| This dissertation examines the development and consequences of the US government's language policy for American Indians in the late nineteenth century, when enforced English-only instruction was designed to replace missionaries' bilingual education programs. This study draws on archival research to conduct historical and literary analysis. To capture the historic contact zone where multiple languages and world views converged, the story is told through the perspectives of US government officials, European American and American Indian teachers, American Indian students, and Yankton Sioux writer Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), a former student and teacher who took ownership of English to restore her own American Indian Stories to their rightful place in American literature.; After the Civil War, as wars over land rights continued to bloody the plains, the federal government undertook a peace initiative that resulted in a large-scale educational program for American Indian students. Although it was promoted as a humanitarian enterprise, the English-only school system actually was an indispensable means to fulfill the larger nationalistic and imperialist agenda of cultural domination and territorial expansion. English signified much more than an additional language. Educational policy was characterized by an ideology that positioned English as the language of a superior European American, Christian culture. Teaching English was viewed as a way to civilize, Christianize, and Americanize the Indians. The goal was to erase American Indian languages and cultures from the American landscape, an endeavor that was doomed to fail. In spite of the devastation wrought by colonialism and racism, students clung to their first language and tribal identity. In the process, they developed their own theories on second language acquisition, cross-cultural communication, translation, and pedagogy. Successful language learners used English to reinterpret the past through American Indian perspectives and to correct misrepresentations of American Indian people.; The study emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical relationship between first and second languages and of recognizing that, because a multitude of American Indian languages came first, English is actually the second language of America. The implications of this history for English language teaching today are explored. |
