such as sports and music offer a means to glimpse the complexity of students’ experiences in federally-run boarding schools for Native children in the United States. Studies of music in residential schools typically include a mix of quantitative and qualitative sources, including “unexpected archives” such as land records, census counts, tribal archives, cultural objects and community stories. The analytical strategy of thematic analysis – an established academic tradition that is consistent with Indigenous methodologies – offers a rich and effective way to evaluate sources. The wide analytical scope can align with Indigenous research tenets including self-determination, supporting the collective good and fostering respectful relationships. Decolonisation can function as a guidepost, supporting methods of analysis that centre the students and bolster the wellness of Indigenous communities. An Indigenous episteme does not oblige a division reason and spirit; rather, it encompasses a web of contextual relationships that integrate multiple sources of knowledge.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Kuokkanen, Reshaping the University, 159.
2. Heart et al., “American Indian Holocaust.”
3. For more examples of students “turning the power,” see Wellington, “Girls Breaking Boundaries.” See also Trafzer et al., Indian School.
4. Innes, “Introduction: Native Studies,” 3.
5. O’Brien, ‘Historical Sources and Methods.”
6. Popkewitz, “Styles of Reason,” 10–14.
7. One extensive digitisation project is that of the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center is a joint undertaking of Dickinson College, the Cumberland County Historical Society, the National Archives and Records Administration. It is hosted online by Dickinson College. These thousands of records are also preserved at the US National Archives within Record Group 75, entry numbers 1327–330. Another digitisation project is underway for the Genoa Indian School: the “Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project,” a collaboration between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; the Genoa US Indian School Foundation; Community Advisors from the Omaha, Pawnee, Ponca, Santee Sioux and Winnebago tribes of Nebraska; and descendants of those who attended Genoa.
8. Jacob White Eyes to Supt Jermark, September 25, 1928.
9. Bauer, “Oral History.”
10. Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, 224. I am indebted to Kovach’s rigorous and insightful approach to thematic analysis.
11. Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis.”
12. Braun and Clarke, Thematic Analysis.
13. DeSantis and Ugarriza, “Concept of Theme.”
14. Nowell et al., “Thematic Analysis.” Nowell et al. develop the criteria initially outlined by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry.
15. This is exemplified in Cowie, “Exploring How Students Who Support,” which was informed by Kaupapa Maori research principles. See also Smith, Decolonising Methodologies.
16. White, Annual Report, 229.
17. Gaither, “Education for True Womanhood,” 64.
18. Reel to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Incoming Correspondence, 290.
19. For more on students’ responses to gendered vocational training, see Wellington, “What More Can We Want?” See also Whalen, “Labored Learning.”
20. Interview with “Bob,” an anonymous alumnus; Bonnell, “Chemawa Indian Boarding School,” 66.
21. Correspondence via Marjorie Waheneka of Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, August 19, 2002, Pendleton, Oregon.
22. Also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, the Indian Reorganisation Act can be read in its entirety here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-5299/uslm/COMPS-5299.xml.
23. Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, 73.
24. For deeper analysis of Indianist compositions, see Pizani, Imagining Native America. See also Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit”; Browner, “Transposing Cultures.”
25. Interview with Kathryn Harrison, October 2006, Grand Ronde, Oregon. Subsequent quotations from Harrison are also taken from interviews done at that time.
26. In “Indigenous Studies,” Andersen and O’Brien assert the need to “think broadly not only about what historical subjects might have written (or had written about them), but about how they thought, did and felt, and the affective relationship of those elements to archival contents.”
27. For more context regarding the remarkable life and achievements of Kathryn Harrison, see Olson, Standing Tall.
28. Sobe, “Entanglement and Transnationalism,” 104; Popkewitz, “Styles of Reason,” 22.
29. Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” 94–95.
30. For a discussion of how the institutional gaze and power relations shaped Finnish child welfare archives in the post-war period of 1945–1970, see Vehkalahti, “Dusting the Archives.”
31. Sköld and Vehkalahti, “Marginalized Children.”
32. For a robust collaborative example of researchers relying on multiple, fragmentary sources to construct an archaeology of the past and shed light on the same issue, see Bingham et al., “Child Sexual Abuse.” The link between family, education and work, once a neglected thread of research, is a burgeoning area of scholarly interest.
33. Interviews with Bob Tom and Chet Clark, February 2005, Keizer, Oregon.
34. Sköld, “Truth about Abuse?” Sköld compares how inquiry commissions in Ireland, Sweden and Denmark evaluate victims’ oral testimonies and written records from child welfare agencies. While empiricist, positivist methods of inquiry have dominated approaches to “truth,” there are also examples of constructivist approaches.
35. For more exploration of these questions, see Musgrove and Michell, Slow Evolution of Foster Care.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Melissa Parkhurst
Melissa Parkhurst is an Associate Professor of Music at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, where she teaches courses on Native Music and Music History. She earned a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research interests include First Nations music in the Northwestern U.S., how music promotes personal and community resilience, and the role of music in cultural revitalization.