Late in the novel, Junior also refers to the fact that reservations were first established as prisons: beginning with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. Beginning in the late 19th century, thousands of children were taken from their families to attend these schools on and off the reservation, with enrollment reaching a peak in the 1970s before ongoing complaints and investigations into the schools led Congress to pass the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and to many of these schools closing. P recalls from his early teaching days, “kill the Indian to save the child,” was coined by Colonel Richard Pratt, who in 1879 established the first of many boarding schools for American Indian children that practiced the educational philosophy-including corporal punishment and harsh prohibitions on expressions of Indian culture-that Mr. Although Junior’s story takes place in the present day, his experiences-particularly the hardships of life on the reservation-are very much informed by the historical oppression of Native Americans in the United States, and Junior and other characters make a few specific references to historical events.
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