It's been interesting hearing the different perspectives on the old Indian boarding schools this week. It is obviously a mixed bag, but it is heartening to know that locals seem to be open and ready to talking about it.
One of the people I was led to talk to was Fort Hall old timer Rusty Houtz. His mother, Effie Diggie, attended Carlisle along with Lillian and Lawrence. Effie met her future husband Herbert Houtz on the train she was on headed for Carlisle, Penn. Herbert was a sheep rancher from Rockland going to Omaha to sell his lambs. Rusty says his mother alway defended the school and the lessons she needed to learn to make it in the changing community. At Carlisle, she learned to cook, sew and farm. She also worked as a housekeeper for a local family there.
I visited with Alene Menta, whose father attended the Fort Hall Boarding School. She said he never said much about his experience, and when he did, it was oftentimes bitter. He recalls being spanked with a rubber hose down in the basement when he didn't follow the rules.
Sandra Eschief shared with me that her father, Ed Boyer, and my grandfather, Harrison Baker, learned carpentry at the school and used those skills to build their homes on the reservation, which still stand today. My grandfather passed before I had the chance to talk to him about his experiences at the boarding school. The only things that tell me he was there is his presence in the school band and baseball team pictures. A Bannock, he was always one of the tallest guys in the group pictures.
Saw the screening of "The Only Good Indian" at the Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City last weekend. The movie stars Wes Studi as an assimilated bounty hunter who tracks down a runaway from the Haskell Indian school. The movie follows Wes and the boy as the travel thru the Kansas countryside on Wes' old time motorcycle, while other bounty hunters after runaways from the school are still on horseback. One of the more comical characters is the town sheriff, who is after both Wes and the boy, and suffers from PTSD from a lifetime of killing Indians. It is a refreshing look at the schools, that takes the traditional "cowboy and Indian" roles, turns them around, and add an interesting vampire story twist. In the end, Wes chucks his broken down motorcycle and vows to go back to his Indian way. I liked the film, although some of the scenes at the schools were too "Hollywood," and detracted from plot. Following the movie, Director Kevin Wilmott and Wes answer questions from the audience. Wes, who attended Chillocco Indian School in Oklahoma, says the belief still abounds that "it's great to be a white man." When asked about the value of a formal apology for what happened at the schools, Wes said an apology would have little meaning. Most of the actors and behind the scenes people were at the screening. After the movie, my friend Bonnie and I were starstruck and we hung around to meet some of the cast. We got to meet the runaway boy, his mom, and Heine Geigomah, well-known Native consultant. They were all very friendly. The boy is a champion dancer and had his hair cut especially for the movie.
This image is one of the few pictures that show the Fort Hall Boarding School campus. The school was in operation at Fort Hall between 1880 and 1936 and upwards of 200 children attended annually. The site is located just above the present day Sho-Ban Jr./Sr. High School. It appears that the students out front are playing horseshoes - it looks like the same students in the closeup. 
