Braiding Sweetwood

Gabby Paterson Colloquium II CA2 Final Reflection The White Man Prevails: Understanding the Impact of Native American Boarding Schools Throughout history, certain nations have used their power to colonize other people whose values differ from their own. This tactic has been used to “civilize,” or in other words, destroy others’ culture for their supposed benefit. A clear example of this is the planned assimilation of Indigenous culture through American boarding schools. Using Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer as inspiration, I wrote a poem describing how a young Native American boy felt after being taken away from his home and forced into boarding school by white men. I titled the poem “Stripped” to convey how this young man was not only torn away from his home, but he was also stripped of his culture and
Robin Wall Kimmerer describes this further by stating, “Saying it makes a living land into “natural resources.” If a maple is it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice” (57). Rather than ripping these people from their land and culture because they were different, we should have attempted to learn from their values. I believe this would have fostered deep connections to the land, and we could have prevented some climate change impacts and other anthropogenic impacts. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to Braiding Sweetgrass in an artistic manner because I believe art is able to evoke more emotion than a traditional academic paper. While academic papers can be beautifully written, art allows people to feel deeply connected to the topic without experiencing it firsthand. My poem brings to light the horrors experienced by young Native Americans because white men were threatened by their different way of life. Placing these young Native Americans in boarding schools dehumanizes them simply because they are