Community Class Series: The Eastern Band of Cherokee and the Carlisle Indian School

Presenters: Barbara Landis, Former Carlisle Indian Industrial School Archives and Library Research Specialist, Cumberland County Historical Society, Pennsylvania; and Marvel Welch, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian Tribe Member, Child Welfare Issues Advocate
“Kill the Indian; save the man” was the philosophy of the past federal American Indian boarding schools. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, opened in 1879 in Pennsylvania, was the first government-run boarding school for Native Americans. During the facility’s nearly 40 years of operation, roughly 8,000 Native American children from nearly every Indian nation and Alaskan village, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, attended Carlisle. Students were made to cut their hair, change their names, stop speaking their Native languages, convert to Christianity, and endure harsh discipline such as corporal punishment and solitary confinement. Carlisle closed in 1918, but its legacy and that of the many boarding schools modeled after it continue to impact American Indian families today.
For the government, the boarding schools offered a possible solution to the so-called Indian problem. For the tens of thousands of American Indians who attended them, the time is largely remembered as one of abuse and desecration of culture. Yet many powerful stories of triumph, resilience, and survival arose. In this program, two scholars discuss the history of the Carlisle Indian School and its personal connection to North Carolina.
Barbara Landis recently retired as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Archives and Library Research Specialist for the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She is currently a consultant for the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center and travels with a grant-funded team from Dickinson College visiting Native American communities whose descendants’ stories have been influenced by the students enrolled with the Carlisle experiment (1879-1918). Landis has traveled extensively lecturing and presenting Carlisle Indian School programming at universities, conferences, and American Indian culture centers.
Marvel Welch, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, honors and respects the cultural and traditional values of her Cherokee people. Welch works with a wide variety of communities by serving as an advocate on child welfare issues on numerous commissions and boards. Currently she serves on the North Carolina Indian Child Welfare Board, the North Carolina Child Protection Advisory Board, and the North Carolina Safe Care Advisory Committee.