Chemawa Indian School <small>(pronounced: "Chih-MAY-way", )</small> is a Native American boarding school in Salem, Oregon, United States. Named after the Chemawa band of the Kalapuya people of the Willamette Valley, it opened on February 25, 1880 as an elementary school. Grades were added and dropped, and it became a fully accredited high school in 1927, when lower grades were dropped.

The second Indian boarding school to be established, Chemawa Indian School is the oldest continuously operating Native American boarding school in the United States. Its graduates number in the thousands. At its peak of enrollment in 1926, it had 1,000 students. New buildings were constructed in the 1970s on a campus near the original one, where at one time 70 buildings stood, including barns and other buildings related to the agricultural programs.

During the 2023–24 academic year, it continued to serve students in the ninth through twelfth grades. It has primarily served students of tribes from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Former names of the school include Forest Grove Indian Industrial Training School, United States Indian Training and Normal School, Salem Indian Industrial Training School, and Harrison Institute.

History

Establishment

The Chemawa Indian School was a product of the ideas of the 1870s, when the American government sought to end its ongoing conflict with the Native American population through cultural assimilation. Following the ideas of military officer Richard Henry Pratt and the perceived successful establishment of the Carlisle Indian School near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, funding was provided for a boarding school for American Indian children in the American Pacific Northwest.

An initial site was developed on four acres of land near Forest Grove, Oregon with a budget of $5,000 appropriated. Girls were steered towards mastery of the "domestic arts". Of these, more than half came from the Puyallup (58), Nez Perce (50), Wasco (46), Spokane (20), Umatilla (20), and Klamath (19) tribes.

The school was to retain control over the child for the whole of that time, and "no promises must be made to any parents or others that the pupils enrolled will be returned home during vacation without special permission of this office, and full data must be submitted with your request showing the necessity for such return." Wooden structures for living areas and workspaces were gradually replaced by larger and better permanent brick structures as government funding was approved.

The school's hospital was built in 1890, with a second story added in 1900. The wooden structure was centrally located and surrounded by a lawn and flowers. The brick building had 10 classrooms and an office, a book room, and a large assembly hall with a capacity of about 600. Sections of the facility were dedicated to tailors and dressmakers, a carpentry shop, as well as areas for harnessmaking, shoemaking, and wagonmaking. "Small" and "medium" girls were housed in a separate facility.

By 1922, the Chemawa campus had 70 buildings, mostly of wood-frame construction but others made of brick. The band was not part of the regular school program of instruction but rather met for practice before or after school, four times a week. Included in these figures, there were a total of 4,196 Native American births in 1900. This mix of Anglo and Native American employees at Chemawa was not unusual, with official statistics from a decade earlier indicating that more than a quarter of the 2,209 employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' school service were Indian.

The school was regarded at that time as one of the "Big Six" off-reservation Indian Training Schools operated by the federal government, joining the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania; the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas; the Phoenix Indian School in Arizona; the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, and Perris Indian School in Riverside, California.

He also wrote:

<blockquote>

"I did not experience any harsh restraint against Indian culture or tradition at Chemewa. Generations of Indians before me had already felt the full force of that practice. I learned that in earlier years, speaking the Indian language (sic.) had been forbidden. White authority had dealt harshly with Indian dancing, singing, and drumming. Students were not allowed to braid their hair or wear any ornaments with Indian design motifs. During my time, efforts to teach the white way were still in force, but attempts to abolish or restrain Indian culture were past. The practice of Indian culture, however, was not encouraged or discussed."</blockquote>

During the 1940s and 1950s a special program for Navajo students was initiated and efforts made to attract Pacific Northwest students, including those from Alaska.

Chemawa today is an alternative high school, accredited through Northwest Association of Accredited Schools since 1971.

Partnership with Willamette University

In 2005, Chemawa Indian School formed a partnership with Willamette University, a private liberal arts college in Salem. Willamette undergraduates, along with Chemawa peer tutors, provide tutoring to students four nights per week on the Chemawa campus.

Athletics

Chemawa School athletic teams compete in the OSAA 2A-2 Tri-River Conference. The school won Oregon state championships in cross country running in 1964, 1972, 1981, and 1986. The school was also state champions for its size class in football in 1914 and 1944. These buildings were surviving brick structures on the school's "old campus"; the older buildings were demolished after the school moved to the adjacent "new campus" in the late 1970s. The Chemawa Cemetery is the only part of the old campus still intact. Marsha Small, a graduate student at Montana State University, used ground-penetrating radar to scan the grounds, locating hundreds of potential unmarked graves by comparing data to the 200 documented grave sites. Small published her findings in her thesis, A Voice for the Children of Chemawa Cemetery (2015).

This and other incidents at reservation detention facilities nationwide were the subject of hearings in June 2004 before the Indian Affairs Committee of the U.S. Senate. The Inspector General of the Department of the Interior noted poor conditions in BIA facilities, the lack of suitable BIA detention facilities for juveniles, high rates of suicide in existing facilities, and failure to report deaths as required, among other problems. He noted that facilities run by the tribes were often in better condition despite similar funding problems and understaffing.

  • Frank LaPena - Nomtipom-Wintu American Indian painter, printmaker, ethnographer, professor, ceremonial dancer, poet, and writer.
  • Bob Greene - Makah elder and veteran of World War II
  • Pearl Warren - Makah community organizer in Seattle
  • Vi Hilbert - Author and teacher, Upper Skagit elder and conservationist of her traditional culture and of the Lushootseed language

See also

  • American Indian outing programs

References

School publications

  • Kalama and Lear, The Indian Citizen, vol. 1, no. 1. Forest Grove, OR: Forest Grove Indian Industrial School, February 1884.
  • H.L. Lovelace (manager), The Weekly Chemawa American. Chemawa, OR: Chemawa Indian School. <small>Vol. 4 (1901). |</small>

Further reading

  • David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
  • Sonciray Bonnell, Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880 to 1980. Universal Publishers, 1997.
  • Burton Carlyle Lemmon, The Historical Development of Chemawa Indian School. MA thesis, Oregon State College, 1941.
  • Preston Scott McBride, A Lethal Education: Institutionalized Negligence, Epidemiology, and Death in Native American Boarding Schools, 1879-1934. PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2020.
  • Patrick Michael McKeehan, The History of Chemawa Indian School. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981.
  • Melissa D. Parkhurst, To Win the Indian Heart: Music at Chemawa Indian School. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2014.
  • SuAnn M. Reddick, "The Evolution of Chemawa Indian School: From Red River to Salem, 1825–1885." Oregon Historical Quarterly, v. 101 (Winter 2000), pp.&nbsp;444–465.
  • Melissa Ruhl, "Forward You Must Go": Chemawa Indian Boarding School and Student Activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Master's thesis, University of Oregon, 2011.
  • Rebecca Christine Wellington, Girls' Vocational Education at Chemawa Indian School 1900-1930s: A Story of Acculturation and Self-Advocacy. PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 2017.
  • SuAnn M. Reddick and Eva Guggemos, "Chemawa Indian School", The Oregon Encyclopedia, www.oregonencyclopedia.org/
  • Historic images of Chemawa Indian School and Chemawa, Oregon railroad station, Salem Public Library
  • Oregon State Library digital photo collections has approximately 50 historic photos of Chemawa (search on "Chemawa")
  • "Investigative Report on the Chemawa Indian School Detention Facility", Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, 2004
  • Carolyn J. Marr, "Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest", 1997–1998, digital project, University of Washington Libraries
  • Pringle Creek Watershed Assessment includes extensive history of Chemawa band and Chemawa Indian School

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5495 Chugath Street Winona Hall - detail of ceiling - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Detail of ceiling

5495 Chugath Street McBride Hall - view from southeast - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Chugath Street McBride Hall (demolished) - view from southeast - 1977

5495 Chugath Street McBride Hall - view from southwest - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Chugath Street McBride Hall - view from southwest - 1977

5495 Chugath Street McBride Hall - first floor stair - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Inside stairway of McBride Hall

5495 Chugath Street Winona Hall - detail view of east front elevation - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Chugath Street Winona Hall - detail view of east front elevation - 1977

5495 Chugath Street Winona Hall - bathroom - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg| Winona Hall - bathroom - 1977

5495 Chugath Street Winona Hall - hall and stair - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Chugath Street Winona Hall - hall and stair - 1977

5495 Chugath Street Winona Hall - general view of east front elevation - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Chugath Street Winona Hall - general view of east front elevation -1977

5495 Chugath Street Winona Hall - view from southeast - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Chugath Street Winona Hall - view from southeast - 1977

5495 Chugath Street Electrical Shop - detail of sign - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Electric shop sign

File-5495 Chugath Street - cornerstone detail - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Hawley Hall cornerstone

File-5495 Chugath Street - interior view of window and bookcase - Chemawa Indian School - Salem Oregon.jpg|Bookcase at Hawley Hall

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