ABSTRACT
“There certainly can be no doubt in the public mind today as to the capacity of the younger Indians in taking on white modes and manners… However, despite the fact that Indian schools have been established over several generations, there is a dearth of Indians in the professions… With school facilities already well established and the capability of the Indian unquestioned, every reservation could well be supplied with Indian doctors, nurses, engineers, road and bridgebuilders, draughtsmen, architects, dentists, lawyers, teachers, and instructors in tribal lore, legends, orations, songs, dances, and ceremonial ritual. The Indian, by the very sense of duty, should become his own historian, giving his account of the race—fairer and fewer accounts of the wars and more statecraft, legends, languages, oratory, and philosophical conceptions… Rather, a fair and correct history of the native American should be incorporated in the curriculum of the public school… But the Indian youth! They, too, have fine pages in their past history; they, too, have patriots and heroes. And it is not fair to rob Indian youth of their history, the stories of their patriots, which, if impartially written, would fill them with pride and dignity. Therefore, give back to Indian youth all, everything in their heritage that belongs to them and augments it with the best in the modern schools. I repeat, doublyeducate the Indian boy and girl… Why not build a school of Indian thought, built on the Indian pattern and conducted by Indian instructors? Why not a school of tribal art? … There were ideals and practices in the life of my ancestors that have not been improved upon by the presentday civilization; there were in our culture elements of benefit; and there were influences that would broaden any life. But that almost an entire public needs to be enlightened as to this fact need not be discouraging. For many centuries the human mind has labored under the delusion that the world was flat; and thousands of men have believed that the heavens were supported by the strength of Atlas. The human mind is not yet free from fallacious reasoning; it is not yet an open mind and its deepest recesses are not yet swept free of errors… But it is now time for a destructive order to be reversed, and it is well to inform other races that the aboriginal culture of America was not devoid of beauty. Furthermore, in denying the Indian his ancestral rights and heritages, the white race is but robbing itself. But America can be revived, rejuvenated, by recognizing a native school of thought.” 2
