F&M program explores Indigenous people's relationship with Lancaster [The Scribbler]

A prime objective of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, according to its founder and superintendent, Capt. Richard Henry Pratt, was to "kill the Indian ... save the man" by educating and acculturating Indigenous children of various tribes.

The boarding school's classrooms were not the only places where this transformation occurred between 1879 and 1918. Children spent their summers and sometimes entire years living in homes in Lancaster and nearby counties. They performed domestic chores. They worked on farms. They learned trades.

Researchers at Franklin & Marshall College have determined that at least 129 of these children spent their summers in Lancaster County. Their experiences were mixed. Some thrived in white society. Others despised a system that separated them from their families and attempted to force them to fit into the dominant culture.

Documenting the lives of Carlisle Indian School children in Lancaster is just one of many lines of investigation that F&M faculty, staff members, students and Indigenous community partners are following this academic year.

The overall topic is "Settler Colonialism, Indigeneity and the Land Question." The goal is to explore the relationship between F&M and the white settlers who settled on land that had been inhabited by Indigenous groups. That study will extend to the experience of contemporary Indigenous people.

This initiative is the first phase of "Reckoning with Lancaster," a three-year humanities-based project supported by a $1.4 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to explore Lancaster's history, present and future.

The next two phases — to be carried out during the next two academic years — will examine the history of slavery and abolition at F&M, and then the ramifications of Lancaster's recognition as "America's Refugee Capital."

Mary Ann Levine and Eric Hirsch, F&M anthropologists, and MaryAnn Robins and Jess McPherson, Indigenous leaders in the Lancaster community, are directing the first phase.

Given the involvement of the entire F&M community and support from Robins, McPherson and other Indigenous participants, Levine says, F&M students have an "unparalleled opportunity'' to pursue what students themselves have termed "unprecedented learning."

That learning began in the summer when students researched papers on the Carlisle Indian School and other subjects. Students have shared this research with area high schools and staff members at the 1719 Museum in Willow Street.

Levine and Hirsch are teaching courses in Indigenous studies. Other professors are revising their courses to include, for example, novels by Indigenous writers in English classes and discussions of Indigenous affairs in government classes.

"The whole idea is to refine the curriculum to include Indigenous studies," Hirsch says.

Eventually, the program will create a website and Instagram site to make historical reports and information about contemporary Indigenous people available to the Lancaster public. Related programs on the F&M campus are open to the public.

Much of this information will be new to many people on and off campus, Levine says, further observing that "Indigenous people have been erased from Lancaster in many ways."

Robins, president of Circle Legacy Center, an organization that supports and empowers Indigenous people in Lancaster, and McPherson, an arts and culture strategist who works with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, appreciate the opportunity to work on campus.

"We're not just here as tokens," Robins says. "We're really engaging and making a difference."

McPherson adds, "This project has the potential to transform the institution ongoing."

Find more information about the "Reckoning with Lancaster" project here .