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Vol. 14, No. 1, Fall 2000

"You First Must Live Earthly..."
The Boarding School Experience from a Healer’s Perspective

by Jacquelyn Ross

Bill Wright lives with his wife Pat and son Charlie out in a small community near the oak-covered hills of Colusa County. This Wintun man is a sweat lodge doctor. Many days, he comes home from a hard day’s work in the fields to find someone sitting on his couch, waiting for his help, maybe counsel, maybe spiritual doctoring. Mr. Wright is in his 60s. Having worked in the prisons as well as his own community, he has seen pains and hurts in his work that span a broad width of Indian experience. As a healer, he encounters issues that affect emotional and family health as well as physical health.

Originally, this article was to focus on what happened to Bill when he received his spiritual instructions and became a doctor. But, in discussing the health of the Indian community, it became apparent that the life he lived before those instructions came had a great influence on everything that followed. The Indian boarding school experience, in particular, had a huge impact on Bill’s life and the lives of many of his patients. In fact, there is a great amount of discussion emerging in Indian communities about the boarding school experience, and how this often painful experience has spread across the generations into family and community behavior. In some communities there are now healing circles focused on this very issue.

Vitamin A(yyy) editor Jacquelyn Ross interviewed Bill Wright at his home on July 19, 2000. What follows is an excerpt from this interview. Italicized sections are the editor’s comments.

Bill began by describing the physical and mental abuse that he witnessed and experienced in boarding school.

Growing up as a young kid, so as with Indian people a long time ago, when Indians lived before the Europeans came, they had medicine people.

They also knew who was special. They knew that a kid was going to be special but they treated him just like any other kid, only a medicine person would maybe doctor him, or he will not touch the rest of his brothers or sisters. So, we just grew up with it. Nobody asked questions.

So we grew up and only the old people knew. Then when I got older, my uncle told me. And I said, "Me? Not me!" Because I grew up earthly. You have to have two parts, and one part of my life is living earthly - these are all material things. How I looked at life before I did anything spiritual, you see. You first must live earthly but you see, I didn’t know I was going to become a spiritual doctor. I had no idea. I lived like everybody else.

Due to some family difficulties when Bill was just a young boy, he and his brothers and sisters were made wards of the court and sent to Stewart Indian School in Nevada. He recalls with striking immediacy the treatment he endured.

I grew up around here in Colusa County. My brother came back from Stewart and then I went back with him that following year when school opened - I was about seven.

When I went to Stewart my brother [was there] and I talked Indian to him. That’s when they started trying to change me, and say, you know, "There’ll be no more talking Indian to him." My brother would tell me, "Can’t talk Indian!"

They split me and my brother—they put him on the other side so we won’t talk Indian.

I stayed 8 years. During those eight years, it was mostly discipline, a lot of hollering and yelling at everybody. They were real strict and stern. They didn’t show affection, no kindness. It was like the military. Everything had to be in its place and when they said "Move," you moved. You didn’t talk. Say something or be the last one to get in line, they put you on the punish list and you’re punished for a month. They made you stand in the corner with your hand over your head all day if they wanted to. I’ve done it.

Rigid standards for behavior controlled every aspect of life for the young students.

We’d get in line and they’d give us a number. My number was 24. When I first went there, I had a hard time remembering it. But in order to get my clothes, they lined you up and you had to tell them your number. Then they gave you, issued you clothes. You took baths, certain days you took a bath, certain days they did the laundry and issued them out. And so when you went to get your clean clothes, you took your dirty ones in but you told them your number and they checked you off and they gave you the clean ones and you threw the old ones in the basket. If you didn’t know your number, then they’d stand you in the corner again.

Growing up in boarding school is mostly discipline. Everything had to be in its place. They marched you to eat and we had to eat, get back, and clean our rooms. Then you had to get ready for school. To get ready for school you had to put on different clothes, take your play clothes off and put your school clothes on, get your room neat. The clothes had to be folded in your closet, then you went to school. And while you’re in school they did what they call "inspection." If your clothes weren’t folded right, they just threw them all over the floor. In the evening when you come home after school, you had to straighten them all out. Of course they’ll spank you, whip you with a belt, they had long sticks and paddles. Everything was a teaching. You kinda grew up in this environment where there were no kindnesses. Mostly, you do it. You do it right or else you’re gonna get a whipping. And you learn. And you better learn fast.

Frequent discipline, scoldings, and deprivation took their toll.

They had advisors. They had matrons. We had a matron that would take us all in the shower and would be there. They would check you and make sure you scrubbed up. In Nevada in winter, your face got all chappy. They had to give you a big jar of salve and you had to rub it all over your face. Something in the cold makes your face chapped and I used to get it bad. If it gets too bad, then they get mad at you because your face is all chapped or your hands are all chapped up real bad. They scold you for that. Seems like you were always getting bawled out there. Seems like you can never do nothing right, not the way they want it.

At Christmastime, they send you to church. They used to give us marbles but when you got back to the dormitories a couple of days later they made us all put them in a big coffee can so we couldn’t play marbles. So they’d take it away.

The family never wrote to us. But at Stewart, they would line you all up and call roll and people got letters and money. And I always asked my brother, "Why do they do this? Why do they line us up because we know that nobody’s going to write to us?" It was like they put us all in this to see other kids get things. They say "Well, I guess the rest of you don’t have parents." And then we just get mad, ornery, we got in fights.

So, in 1953, when I was sixteen, I got out. It’s like you got these habits already. It starts when you’re a kid but when you get older the habit is there, being mean and ornery. When you become fourteen, fifteen, you get in fights, you always have to try to stay on top so the other kids won’t bully you. I was pretty good at fighting and stuff, so they won’t bully me. So, if another kid gets beat up, he’ll come to me and I can whip that kid.

There’s no one there to pat you on the back, to say "You did good" or "You’re trying." You go to school, you couldn’t read, they’d let you go play basketball or something to take up time.

The cycle carries into the next generation, and continues until it is recognized and stopped.

So growing up then, you can’t show affection. When you get older, you go and get married, have kids you know, and it’s like the boarding school is still there. You want things done now. Anybody that’s been to boarding schools and they’re in their 50s-60s now - the way they were treated, they will treat their kids like that, because it is that we want things done, no talking back - that’s boarding school. No swearing, no cussing.

Maybe it’s pounded into us all these years. When you have a family, pretty soon you tell the kids "Do it" and they don’t do it. Before you know it, you can come down on them. Pretty soon, the wife doesn’t know what’s happening. Or, maybe she’s been to [boarding school] and she says "Well, you guys, that’s the way it is." And the kid - he doesn’t know. The parent doesn’t stop to think about what he’s doing to his kid. He’s taking his boarding school attitude out on him. He wants it done the way he was taught.

Now when that kid grows up, he has a family. Now he’s going to do that to his family, or he’s going to hate his dad. He will hate him for being so cruel to him. And this is what they do in boarding school. If they tell you to scrub that floor and you hesitate, they grab you by the neck and they get the bucket and they throw you down and they start making you scrub. When they say "Do it now," you do it. I mean, you move.

His family helped him understand what had happened to him. Bill broke the cycle.

It was in me, with my first family. You know, because I wanted it done now. Nobody could understand that. Not even me. I told my little kid to get with it, man, you know. You go feed those chickens or you go get this camp cleaned up around here. "Do this, do that." I’ve got him doing three or four things at one time without realizing it.

You don’t realize it till you’re in your fifties. (Laughs) I’m in my sixties now, I got married again, and I have a boy, Charlie, he’s thirteen. One day he said "You know, Dad, you got a boarding school attitude." Course I would tell him about Stewart, you know. He was about ten. "Dad, you got a boarding school attitude." And I went "WHAT?" "You have a boarding school attitude." I told him "What are you talking about?" "You want this and you want that." You know, it’s like, "Oooh, where does this kid tell me where to get off?"

I’d never thought of it, I’d never looked at what Stewart done to me, not until my third wife and then I had Charlie and he sat and would ask me, "Did they beat you, did it hurt?" and I said "Yeah, it hurt!" "Did you cry?" And I went "Well, yeah, I cried!" You know, but not really talking about it because nobody understood.

But you see it took him...then I have to reprogram myself. I come in the generation that sees it. I sit back and wonder what they done to us, they taught us hate. Because they were trying to change us.

My life changed when Charlie came. I had to do spiritual things. But I still had this anger I had to fight. Working with Indians, Indian traditional ways, working with them, I see a lot of young ones who are in their 40s or early 50s, they hate their dads. And I come to find out that their dad’s been in boarding school.

We never had a childhood. I tell my nephews, "When you have kids, don’t be mean, learn to love and care for them."

Jacquelyn Ross (Pomo/Coast Miwok) works in Student Affairs at U.C. Davis in the beautiful Sacramento Valley. A fisherwoman and gatherer, her interest in health was first kindled by friends and relatives who have lived long and abundant lives.