Forced Relocation at Puyallup
Government authorities move indigenous students to Oregon to hasten 'the civilizing process.'
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Fourteen of the most intelligent children belonging to the Puyallup reservation school were transferred to the Indian training school at Forest Grove, Oregon, last week. A number of the children who were there three years ago have returned and these were sent to fill the vacancy. The object of sending them there is to remove them from the influence of the older Indians, and thus hasten the civilizing process inaugurated by the Government.
“The object of sending them there is to remove them from the influence of the older Indians, and thus hasten the civilizing process.”
This item documents the aggressive and assimilationist 'boarding school' policies of the 19th-century U.S. government, which forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families. It is a critical piece of the history of systematic erasure and trauma inflicted on the Coast Salish people, whose lands and cultures are now at the center of modern tribal sovereignty and reclamation efforts.
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