Pipestone

by Adam Fortunate Eagle

Overview

A renowned activist recalls his childhood years in an Indian boarding school

Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers an unforgettable memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. In this rare firsthand account, Fortunate Eagle lives up to his reputation as a “contrary warrior” by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike.

Fortunate Eagle attended Pipestone between 1935 and 1945, just as Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier’s pluralist vision was reshaping the federal boarding school system to promote greater respect for Native cultures and traditions. But this book is hardly a dry history of the late boarding school era. Telling this story in the voice of his younger self, the author takes us on a delightful journey into his childhood and the inner world of the boarding school. Along the way, he shares anecdotes of dormitory culture, student pranks, and warrior games. Although Fortunate Eagle recognizes Pipestone’s shortcomings, he describes his time there as nothing less than “a little bit of heaven.”

Were all Indian boarding schools the dispiriting places that history has suggested? This book allows readers to decide for themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806141145
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	03/19/2010
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	910L (what's this?)
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Adam Fortunate Eagle is an Ojibwe artist, writer, and frequent guest lecturer. As an advocate for Native civil rights throughout his life, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York, New Paltz. He is the author of Heart of the Rock: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz and Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School.

Laurence M. Hauptman is Professor of History in the State University of New York, College at New Paltz, and the author of several books on the Iroquois in New York state.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

Life at Pipestone Indian Boarding School, March 1935-June 1945 3

Life after Pipestone Indian Boarding School 149

Appendix 1 Excerpt from "The History of Pipestone Indian School," Gaylord V. Reynolds 163

Appendix 2 A Brief History of "The Pipestone Indian School," Courtesy Pipestone County Museum 167

Afterword Laurence M. Hauptman 171

Notes 187

Glossary 193

Editorial Reviews

Gr 9 Up—Adam Fortunate Eagle entered the Pipestone Indian Training School at the age of six. From that time until his graduation at age 16, he spent each school year and many summers under the care of the teachers and wardens at Pipestone. Growing up with other children, some sent by their families and others enrolled as orphans, Fortunate Eagle experienced the loneliness of separation, the camaraderie of school life, and the absence of his culture. While traditional practices were not forbidden, neither were they taught. Piecing together his heritage through hunting excursions, visits to nearby Native families, summer trips home, and the thoughts and ideas of his schoolmates, Fortunate Eagle eventually matured into a proud, resourceful, well-educated young man. This journey, told through his spare narrative, is filled with school pranks, tender memories, and a growing sense of the world at large between 1935 and 1945. While his account does not follow the general bias against this boarding-school system, the author acknowledges its shortcomings. Brief language and bare, honest descriptions of adolescence add strength and truth to the story, making Pipestone well suited to high school readers. Fortunate Eagle's memories of his time in an Indian boarding school fill a vital need in the canon of available literature about the American Indian experience.—Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Consortium Library, Barrow, AK

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