Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929

Amerind Free Online Lecture
Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929 with Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, PhD
Recorded - Saturday, September 24, 2022, 11:00 am - Arizona Time
Sponsored by Desert Diamond Casinos
Education beyond the Mesas is the fascinating story of how generations of Hopi schoolchildren from northeastern Arizona “turned the power” by using compulsory federal education to affirm their way of life and better their community. Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, one of the largest off-reservation boarding schools in the United States, followed other federally funded boarding schools of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in promoting the assimilation of indigenous people into mainstream America. Many Hopi schoolchildren, deeply conversant in Hopi values and traditional education before being sent to Sherman Institute, resisted this program of acculturation. Immersed in learning about another world, generations of Hopi children drew on their culture to skillfully navigate a system designed to change them irrevocably. In fact, not only did the Hopi children strengthen their commitment to their families and communities while away in the “land of oranges,” they used their new skills, fluency in English, and knowledge of politics and economics to help their people when they eventually returned home.
Dr. Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert is Professor and Head of the Department of American Indian Studies and Professor of History at the University of Arizona. He is an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe from the village of Upper Munqapi. Centering his research and teaching on Native American history and the history of the American West, he examines the history of American Indian education, the Indian boarding school experience, and American Indians and sport. In addition to publishing articles and books on Hopi history, he has produced a documentary film -- Beyond the Mesas -- on the Hopi experience at off-reservation Indian boarding schools, including Sherman Institute, Stewart Indian School, and the Phoenix Indian School.