435. The Long, Dark History of Native American Boarding Schools

Willie Hiatt via Zoom

This lecture explores the forced assimilation of Native American children into U.S. government and missionary boarding schools beginning in the nineteenth century. Children were removed from their families, forced to speak English, adopt Christianity, and relinquish native cultures and values. Assimilation was a pernicious tactic of settler colonialism, in which Native Americans were erased or silenced to justify colonial domination and land appropriation in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other Western countries.

10-12 noon                                                                                                1 Session

Friday, January 24                                                                                     Fee: $30

[A Zoom link will be sent to you prior to each session, typically on the day before your class and the morning of your class.  If you have any questions or need help getting online, feel free to call us at 516-480-5733 and we’ll get right back to you with assistance.]

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Willie Hiatt, a Kentucky native, is an Associate Professor of History at Long Island University,

Post Campus, and a former Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2019-20).

He’s the author of The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes (Oxford, 2016). His current research is an oral history project examining how Maoist

insurgents in Peru targeted high-tension towers during the Shining Path movement (1980-92).