Indigenous Institutionalization in the United States

The history of Indigenous institutionalization is global; it could be periodized in several ways. This article addresses the rise of institutions that claimed to educate, care for, reform, or “uplift” Indigenous people, with a focus on the Progressive-era United States. With social reformers’ efforts to manage populations deemed to be “in need,” the late nineteenth century saw the proliferation of diverse institutions that aimed to mitigate perceived social ills—criminality, moral decay, and unemployment are notable examples. Alongside the development of this institutional network, the turn of the twentieth century also heralded the proliferation of racialized discourses, ideologies, and practices that positioned Indigenous people as inherently deviant and deficient, which in turn informed the establishment of institutions that targeted Indigenous people specifically. Boarding Schools in the United States sought to divest Indigenous children and youth of their Indigeneity and replace their worldviews with Euro-American values and mores. Federal agendas and policies also sought to acculturate Indian people to hard manual labor and other menial tasks in the public and private sectors—see Labor. The early twentieth century saw some of the most abysmal health conditions on Native reservations, and facilities such as sanatoria, hospitals, and even the so-called Canton Asylum for Insane Indians were founded to address widespread disparities in health and well-being among Indigenous populations. Medicalized discourses and dominant gendered ideologies also seized upon Indigenous people in spaces of spirituality or religion and informed their confinement or institutionalization in facilities that aimed to correct perceived deficiencies. This essay also considers Indigenous experiences of institutionalization in carceral sites such as prisons, while remaining attentive to substantial differences in the practices and protocols of institutions with diverse aims. This essay also considers the role of art and culture in Indigenous experiences of institutionalization—as a site or as a means of obtaining truth, healing, and justice for survivors. While many institutions that targeted Indigenous people for removal, confinement, or incarceration were expressly designed for Indigenous populations, not all of them targeted Indigenous people exclusively; this essay also addresses Indigenous institutionalization within and among facilities intended for the general American public in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Experiences of institutionalization leave a lasting legacy among Indigenous survivors, their descendants, and Native nations today; often, survivor accounts express how these histories of institutionalization have been detrimental to the integrity of tribes and their well-being. However, as the diverse, Indigenous-centered works here reflect, these experiences were anything from uniform. Indigenous people also found myriad ways to resist and refuse institutionalization, using all of the resources at their disposal.